Many of us grew up hearing stories about children who would skip a lot of grades and then end up graduating college before most people were in high school. Although some of those stories were not exactly true, that isn’t the case with a young woman named Dorothy Jean Tillman (DJ). As far as 14-year-old teenage girls are concerned, she’s not all that unusual. She enjoys hanging out with her friends, dancing, and scrolling through social media. When it comes to her educational life, however, that is where she truly differs. She earned a master’s degree from unity college, an accomplishment that is incredible, considering she is only 14 years old.
It all started when DJ was going through a variety of schools for talented and gifted children. She had a bit of a challenge in those schools due to distractions, so she started doing enrollment high school courses when she was only eight years old. During the day, she would take regular classes and then at night, she would take her high school class modules. She was able to complete high school and attend the College of Lake County, where she earned an associate’s degree in psychology. DJ was only 10 years old at the time! Afterward, she went to Excelsior College to get her bachelors degree in liberal arts at only 12 years of age. Now that she has completed her Masters degree in environmental science and sustainable engineering, it was time for a celebration.
The interests that DJ has in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) and engineering goes to her grandmother. After all, her grandmother would purchase books and magazines on the topic and it started DJ down the path when she was only a small child. According to her family, she always loved studying but she continued to stay well-rounded by immersing herself in the arts.
Jimalita Tillman, DJs mother told PEOPLE that she is proud of her daughter and the example she is setting for other young girls. Although DJ doesn’t have her entire future figured out that this point, she does feel that it will involve being an entrepreneur and STEM. She also says that she would like to find a way to group her degrees into a single endeavor.