News - Local/State

Saturday, May. 17, 2008

No high school for this college graduate

Emily Hunt, 18, is graduating this weekend. Nothing strange about that, right?

There wouldn't be, except that Hunt is graduating from college, not high school, like other people her age.

Through a program for the exceptionally gifted, the Rock Hill native went straight from middle school at St. Anne Catholic School to college at Mary Baldwin in Staunton, Va.

"Her going to college at that age was a perfect solution for her," said her father, Joseph Hunt. "It was just something that fit her needs so well. She just took it and ran with it. We're obviously very proud of her."

In school, Emily lived in a dorm and a campus apartment with a series of other girls. She was captain of the Ethics Bowl team, editor of the literary magazine, co-chairwoman of the freshman orientation committee and more.

She will graduate cum laude and has been inducted into Phi Beta Kappa and Omicron Delta Kappa national honor societies.

Transitioning to college-level work was no sweat.

"I think I was helped by the fact that I was always more independent, even when I lived at home," she said. "I've always been sort of self-motivated. I knew that I wanted to do something big and important with my life."

Emily never broadcast her age, but she told people how old she was whenever it came up in conversation. Her friends were her age and older, and they did typical college things: went to the movies, drank coffee and spent spring break at the beach.

Even though she missed high school and all that goes along with it, Emily said she has no regrets.

"I've had so many incredible experiences here doing what I'm doing that I never really felt like I was missing anything," she said.

Emily learned to drive a car over holiday breaks and got her license last summer. The first time she drove a car back to school, her mother, Suzanne Hunt, said she was a wreck.

She trusts her daughter completely, but Suzanne, like any other mother, worried about her.

"It was a four-year experience in letting go," she said. "There were so many times where we had to let go and let her pursue her path and pursue her dreams. As a parent, you want to hold on as tight as you can, but this one we had to let go."

Emily will graduate Sunday with a double major in political science and philosophy/religion.

In the fall, she will begin law school at Wake Forest University in Winston Salem, N.C.

"I love Mary Baldwin so much," Emily said about her experience. "I'm so glad I wound up here because honestly, had I been doing a normal college search four years later, now, I don't think Mary Baldwin would have been on my radar.

"I just feel really that through some strange twist of fate I wound up here."