Alena Analeigh Wicker has 20,000 followers on Instagram. She also has an acceptance letter to medical school, from the University of Alabama at Birmingham’s Heersink School of Medicine. And she’s only 13 years old.
Alena graduated from high school at the age of 12 and now, at 13, she is headed to medical school. She was accepted into a program that “provides early acceptance to the students who meet the requirements for acceptance and matriculation, called the Burroughs Wellcome Scholars Early Assurance Program, reports CNN. She is the youngest black woman to achieve this.
She is currently working on two separate undergraduate degrees in the biological sciences, at Arizona State University and Oakwood University but, she says, “I’m still a normal 13-year-old.” Asked how she does it, she says “I just have extremely good time management skills and I’m very disciplined.”
Alena’s mother says she’s always been gifted, and that she began noticing it when Alena was about three. “Alena was gifted. It was just how she did things and how advanced she was. She was reading chapter books.”
Alena explained that she enjoys volunteering, and has since she was “young.” She said since she was three and five she liked feeding the homeless and doing projects with girls and mentoring. Her advice to others who want to achieve great things is not to let anyone tell you no and to have a good support system. Hers was her mom.
Her mom said she always knew there was something about Alena that made her know she had to nurture that gift.
Alena is also an entrpreneur. She started an organization called Brown STEM Girl when she was about three and had a passion for NASA, and she didn’t see anyone who looked like her. She wanted to advocate for brown-skinned girls and women to show they can do whatever they put their minds to.
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Alena may think she’s just like any other 13-year-old girl, but she is truly exceptional. She has already accomplished more than most adults. Do you think she is missing out on being a normal kid, by going to college and med school so young? Or is the sky the limit for her?
