Zolie Pin is taking her first college class this fall, and it all comes down to wanting contacts.
After two years of Zolie, 11, asking for contacts, her mother, Erendira, told her to write a paper to convince her. Zolie wrote a persuasive essay, which Erendira said she then realized was at a higher level than she expected from someone who had just completed fifth grade. In fact, she said, it seemed like it could be college-level.
Now, Zolie is a few months into sixth grade at Armand Larive Middle School in Hermiston and a few weeks into an online math class through Blue Mountain Community College. She’s been in the talented and gifted program since third grade, her parents said, but Erendira said she never expected to have a middle schooler in college.
“She’s always been an extremely outside the box thinker, I would call it,” Erendira said. “Regular school is just not enough of a challenge for her, so she likes it.”
After reading the essay on contacts, Erendira said she showed it to others and eventually made a call to BMCC to see if it would even take an 11-year-old. The college would.
Starting her college path early
According to Riley Faircloth, BMCC’s director of enrollment services at the time, Zolie is the only middle school student taking classes through the college, though it is more common for high schoolers.
“At first I thought I wasn’t ready for it, and that I shouldn’t be taking them because I’m not that high of a level yet,” Zolie said. “But then I started taking them, and I was like, ‘OK, this is good,’ because it wasn’t that hard, but it’s going to get harder as I go.”
She’s taking a pre-algebra course at BMCC this fall, Math 25, and plans to take reading and writing in the winter or spring term. The course she’s taking is not quite considered college level, but Faircloth said if she passes it, then she can work her way up through the next levels. As a BMCC student, she will have to meet the same standards and requirements as everyone else.
Zolie said she likes Blue Mountain.
“It’s cool,” she said, “but I haven’t been to any other colleges.”
At this point, Faircloth said, Zolie isn’t seeking a degree, so she’s considered a community education student. Usually, that classification is reserved for older folks and community members who want to take yoga or tennis, not for 11-year-olds who want to enroll early.
“I think it’s pretty remarkable that she’s wanting to start so young,” said Faircloth, “so it’ll be interesting to see what she wants to take next term.”
Future plans
For Zolie, she just wants to end up going to a good college that has a strong program in whatever she chooses to study (which she said she hasn’t decided yet; she’s just 11, after all).
Zolie said she doesn’t like to highlight that she’s taking an additional course through BMCC — only a few of her friends and teachers knew as of early October. But her parents see it as a point of pride, since their daughter is driven enough to take on additional work and since she values her education so much.
Zolie’s father, Chanty, and his family are from Cambodia, he said, where his parents were refugees. Education was hard to come by for Chanty’s father, who then made it a priority for Chanty and his sister. The value of education is something Chanty hopes to pass on to Zolie, he said, but he doesn’t want her class at the college to interfere with being a kid and transitioning into middle school.
“I just hope that she will be happy in whatever she chooses to do,” he said of his hopes for her future. “That it challenges her, and she’ll be happy with it, because it’s up to her, whatever she chooses that makes her happy.”
