Gifted student hops three grades to start college

Emily Lint awoke before dawn.

From her dorm room bed, she watched the world brighten and people's feet as they walked across the Mary Baldwin College campus in western Virginia.

She got a sick feeling in her stomach.

"I'm on my own," she thought. "I don't know if I'm going to do this."

Back home in Norfolk, it was summer break. Her friends - Emma, Cassandra, Jewell and the others - still had a few more days for the mall or the beach before beginning the 10th grade.

She'd said goodbye to them two weeks earlier during a giddy romp through MacArthur Center, where they paid equal attention to thigh-highs at Hot Topic and a jack-in-the-box at Go! Toys & Games.

Emily could have stayed with them and finished high school, but she had left after one year.

She couldn't drive, vote or go to R-rated movies. She still slept with a SpongeBob SquarePants doll.

But at 15, Emily was in college.

Emily's friends know she's smart. If she's not the smartest person they've met, she's probably in the "top three," they say.

Her teachers identified her as gifted in kindergarten, and in the third grade, she decided to transfer to Dreamkeepers Academy, which offers activities such as forensics in an extended school day.

Emily would finish her schoolwork early and visit Principal Doreatha White to discuss what came next. "Basically she had her future set," White said. "She just needed someone to endorse it for her."

In the sixth grade, Emily took the PSAT. Two years later, she took the SAT.

She twice attended the University of Virginia's Summer Enrichment Program for high-ability students, and it caught the attention of Mary Baldwin administrators. They sent Emily information about the college's Program for the Exceptionally Gifted.

Her mother hesitated to pass along the brochure. It seemed like too much, too soon: the independence, the distance from home, harder classes, older classmates.

Besides, Emily was having fun at Granby High School. She loved researching robotics for the NORSTAR gifted program, and she held the

No. 2 spot on the golf team.

But Emily was acing the academics, and there were so many other things she wanted to fit in: drama, debate, community service, art.

Her father secretly hoped she'd stay at Granby and play out her high school golf career. Why did she have to go to college now?

"I knew what the answer was," Don Lint said.

Perched among the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, the cream brick buildings of Mary Baldwin College flow down a steeply sloping lawn to downtown Staunton.

Founded in 1842, the private, liberal arts school is considered the oldest women's college related to the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). About 830 undergraduates attend.

The college's Program for the Exceptionally Gifted, known as PEG, began in 1985. Educators worried that gifted girls who weren't nurtured in the classroom would succumb to peer pressure to hide their intelligence, said program director Stephanie Ferguson. PEG is among a handful of programs catering to teens who are ready to start college full-time before finishing high school.

Students entering PEG are typically between 12 and 17, motivated, mature and score above the level of incoming college freshmen on the SAT. Most eventually graduate from Mary Baldwin or another school.

Since its inception, just 10 of 575 PEG students hailed from South Hampton Roads, Ferguson said.

In their first year and until they turn 16, PEG students must stay together in a dorm, where they sign in and out.

They mostly take the same classes as other Mary Baldwin students and are encouraged to participate in extracurricular offerings. They also merit special attention: For example, a PEG student in a school play must be chaperoned if she attends a cast party where alcohol is served.

The school also plans activities that appeal to teenagers - mixers with nearby boarding schools and field trips to high school football games.

"They still need to run around and have pillow fights," Ferguson said.

Emily prepared to leave Norfolk on a muggy August afternoon.

Stacks of cardboard boxes covered the Lints' dining room table and overflowed onto chairs. Pillows and a new striped comforter bulged inside clear plastic trash bags.

So much was new: towels, an organizer, peace-sign sneakers, laptop - even her hairstyle. She'd changed it from long and streaky to a shorter, darker, more sophisticated cut.

Upstairs, her bed was stripped and the shelves looted, with only a few golf trophies, ceramic horses and Harry Potter books left behind. "Everybody has Harry Potter," Emily explained.

Downstairs, she dabbed at her makeup as she waited for her father to arrive with the truck.

For the last few nights at home, Emily slept on the sofa with her mother, Carolyn O'Donnell. Emily didn't want to leave her. She knew she'd miss their special times the most, cuddling and watching "True Blood" together.

The hugeness of college hit her when she finished packing with her friend Emma.

Emma would be seeing all their friends at school in a couple of weeks. Emily was leaving that life for good.

What if things didn't work out? What if she didn't make tons of friends? What if she and her roommate didn't get along?

"You're a great person," Emma told her. "I can't see anybody not liking you."

Emily's father backed the red truck all the way up to the front steps. They packed it up and hopped in.

"You got enough room in there?" O'Donnell called over her shoulder.

