Kaylandra Woodside, 15, graduate of Central Andros High School, is preparing to depart for college to behin her freshman year at State University of New York (SUNY) at Oswego having received a $12,700 per year scholarship tenable at the institution through her involvement in Junior Achievement (JA) Bahamas (Photo: Kaylandra Woodside)
Kaylandra Woodside knows without a shadow of a doubt that references to the fictional television character Doogie Howser M.D. are bound to happen with a certain generation, especially when they learn the Central Andros High School graduate will enter college in the fall as a 15-year-old.
In fact, Kaylandra herself first learnt of Doogie Howser when she was a 13-year-old 10th grade student from a science teacher.
"Ms. Bowe always does these smart analogies, or over-exaggerated explanations and one day in 10th grade she just referred to me as 'You mini Doogie Howser.' I was like who is Doogie Howser? Are you trying to say I look like a man?"
Her teacher was referencing the fact that Kaylandra who at the time was just one-year into her teenage years, was no ordinary teenager -- just like Doogie Howser, whose television show ran from 1989 through 1993, and who was a doctor, and as smart as they came. Doogie Howser had been a doctor since the age of 14. On the show he was constantly torn between a life of teenage fun with his buddy Vinny, and a more serious and quiet life practicing medicine.
Unlike Doogie Howser, Kaylandra, who lives in Stafford Creek, Andros, will not pursue the field of medicine, but will commence studies toward a degree in journalism next month at the State University of New York (SUNY) as Oswego having received a $12,700 per year scholarship tenable at the institution through her involvement in Junior Achievement (JA) Bahamas.
Kaylandra was one of 34 students who received a portion of $4.5 million in scholarship monies through JA, which partnered with 12 colleges in the United States, two in The Bahamas, and one in Grenada. She will supplement the JA scholarship with a $10,000 per year scholarship that she will receive from the government. They are funds Kaylandra is grateful for.
The last of eight children -- her eldest sibling Kim is 39, and the closest to her in age is a brother Theodore 20 -- Kaylandra said college in the United States would not have been possible had she not received the scholarship.
"I come from a family that does not have much -- my mother [Angela Woodside] is a janitress; my father [Otland Woodside] is a fisherman -- we don't have all the money in the world, but with God all things are possible," she said.
Add to that the fact that Kaylandra has always been serious about her grades, and doing well in school, she was able to garner scholarship offers. She graduated high school with a 3.90 cumulative grade point average (GPA); and scored 1,520 on the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) -- 500 on math, 490 on critical reading and 530 on the writing portion.
To graduate high school at 15 (she celebrates her 16th birthday in February 2017), Kaylandra was advanced past second and ninth grades, which meant she wrote her Bahamas Junior Certificates (BJC) examinations as an eighth grade student. She sat English Language, math, religion, social studies, general science and health science and passed them all with grades between "A" and "C".
"They didn't have a reason to put me in ninth grade to prepare for anything, so they just skipped me into 10th grade," she said.
She wrote the majority of her Bahamas General Certificate of Secondary Education (BGCSE) papers in 11th grade -- English Language, math, biology, combined science, religious knowledge, geography and history. She obtained two A grades and five B grades. In 12th grade she retook a number of subjects all in the name of better grades.
She's not certain from which parent she got the academic gene, but said her mother always talks about Kaylandra being that way since her kindergarten days.
"They talk about how in primary school that if a classmate beat me I would get upset. I don't know where the competitiveness came from, but I am a very competitive person. I am kind of self-oriented when it comes to school work and like to be on top of things. I don't know where it came from, but I'm an idealist," she said.
Kaylandra won't be the first of her siblings to attend college. She has a brother who studied in Ohio, and another sibling who sought post-secondary education locally. She is grateful that she will be able to do what she didn't think would have been possible, considering that her young life has had its share of challenges that she has had to overcome to get to where she is today.
The teenager who for a long time was an introvert and would sometimes not speak to people for sometimes weeks on end said her introversion was an obstacle she had to overcome. Having come through it she looks at herself as "resilient."
The extreme introversion manifested itself in how she behaved socially and interacted with her peers and family.
"I would go home, lock myself away [and] pretend to be deaf and mute. I wouldn't talk for weeks. One time I was on the bus and all of a sudden I asked a girl in front of me for the time, she turned around and said 'oh you can talk.' I looked at her and said yeah I can talk. So it went really deep into my social life. I isolated myself and kind of forgot about everyone else," said Kaylandra.
That extreme introversion even affected her grades during her 10th grade year.
"My GPA dropped from a 3.90 to a 3.7, and people didn't really see it as drastic, but I'm an idealistic person and believe everything I do should be perfect, so I felt it shouldn't have happened and knew that I had to step up my game," she said.
With the support of her parents, friends and family, she emerged from her self-imposed shell. Rock bottom for her she said was having a school councilor tell her that she had no idea how to deal with her anymore. Professional guidance helped Kaylandra emerge from her self-imposed isolation. She spoke to her friends about why she had removed herself from them, she said they forgave her and she had a social life again.
The Central Andros High School graduate said her introversion had nothing to do with the pressures of sometimes being in classes with students who in some instances could have been up to three years older than she herself was at any given time.
"The age difference did not really affect me. Not wanting to sound egotistical, but I saw myself as more supreme, because I was like 13 and in 11th grade with 'grandmas and grandpas,' so the age difference didn't really have a negative effect on me," she said.
In her senior year she said at one point she felt herself slipping back into that space where she wanted to pull away from people, but said through therapy she learnt she had to find a way to deal with it when it happened. Kaylandra said she's in a good space now that she's learnt that how to deal with her "obstacles".
As she makes preparations to begin her freshman year in approximately one month, she said she is feeling a mixture of excitement and nervousness.
"I'm only 15. I'm a baby! I'm excited and nervous because I'm expected to open a bank account, go shopping by myself. But I'm excited about the whole new atmosphere I will get to experience -- college and friends and parties, and stuff like that. Then there's the fact that I won't have mommy to complain to, and have to get money from the bank, go to the doctor by myself, so it's kind of nerve-racking when you look at it. But overall I'm looking forward to the experience."
Kaylandra will live on campus and will be amongst fellow freshmen who will be anywhere from 18 to 20-year-olds in most instances. That does not bother her.
"In all honesty, it's not the age that makes you mature, it's the level of your mind is how I view it. And I view myself as a very mature person," she said.
While she's confident in her abilities, not everyone was willing to let her go. Kaylandra says her mother outright told her she would not be attending college right after graduation as she wanted to "keep an eye" on her baby. The family talked about it, and in one month the 15-year-old will be a college freshman in New York.
Kaylandra aspires to make her family proud.
"I follow one mantra that I repeat to myself every day -- once you do something to the best of your ability the first time, you would not most likely have to do it again -- that was taught to me by my siblings. I never liked chores and I used to do my chores halfway, and they would always repeat that to me and it stuck with me, and I've used it to help me through many situations," she said.
No matter that she has had a few hiccups she's had to overcome early in life, Kaylandra is a firm believer in God having a plan on her life that can't be compromised, even though it may go through challenges.
"No matter what circumstances or situations you go through, once God has a plan for your life, no one can go against you or do anything to compromise that plan," she said.
Shavaughn Moss, Guardian Lifestyles Editor
Click here to read more at The Nassau Guardian
