Multitasking: How One FCPS Grad Earned Her Associate's Degree Days Before Her High School Diploma

Newly-minted Hayfield Secondary School graduate Eryn Yarrell isn’t afraid of doing things a little out of order.

Eryn, who moved seven times before fifth grade as part of a military family, graduated from Northern Virginia Community College with her associate’s degree last month, 19 days before she crossed the stage to receive her high school diploma.

“My parents always back my crazy ideas, but I had to come up with a plan for this,” Eryn said, adding she first learned about the ability to pursue dual degrees from a cousin who did so in North Carolina. “When there was pushback that no one had done this before, or it had been awhile since anyone had done it at least, we went with the mentality of well then, `I will be the first.’”

Eryn says her experience of attending community college and high school at the same time didn’t take anything away from having a traditional teenage experience. She attended prom, was a Girl Scout since kindergarten, played on the Hayfield softball team, was a founding member of Hayfield’s student equity council and editor-in-chief for two years of the Hayfield yearbook.

 

“What it did was allow me to make my high school experience more individual,” Eryn says.

“I figured out what I had to do, and that not everything that other people want to do is what I wanted to do,” Eryn says. “Going through a dual degree program helps shape who you are.”

Eryn, who attended Island Creek Elementary School for second, fifth and sixth grades, credits teachers there who helped her realize she was part of “something bigger” than herself. She chose to study the continent of Africa for a fifth-grade project, exploring how the history of colonialism shaped current-day Africa.

“My teacher, who had two biracial children, encouraged me to pursue the topic knowing I am Black,” Eryn said. “It felt nice to be affirmed in my Blackness at such a young age, that I had a teacher who encouraged students to look into their cultures and what they felt connected to in the past.”

She says she lucked out in finding teachers throughout her FCPS years who encouraged her to be an individual and think outside the box.

 

“No one does anything independently in this world, there are so many great individuals at Hayfield who supported me,” Eryn says.

Eryn’s Hayfield counselor, Corey Gilmore, has been with her “through thick and thin,” she says. “Once I got him on board for the dual degree program, he truly advocated for me to do this.”

Gilmore says his first impression of Eryn was that “this is a very ambitious student with a very ambitious request.”

“In the fifteen years that I’ve been a school counselor, I had never fielded a request like hers and quite honestly I was not aware of this program that NOVA offered,” Gilmore said.

Nonetheless, he was committed to going to bat for Eryn, she says.

Gilmore got creative with Eryn’s schedule, ensuring she had a block of time in her day to do college classes. “He had to go above and beyond to create an unusual schedule to accommodate these goals,” she said.

He stands by that decision.

“What stands out about Eryn when you first encounter her is just how mature, smart and  savvy she is,” he said. “She is a self-motivated go-getter who truly see’s no limits to what she can accomplish. If it’s conceived by her, I believe that it will be achieved by her."

 

Eryn says Gilmore wasn’t the only FCPS staffer to encourage her to challenge herself.

An 11th grade English teacher, Hendrick Booz, gave her the freedom to explore any subject that interested her for a research paper, she says. Eryn picked disparities in medical care, and how they’d led to ineffective treatment of black women, as well as a review of how medical treatment looks in society today.

That project aligned with Eryn’s current goal of pursuing undergraduate work in medicine or as an engineer, she says, when she heads to North Carolina A&T State University this fall on a full-ride scholarship.

Hayfield Secondary Principal Martin Grimm says Eryn has been "everything we could ask for in a student: bright, driven and an incredibly hard worker."

"I think what I admire most about her is that she is passionate about helping others and making sure that all voices are heard," Grimm says.

Eryn – and her parents – are grateful her individualism led to getting two years of college coursework out of the way ahead of schedule.

“I used this time to knock out my English and history requirements, and most of the things that constitute general education,” Eryn says. “I also learned how to balance a schedule, advocate for myself, and learn the tricks and trades of college without actually living on campus yet.”

* Watch video on FCPS joining Northern Virginia Community College (NOVA) and George Mason University (Mason) to build an early college pathway at Mount Vernon High School. Students at Mount Vernon High have the opportunity to earn transferable college credits while also completing the requirements for their high school diploma.