Teen Punk Girl To Get MBA

The AP reports:

Jessica Meeker is not your average MBA. She's a black-clad, punk rock fanatic whose hair has seen more colors than the average rainbow. She's also 18, and on Saturday, she will be the youngest student ever to receive an MBA from Indiana University of Pennsylvania, school officials said.

She's not caught up in being a prodigy, though.

"It just feels so good to finally be done," Meeker said Friday. "I have been in college for so long."

At age 12, Meeker became the youngest student to enroll at Pennsylvania State University and, at 16, she was the youngest to earn a bachelor's degree there, majoring in psychology.

Being a young teenager at a huge university wasn't easy.

"I was a little kid," she said. "Everyone was like, `What's she doing here?'"

But Meeker eventually thrived, enjoying coffee shops and dorm life with her older peers.

Frank Meeker, 49, and Leigh Meeker, 46, always knew their daughter was smart - she could spell at 18 months. In first grade, after repeatedly complaining that she was bored, she was given an IQ test and scored in the 99.7 percentile, her mother said.

Meeker's parents took her out of public school system and taught her at their home in Bellefonte, in the state's center, about 10 miles north of Penn State's main campus.

The triumph of homeschooling.