ad-free
Channel / Source:
TEDx Talks
Published: 2013-06-20
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KAG1kFzf24
everyone by now you've probably figured out some things about me probably guessed that my Indian parents pushed me not only did they push me to skip several grades they push me to not have friends or a social life or even sleepovers I was probably on a regimented intellectual diet if advanced not gonna city test prep from age to now as a result I don't do anything
for my own personal interests itself the grades the salary in the eventual success one of the worst part of all this is because I've been resist way my entire life probably in Cape and incapable of relating to another human being or just to be emotionally whole person and after all this they're probably still some fear the audience were wondering how you can get your kids to
college at the age of fourteen the good news is I'm here to tell you the bad news is it might not be what you think it is this is the first time ever accepted opportunity to talk about my age and I decided to give it a try because over the past few years I've talked to so many people who think that I am where I am
today because of intelligence that I was going and over the next few minutes I hope to prove them wrong the truth is until very recently until I got to college most people who knew my family that my brother and I spend way too much time playing outside and having fun and not enough time studying so where did this all start well my parents actually have a
plan for me to go to college in fourteen turns out I was a kindergarten school dropout and during the first three months of kindergarten I was doing great I grew up loving stories and books so my mother taught me how to read at home and one of my favorite things to do growing up was to read on my own so it seemed natural that I would
do well enough of that lessons school until one day when my mother started getting notes sent home from the teacher and most of them read something like your daughter is falling behind she needs to work on her let Iraqi rather than talking to me my mother decided to volunteer in class wanted to see what's actually going on she was shocked to see when the teacher asked
us all to write in a I took so much effort to write the perfect see she went into crosses over pulled me aside and asked me what I was doing no I don't remember this but apparently I said something along the lines of won't back when I knew everything I didn't have any friends and now I don't know anything I have so many friends invited birthday
parties every weekend I figured it out and how it's going to be needless to say my parents were more than a little unsettled at the age of four I decided it was important to me it definitely wasn't performing well in school so they started looking for alternate educational opportunities for me Anderson homeschool me it started out as a one year experiment and turned into a ten
year experiment by the end of it I had the benefit of getting incredibly customize education and I learned from doing research from taking college courses from teaching myself Ruth playing outdoors and traveling but that was supposedly my academic for if the education a big part of my education was actually learning how to be authentic to myself regardless of social situation that I wasn't and I'm not
saying that no one in this audience has ever thought about authenticity I'm sure all of us can actually think of a time where we're figuring out to do with their lives or where we fit into the rest the world but I mean to you I'm suffering from teenage angst so I'd like to think that my story was a little bit different in one main way very
early on I realized that we grow up believing in rules that determine who have conversations with and who we have friends with and to me that also meant that we grew up believing that when we're certain age we feel like we can only relate to other people who were born the same year regardless of backgrounds personalities interests world views our sense of humor so when I
was thirteen my typical day would look something like this I wake up in the morning do some work and had to local community cause stick chemistry class on the way to class I see my friend who is leading turning problems that sit down with him talk about chemistry talk about life after class had plug you some research I get home to play kickball with my ten
year old neighbors and then came the best part of my day I was ready for my first tennis lessons I walked off the court Braniewo rack in hand inside that the instructor my class with the same friend that I was hoping with the problems that earlier that day no situations like those pop defend my life so many times I learned quickly and by the time I
got Stanford I realize that being the same age or being the same anything wasn't a prerequisite to being friends with someone another thing that I feel like people don't often see in the story is how many times I tried to break the rules but also how many times I tried period growing up I always want to be an animal scientist and by the time I was
twelve I connected two years of research and decided I was interested molecular biology so I wanted to work in a lab the problem is when you're twelve it's not even legal to work in most labs and most college professors would rather work with students than with you so I looked up every scientist but did work but I was interested in within a hundred mile radius of
where I live and sent emails to them I usually go something like this I find it really exciting professor sent off an email and never hear back over the course of several months I send so many emails to all these different factors and most never responded a couple respond to the plate no but if you invited me to come talk I would start to wonder festers
and address that he actually misunderstood my email and was a complete accident but he even asked me to come talk to him but by the end of our conversation he saw how much I cared and use will you give me a chance that year under conducting research in a slob and learn more than I ever could have been a classic it was also towards the beginning
of seven years during which I conducted research us really interesting questions and work with amazing people and eventually ended up getting international recognition for my work but none of it would have ever happened had I not tried over and over and over again in the end I think my story is not at all about how to get to college at fourteen it's more about how to
get out of my own way how to superiors that I thought existed undone ignored them in she is no longer minors I'm eighteen I consignment on forms now really excited and the truth is in a few years it won't even matter that I went to college early the thing is I was born into a family that is absolutely amazing and I had access to educational opportunities
and scholarships that let me do all the things I learned customizing my own learning experience in being authentic while breaking rules I think easily see how different my experience we've turned out by not have access to even one of those things I've come to realize that I'm perceived as being intelligent because I had access to opportunities that other people have I believe that I have the
