Alanah Poullard, an African American teenager from Jennings, Louisiana, will graduate from high school at the age of 16. Furthermore, she has been accepted into 60 institutions around the country, with scholarships totaling more than a million dollars.
“It’s happening so fast it feels like I just started my first year of high school, like my first day of high school, and now to say I’m graduating is just a shock,” Poullard stated to KLFY.
Her enthusiasm for medicine is clear, since she completed an internship at the American Academy of Medicine and Surgery at the University of California last summer.
“When I say I rushed to the bathroom, I was leaping up and down. I’d sprung out of my heels. “I was overjoyed,” Poullard explained.
Poullard made headlines 11 years ago at the age of five when she met former President Barack Obama. She even asked him to prepare an excuse note for her teacher. She skipped school to attend a Wounded Warriors program at the White House with her parents, and Obama enthusiastically obliged.
Poullard is now preparing for college and offers advise to dreamers facing academic obstacles.
“Just because you don’t have a high A-C-T score or your grades might not be that good, you can still apply to that school if you want to,” Poullard stated. “I guarantee you when you have a long list of community services that you’ve done, that’s going to say a lot about you as a person.”
Poullard has also opted to attend Louisiana State University and major in microbiology. Her ultimate objective is to go to medical school and become a trauma surgeon.