Local 14-year-old finishes first semester at Spelman College on dean’s list

ATLANTA — A local 14-year-old is proof that hard work can take you anywhere.

Not only did Sydney Wilson just finish her first semester of college, she made the dean’s list.

Channel 2’s Tyisha Fernandes caught up with the teenager Thursday, to see how she’s adjusting.

When Wilson stepped foot on the campus at Spelman College, she had some moments of doubt mixed in with some anxiety. She told Fernandes it was never the academics that scared her, but it was the social aspect of being on a college campus at such a young age.

“The best part was proving to myself that I could do it,” Wilson said.

She has always done extremely well in school.

Her focus on education has helped her skip grades, and it has made her one of the youngest students to ever get into Spelman.

When it was time to move into her dorm room and move away from her parents for the first semester, she was a little nervous and started to doubt herself.

“I kind of felt defeated. (There were) a couple of weeks where at the end of the day, I just didn’t feel good about, I don’t know, how I was doing or just me being there. I didn’t know if this was the right decision,” Wilson said.

But then, she started to make friends, started to get comfortable with her professors. By the time she headed home for the holiday break, she was on the dean’s list with all As and one B.

Right now, her major is biology, but Wilson said she just wants to be a sponge at Spelman and learn as much as she can about everything.

“I think I’m just waiting for that: the right moment where I find something that’s super interesting to me - but I still am very interested in pediatric surgery – and so that’s what I want to do as of now -but I’m completely open to changing my mind,” Wilson said.

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