An 18-year-old boy named Claire Hiltner has earned an associate’s degree in Science from Lake Region State College, North Dakota, United States despite still being a high school student.

Claire is a student at Langdon High School who was able to bag an associate degree in Science through the dual credit program at Lake Region State College before graduating from high school.

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She made history as the first student to graduate from Lake Region State College with an associate degree while still in high school. ”I was a full-time high school and full-time college student,” Claire said

”It was challenging to find time for all of it, but we made it happen. It’s all about balance, and there were hardships trying to balance it, and what activities to do when,” she added.

Claire stated that she initially started taking online classes at Lake Region State College not to earn a degree, but to challenge herself. She said she tended to get bored in art and food science classes.

She said that she started taking advanced high school classes in middle school and college classes were the next challenge. Claire added that one of the first advanced high school classes she took was an introductory nursing class.

She stated that from then on, her interest in the medical sciences grew. Claire said when she was young, she would make and label anatomical diagrams out of Styrofoam, and one day she drew a large anatomical heart on the wall of her bedroom with a permanent marker.

With her growing love for medicine in mind, Claire said she began researching the classes first-year college students take, hoping to get some generals out of the way before heading to college.

She said the summer before her junior year of high school, she and her college adviser, looked at the credits she had earned so far and they realized that with some extra classes, she could graduate with an associate degree at the same time she graduated from high school.

Despite taking high school and college courses, Claire also works  for Langdon Ambulance and as a certified nursing assistant at Langdon Prairie Health. She said within her first few calls when she started, she knew pursuing medicine was the right path.

Claire said she plans to study medical lab science at University of Darkota adding that with her associate degree, she will start at the university as a junior. She also hopes to receive her paramedic license so she can work as a paramedic between undergraduate classes and medical school.

Claire added that eventually, she plans to attend medical school for emergency medicine. “I love helping people and being their calm in the storm and being able to be there for somebody. That’s what medicine is all about,” she said.

Source: scholarshipregion.com