'Simply incomparable': Youngest-ever student to graduate from UCCS

Annika Mote’s age hadn’t even reached double digits before she was reading at a college level. Her undergraduate studies began before her teenage years.

And on May 12, the gifted juvenile student will become the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs’ youngest-ever graduate at the age of 17.

“People freak out for the first couple weeks, but then it becomes more or less just a joke in conversation,” said Mote, who is earning her bachelor’s degree in mathematics.

Much of her educational journey has veered off the traditional path. In some regards, she said, she wishes she was a normal teenager. Her accelerated learning has come at the price of experiences like homecoming and prom.

Then, of course, there’s the fact she started college as “an awkward and anxious” kid who just wanted to fit in.

“There was no hiding my age,” Mote said. “I was 5-foot-2, and I dressed like a 12-year-old, and I acted like a 12-year-old, and I had gaps in my teeth and braces. There was no way around it.”

In other aspects, her learning looked much like anybody else’s. She still needs to study and work hard. There were nights spent crying at the kitchen table over homework that just didn’t click, she said. Ironically, math frustrated her most of all, although that would change under the guidance of her “math mom,” Pikes Peak State College associate professor of mathematics Ivana Seligova.

Mote failed her first calculus test in college, recalling her score to be about 56%. The frustration motivated her, pushing her on a mission to improve. Seligova took notice.

The only 14-year-old in her class, Mote asked “phenomenal questions,” Seligova said. To Mote’s amusement — and fervent disagreement — Seligova suggested she change her major from biochemistry to mathematics.

“I just could not believe that this young child can think out of the box like that,” Seligova said. “The talent was incomparable. Simply incomparable.”

Eventually, Mote said everything came together in her mind. By semester’s end she not only walked away with an A in the class but also a new major.

Mote’s parents had “no frame of reference” when Annika, their only child, was a baby, according to her mom Lindsey Mote. Other parents would comment on how clearly and quickly little Annika was able to speak. Those differences stood out during playdates in mom groups.

Mote was formally diagnosed as “gifted” at 7, although informal testing suggested as much when she was 2.

“It was overwhelming, and I wouldn’t have known where to start,” Lindsey Mote said. “Luckily we were with teachers who had advanced training specifically on working with gifted students, and honestly, Nikki Myers was amazing. I went to her I can’t tell you how many times that first year, concerned with all kinds of things.”

Myers, the director at gifted student-oriented charter school Academy for Advanced and Creative Learning, said Annika Mote was among the “founding families” when the school opened its doors in 2010. She exposed Mote’s family to a network of parents who were navigating similar uncharted territory and to a library of books specific to their needs.

“Giftedness is a range, just like any brain difference,” Myers said. “People tend to stereotype kids who have this amount of advanced capacity into all of the stereotypes you see on the television, and they forget these are kids who just have journeys of learning, and they shouldn’t be held back from learning new things. By the same token, they need support to be kids along the way, and her family has done that so well for her all the way through.”

As Mote prepares for graduation, having overcome the obstacles inherent to a young teenager navigating college, she said she wishes she’d been nicer to herself. She’s come a long way from the days of pining after friends and trying to make everybody like her, of trying to act older than she is, of trying to tone down her femininity.

“Being a teenage girl is hard enough. Being a 12-year-old girl in a male-dominated field, and everyone knowing how young you are, and always feeling that kind of judgment makes everything feel a little bit weirder,” Mote said. “There’s always someone who thinks that I either cheated my way here, or that I don’t know what I’m talking about, or I’m not actually smart, or that I’m just a silly little teenage girl.”

Thanks to her wonderful female influences, such as Seligova, she said she learned to embrace her age and gender not as barriers but as points of pride.

“I’m girly — I just am. That’s what I enjoy,” Mote said. “People will expect less of me for whatever reason they choose to, and if it’s not because I’m wearing a skirt, then they’re gonna pick something else, so I might as well wear my skirt and have fun and do things that I enjoy.”

Even so, Mote and her family say it’s easy to lose sight of the fact she’s not yet an adult despite her achievements and personal growth during her undergraduate years.

“She is still a 17-year-old girl. She’s not 100% advanced across the board,” Lindsey Mote said. “She’s still learning how to drive. She’s still learning life skills and the things that she’ll need to be independent, which is normal 17-year-old stuff.”

Annika Mote said she plans to spend the summer “debriefing” from math for a moment, taking the opportunity to do something unrelated to her degree before jumping into her career later this year. Then, after gaining some real-world experience, she plans to pursue grad school in 2024.

“I keep saying I need to vote at least once before I go to grad school,” Mote said. “I need to grow up a little. I need to feel like an adult a little bit more than I currently do.”

Article by Nick Sullivan.