Windermere High valedictorian earns diploma and UCF degree in same month
Mariana Nijensohn will give the valedictorian’s speech at Windermere High School’s graduation later this month, but the cap-and-gown ceremony might seem a little deja vu to the teenager and her family.
Earlier this month, the 18-year-old walked at a University of Central Florida commencement ceremony because while in high school she earned enough college credits to receive a bachelor’s degree in English from the university.
Her unusual dual enrollment feat required a workload that sometimes worried her mother and her guidance counselor 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, then laughingly added, “A lot of my friends think I’m crazy and would never have done this, and they shouldn’t have because it’s not for them.”
Her mother, Lynda, proudly displays Mariana’s academic awards on a table inside 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 kind of crazy,” she said of her oldest of two children.
An avid reader and a strong writer with a knack for memorization, Mariana managed her extraordinary amount of classwork, though she is also, perhaps surprisingly, a procrastinator who didn’t always attack assignments until close to deadline, a habit Lynda Nijensohn found sometimes exasperating.
“Why are you doing this to yourself?” her mother would ask.
The teenager also dances on a competitive team, which takes 15 to 20 hours a week and added more pressure to her complicated school schedule.
Mariana heads next to the University of Pennsylvania. She plans to start over as an undergraduate at the Ivy League school in Philadelphia, although she’ll pursue a new major — the school’s interdisciplinary one on philosophy, politics and economics is likely. A career in law is her goal.
Mariana is an exceptional student and Windermere’s first to earn a bachelor’s degree alongside her diploma, said Keyonata Granberry, Mariana’s high school guidance counselor.
Orange County Public Schools does not track how many high school seniors also earned bachelor’s degrees but said it is a rare accomplishment.
“It was amazing, and honestly it was hard. She really put in the work,” Granberry said. “I find her amazing, and not just because she’s a smart kid, but because she has personality,” she said.
“She just has a purpose and she’s driven,” she added. “We will definitely see her name again.”
Mariana’s decision to start taking dual enrollment college classes started because she was bothered that her class rank at the end of 10th grade, despite top-notch grades, was only middle of the pack.
She’d transferred to Windermere High as a sophomore after a year at a private school. Her family had moved to Florida, where her mother grew up, from Massachusetts the summer after her eighth-grade year. The move was made to be closer to family, including Mariana’s grandmother Anna Cowin, a former state senator from Leesburg and a former superintendent of Lake County schools.
Mariana had high school credits from both her middle school and the private school but because those schools used different grading systems, those classes didn’t carry the extra weight needed for a top-ranking GPA at the public school.
With her sights set on top-flight colleges, Mariana wanted “to make my transcript as strong as possible” and boosting class rank was part of that. In the end, she’d be at the very top of her class.
Her plan to get there included lots of Advanced Placement classes — she took 16 in all — but also lots of online dual enrollment classes both junior and senior years and the summer in between. She took classes at UCF but also at Valencia College, the University of Florida, Arizona State University and the University of Arizona.
Initially, Mariana did not intend to complete a bachelor’s degree but when her UCF counselor mentioned 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 checked in then with Lynda Nijensohn to make sure Mariana was handling the workload.
“Her schedule from just her junior year alone, oh my goodness, I can’t see another kid doing this,” Granberry said.
One of the biggest challenges was keeping track of all her assignments, which at one point required checking seven online platforms. Her mother helped create a color-coded Excel spreadsheet that tracked all the work in one place and made completed assignments — there were more than 1,000 — vanish.
Mariana, who loves the work of poet Sylvia Plath, said her accomplishment was possible because she pursued English, a degree that did not have a tightly set course progression.
“You can’t do this if you’re a math person or a science person,” she said.
UCF invited her to the May 3 commencement, though technically it cannot confer her degree until she earns her high school diploma and Windermere can send her final transcripts.
“It was actually really cool,” she said of the UCF ceremony. “It kind of hit me. I got it. I did it.”
A UCF dean also attended Windermere’s senior awards ceremony to present Mariana with a UCF graduation stole and recognize her unusual achievement.
“That was very touching,” Lynda Nijensohn said.
Both Mariana and her mother said they were impressed with the dual enrollment options available to Florida high school students, free of charge, whether they want to pursue academic classes or career-focused ones.
Her UCF degree is “an anomaly, but I’m not some genius” Mariana said, and Florida’s dual enrollment offerings can help lots of students.
“They have more opportunities than they think,” she added.
