19-year-old student begins IU graduate school

After completing 340 college credits, two majors and a minor, Erin Earl found time to celebrate her 19th birthday last week.\nEarl, who began her masters in piano performance this year at IU's School of Music, has also somehow managed to maintain a two-year relationship with her boyfriend.\nSomewhere in the midst of playing piano melodies and solving calculus derivatives, Earl has discovered a seemingly infallible personal work ethic.\n"It's not really as hard as you probably think it is," Earl said with a laugh.\nIn addition to maintaining a GPA of about 3.8., Earl volunteered for a newspaper that focuses on Seattle's homeless population and rowed with the crew club.\nEarl, one of 16 students chosen to begin college after junior high school as part of the University of Washington's early entrance program, enrolled in her first college class at 13. She graduated last spring with a triple degree in applied music (in piano performance), music theory and computer science.\nAs a part of the process, all of the early entrance students went through one year of transition school. \nInstead of plunging into advanced high school content, students focused on learning college skills. In fact, Earl thought the one year of intermediate schooling placed her at a slight advantage in college.\n"Transition school is so hard, college seemed easy in comparison," Earl said.\nAfter Earl finished the transition school year, she evolved into a "normal" college student.\n"I didn't have that much of a problem," Earl said.\nOver time, she made friends with people despite the age difference. Though she was well under the legal drinking age and couldn't go out to bars, she managed to enjoy herself in other ways, often going out to lunch with friends.\nEarl's boyfriend Alan Worsley, a first-year graduate school student, went through the same program. \nThough the two didn't take similar classes, they managed to spend nearly 30 hours a week together, Worsley said.\nHe credits the success of their relationship, in part, to the fact that the couple went through the early entrance program together.\n"Life's easier dating within the program," Worsley said.\nMost "eepers" (a nickname used in the early entrance program) don't brag about their achievements, Worsley said.\nStill, Earl seems to have impressed many of her professors.\nBela Siki, a piano professor at the University of Washington who worked with Earl for three years, said she "has a great talent."\nSiki spent an hour a week with Earl, and 60 minutes was more than enough time for him to detect Earl's musical talent.\nAfter 28 years at the University of Washington, Siki said he's seen many young talented students excel because of the early entrance program.\nDespite her modesty, Earl admits skipping high school and beginning college at 13 took a lot of work. She took 20 to 21 credit hours each semester, but said she did have time for other activities.\n"I found that if I took a lot of credits, I had more free time," she said\nBesides the irony of Earl's college work ethic, it worked.\nDespite her academic success, Earl admits she's not superwoman. She might be able to program a computer, but she can't bowl a strike.\nHaving developed an intrinsic "eeper" sense of modesty, Earl said she doesn't think of herself as out of the ordinary. From her perspective, a 19-year-old graduate student is about as normal as a 14-year-old college student.\n-- Contact features editor Asma Khalid at amkhalid@indiana.edu.