"I'm good," said Emily from the backseat.

By the time Emily's parents said goodbye, she was ready for them to go.

She wanted her own space; she wanted everything to begin.

After five minutes, she'd stopped being nervous around her roommate, Laura. They'd talked all night, and Emily had even tried on Laura's blue-tinted contact lenses. They signed up for library cards together and did their laundry in machines down the hall.

Emily hung her posters - two from the "Twilight" movie over her bed and a dragon inside the closet door, placed there because it unsettled her roommate.

She Facebook-friended Otis, the dorm's elevator. She figured out her new ATM card and cell phone. She used her college ID to get into an R-rated movie, "Taking Woodstock."

The night before classes began, Emily packed her book bag and looked through her algebra text, while Laura sifted through her class schedule.

"I didn't come here to compete with the freshmen," Emily was saying. "I came here to do my best."

"There was a girl at my school who always had the best grades in the class. We'd just stare at her," Laura said. "How about you? Did you get, like, really good grades in your classes?"

"Not in all of them," Emily carefully replied.

On the first day of classes, Emily wore her lucky earrings - a guitar in one ear, a treble clef in the other - and a purple blouse her mother had recommended.

In high school, she'd usually rush off to class without breakfast. Today, Emily melted chocolate chips between warm pancakes, then went back for chocolate milk. She'd either be very sick or very happy, Emily told the girls at her table.

Algebra started at 9 a.m. She slid into a desk near the front.

"I actually did some studying before I came to class," Emily told the girl beside her.

"Really?" the girl asked. "Nice." She seemed sincere.

The professor, Rebecca Williams, appeared, and 23 pairs of eyes watched, hands poised over blank sheets of paper.

She started roll-call: Jessica, Eboni, Danielle and three Katies from places like Chicago, Raleigh and Orange, Va. They announced their plans to major in biology, theater, and psychology with a minor in art.

"I don't know what I'm going to major in," Emily said when it was her turn. "I'm kind of undecided, but we're thinking about communications."

Students should spend two hours on algebra outside of class for every hour they spend in class, Williams said, and they are expected to show their work.

Emily raised her hand. She'd heard that students who speak up in class get better grades.

"I'm just warning you, I do a lot of problems in my head," she said. "My geometry teacher got frustrated by that and graded me down. If I do that to you, I'm sorry. It's just how I do math."

Walking back to the dorm with Eboni, Emily predicted the professor wouldn't like her.

"This is, like, everything I learned last year," she said. "I think in this class I'm going to doodle a lot."

The English professor was late for his 1 p.m. class.

Emily began to draw intricate designs on her hand. So far, the biggest differences between high school and college were that classes were shorter, and she lugged more books to classrooms with smaller desks.

Whenever people mentioned "professors," she thought of Hogwarts.

A girl with green streaks in her blond hair sat next to Emily in the front row, her plaid Scooby-Doo backpack on the floor at her feet.

"Where's our teacher?" asked the girl, a 14-year-old named Amber.

"They say he's late, like, a lot. He's always late like seven or eight minutes, and sometimes he cancels for headaches."

"They don't have substitutes?" Amber asked.

"This is college," Emily said. "They don't do substitutes."

The walk to drama class was more like a climb. Stairs and then more stairs, a path, a parking lot, a never-ending hill.

As she walked, Emily pondered what she'd write her first essay about for English class. Maybe peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Maybe SpongeBob. College involved a lot of work, and the independence was a little disconcerting. She'd have to do all the assignments on her own, and if she didn't, no one would care.

"That's why people freak out," Emily said. "Now I know why."

She reached the Deming Fine Arts Center and walked down a flight of stairs. A voice beckoned from an open door.

A heavyset man with long dreadlocks stood at a podium. "If you are not supposed to be in my class, then get the hell out!" Clinton Johnston roared to his students' delight.

He guided them through the syllabus, varying his accents from New Jersey tough guy to English Cockney. Some of the older girls playfully answered back, claiming a heavy textbook was good for weightlifting and that they were glad they'd be reading 'Henry IV, Part I,' "because 'Hamlet' sucks."

Emily, a Hurrah Players alumna, was charmed by their wit and irreverence. They seemed more like her than the teens in high school. They could be goofy or serious and knew when to be which.

Emily cornered the professor after class.

"I understand there's a theater group at Mary Baldwin," she said. "How do I audition for that?"

"You just have to show up," Johnston said. He led Emily to his office, and showed her the script to the group's first show, "Unnecessary Farce."

She suddenly remembered to introduce herself. "Nice to meet you," she said. "Emily."

"I know."

Amy Jeter, 446-2730, amy.jeter@pilotonline.com