Mariana Nijensohn will give the valedictorian speech at the Windermere High School graduation ceremony later this month, but the cap and gown ceremony may seem like a bit of deja vu for the teen and her family.
Earlier this month, the 18-year-old attended the University of Central Florida’s commencement ceremony, having earned enough credits in high school to earn a bachelor’s degree in English from the university.
Her unusual dual-enrollment feat required a workload that sometimes worried her mother and her academic advisor, and an online spreadsheet to keep track of a dizzying array of assignments.
“I’m a total nerd. I enjoy school,” Mariana said of the academic challenge she faced.
“I just think everyone’s journey is different. This was what was best for me,” Mariana said, adding with a laugh, “A lot of my friends think I’m crazy and would never have done this, and they shouldn’t have done it either, because it wasn’t for them is.’
Her mother, Lynda, proudly displays Mariana’s academic awards on a table in the family’s home near Winter Garden and her dual UCF and Windermere graduation signs on the front lawn outside — but she would also agree.
“She’s a little crazy,” she said of her eldest of two children.
Mariana is an avid reader and a strong writer with a talent for memorization. Mariana manages her extraordinary amount of schoolwork, although, perhaps surprisingly, she is also a procrastinator who doesn’t always tackle assignments until just before the deadline, a habit that Lynda Nijensohn sometimes found irritating. .
“Why are you doing this to yourself?” her mother would ask.
The teen also dances on a competitive team, which takes 15 to 20 hours a week, adding to the strain on her complicated school schedule.
Mariana attends the University of Pennsylvania. She plans to start over as a student at the Ivy League school in Philadelphia, although she will pursue a new major — likely the school’s interdisciplinary in philosophy, politics and economics. Her goal is a career in law.
Mariana is an exceptional student and Windermere’s first to earn a bachelor’s degree in addition to her diploma, said Keyonata Granberry, Mariana’s high school guidance counselor.
Orange County Public Schools does not track how many high school students also earn a bachelor’s degree, but says it is a rare achievement.
“It was great, and honestly it was hard. She really tried her best,” Granberry said. “I think she’s great, and not just because she’s a smart kid, but because she has personality,” she said.
“She just has a goal and she’s driven,” she added. “We will definitely see her name again.”
Mariana’s decision to take dual-enrollment university classes came because she was concerned that her rank at the end of 10th grade, despite having the best grades, was only mid-range.
She had transferred to Windermere High as a sophomore after a year at a private school. Her family had moved to Florida from Massachusetts, where her mother grew up, the summer after she was eight years old. The move was made to be closer to family, including Mariana’s grandmother Anna Cowin, a former senator from Leesburg and a former superintendent of Lake County schools.
Mariana had high school credits from both her high school and the private school, but because those schools used different grading systems, those classes did not have the extra weight needed for a top GPA in public school.
With her sights set on top schools, Mariana wanted to “make my GPA as strong as possible” and improving class rankings was part of that. Ultimately, she would be at the top of her class.
Her plan to get there included a lot of Advanced Placement classes — she took 16 in total — but also a lot of dual-enrollment online classes for both juniors and seniors and the summer in between. She took classes at UCF as well as Valencia College, the University of Florida, Arizona State University and the University of Arizona.
Initially, Mariana had no intention of completing a bachelor’s degree, but when her UCF advisor said she was close to completing one, she went for it.
Her spring semester of 11th grade, when she had six classes on campus and nine college classes online, was the toughest, she said.
And that worried her guidance counselor, who then contacted Lynda Nijensohn to make sure Mariana could handle the workload.
“Just her schedule from her freshman year, oh my gosh, I don’t see this being done by any other kid,” Granberry said.
One of the biggest challenges was keeping track of all her assignments, which at one point required me to check seven online platforms. Her mother helped create a color-coded Excel spreadsheet that kept all work in one place and completed assignments (there were more than a thousand of them) disappeared.
Mariana, who loves the work of poet Sylvia Plath, said her achievement was possible because she studied English, a course for which there was no rigidly defined course of study.
“You can’t do this if you’re a math or science person,” she said.
UCF invited her to commencement May 3, although technically it cannot confer her degree until she receives her high school diploma and Windermere can send her final transcripts.
“It was actually really cool,” she said of the UCF ceremony. “It touched me a little bit. I understood. I did it.”
A UCF dean also attended the Windermere awards ceremony to present Mariana with a UCF graduation stole and recognize her unusual achievement.
“That was very moving,” said Lynda Nijensohn.
Both Mariana and her mother said they were impressed by the dual enrollment options available for free to high school students in Florida, whether they want to take academic classes or career-oriented classes.
Her UCF degree is “an anomaly, but I’m not a genius,” Mariana said, and Florida’s dual enrollment offer could help many students.
“They have more opportunities than they think,” she added.
