Anthaea-Grace Patricia Dennis, a 12-year-old student from Ottawa, Canada, has become the youngest university graduate in Canadian history. During the weekend, Dennis accepted her University of Ottawa certificate for a bachelor’s degree in biomedical science.
The kid prodigy began university studies at the age of nine and has since produced a 40-page thesis on the relationship between the brain and the hand in right-handed versus left-handed people. Dennis spent a year investigating the subject before presenting her findings at the Ottawa-Carleton Institute of Biology Symposium, according to CBC News.
“I can now call myself a researcher,” she told the outlet. “There are people showing interest in what I’m doing, and I feel like the master of the cerebellum.” Her mom Johanna Dennis, who has been behind her throughout her studies, said she noticed that her daughter had special skills when she was around two-and-a-half years old. Besides reading at that age, she started public school when she was four after studying for kindergarten and grade one together.
However, being a 12-year-old in a class with individuals much older than her was initially difficult owing to preconceived views others had about her, which is why she urges her friends who are similarly brilliant and smart not to allow other people’s expectations bring them down.
Dennis, who grew up learning to swim, dance, and perform in musical theater, is pursuing postgraduate studies at McGill University, the University of Toronto, and the Illinois Institute of Technology, according to her.
“I worked so hard from when I was eight. I have earned these accomplishments,” she told the University of Ottawa during an interview. “Age has not stopped me from being where I belong, where I deserve to be.”
