10.22.06
Meet Christopher, youngest person to graduate from BC
BY RYAN SCHUSTER, Californian staff writer
e-mail: rschuster@bakersfield.com | Friday, May 12 2006 10:15 PM
Last Updated: Friday, May 12 2006 10:19 PM
In many respects Christopher Anderson is like most 14-year-olds.
He loves to play video games and enjoys spending time with his younger brothers.
But instead of finishing up the final weeks of eighth grade like other 14-year-olds, Anderson was dressed in a cap and gown Friday night graduating from Bakersfield College.
“People always ask me, ‘Do you really go here?’” Anderson said in a squeaky voice.
Anderson, who graduated with honors, an Associate of Arts degree in anthropology, and a 3.72 GPA, is the youngest BC graduate in the school’s records, which go back to the 1960s.
Anderson was one of approximately 500 students in Bakersfield College’s 988-member graduating class of 2006 who walked to the podium to receive their degrees from president William Andrews. One, Tanner Thompson, received his in a wheelchair.
“It feels good,” said smiling graduate Ashley Varnado as she waited in line before entering Memorial Stadium. “I’m happy, excited, ecstatic.”
A long line of graduates dressed in black caps and gowns slowly filed into the stadium, crossing the football field before being directed to their seats. After a bevy of speeches, the graduates were recognized one by one in front of a crowd that almost filled one side of the cavernous stadium’s lower bowl.
Instead of attending seventh grade with the rest of his classmates, Anderson skipped junior high and enrolled at BC.
Anderson’s parents, who live downtown in the Westchester area, said they weren’t pleased with the nearby junior highs. Anderson’s father, Paul, considered homeschooling his son before looking into enrolling him at BC.
Christopher Anderson had taken two classes at BC as a sixth grader and passed the school’s entrance exam. BC allows minors to take classes, but limits the number of units they can take.
“It was exciting,” Anderson said of taking junior college classes as an 11 year old. “It was different than elementary school. You didn’t spend the whole day there. You had more freedom than in elementary school.”
Anderson’s father, Paul, who owns an online music business, has shuttled his son back and forth to classes.
Last year the father and son took two classes together.
“It’s quite interesting taking a class with your son,” Paul Anderson said. “We would work in groups sometimes and he was the one we would be asking questions.”
BC professor Robert Schiffman said he wished more of his students had Christopher Anderson’s motivation.
“He pretty much stayed to himself,” said Schiffman, who had Anderson in two distance learning classes where students watched videos at home and came in for review sessions and exams. “He was 12 years old at that time. He was quiet, shy. But he was confident in his ability to do well and he did. He’s a 12-year-old in the top 10 of the class out of 100 people.”
Anderson will attend Bakersfield High School in the fall, partly because as his mother, Blanca, said, “he’s too young to think about sending away” to a four-year school.
For his part, Anderson said he is looking forward to reuniting with grade-school buddies and playing sports or getting involved in extra curricular activities.
“I think it’s going to be a pretty good experience for me,” he said.
His father, Paul, said Christopher might leave for a four-year school in a year or two since his grades at BC were high enough to guarantee him entrance to most UC schools.
But for now he’ll try to blend in with the other kids his age.
“At heart, he’s your typical boy,” said his mother, Blanca.
