Errynne Page, a former student at McCluer High School, remembers walking home from school last March with her twin sister, Brianna. That’s when she finally said what had been on both their minds for four years.
“We need to decide where we’re going to college,” Errynne said to Brianna. “First, we need to decide if we’re going together.”
The twins were both on the varsity soccer team their senior year. Brianna graduated in May with a 4.8 grade point average and Errynne with a 4.9.
Both were violin players in the school orchestra. Both GEAR UP St. Louis volunteers in the summer, recipients of an University of Missouri–St. Louis Top Math Award, and participants in the National Society of Black Engineers.
The list goes on for a few pages. More importantly, both had applied to 11 schools the previous fall. Four were schools that would separate them.
Though they had heard twins shouldn’t go to the same college, and especially not for the same major, they decided to take their chances.
“Together it’s so much better than if we are apart,” Brianna said. “It’s like a built-in study buddy. If I don’t know something, she knows it.”
“And if I can’t do something, Brianna can,” Errynne finished for her sister.
That’s continued to be the case in their first semester at Howard University in Washington, D.C. – or “the black Harvard,” as they called it.
Last week, the twins came home to visit their mother and family for Thanksgiving. After hearing about all the legacies who graduated from Howard, such as author Toni Morrison and the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, the twins told their mother what they aspire to do in life.
“I want to be someone who gives $5,000 to my elementary school library,” Errynne said. “I want to be remembered as someone who gave back to my community.”
“So many people leave and don’t come back,” Brianna said. “What’s the point of coming from the grass roots to get to this high place, this pillar of success, if you don’t do something with it?”
The value of money and of education were both learned early at home.
“I had jobs where I worked crazy hours. Sometimes we had a lot of money and not so much at other times, but we made do,” said their mother, Diane Page.
“Them growing up in a single-parent household, learning was a priority because education was a success.”
Now, careers in chemical engineering seem like a good way to support themselves – and their goal of bettering their community. “If you can get a chemical engineering degree, you can do anything,” the twins said in unison.
Scholarship frenzy
Both girls have full-ride scholarships, including tuition, room, board, books and fees. They even got a few extra scholarships, so they could have some “money to eat,” said Errynne, who received the Gates Millennium scholarship.
The Gates Millennium scholarship pays for a person’s education for life, all the way up to a doctorate. Four McCluer students previously received the scholarship. One was a senior when the twins were freshmen. “Everyone was in an uproar about it,” Errynne said. When she found out it paid for college up to a PhD, she told Brianna, “We have to get this.”
They both spent their last winter break writing the eight essays for the application. Brianna was a finalist, and Errynne received the award.
The Millennium Scholarship is not based on ACT scores or grades, like most elite scholarships. “It gives students who are at a disadvantage with their school environment a chance to say, “This is what I can do,’” Errynne said.
At a conference with other Gates Millennium scholars, Errynne said that she met so many students who wouldn’t have gone onto college if it hadn’t been for the scholarship. The submission deadline this year is January 11, 2010, and minority students with a cumulative GPA of 3.3 are eligible.
The twins applied to 11 schools and a good dozen scholarships.
The other day, their mother Diane Page ran across the girls’ old flow chart, which detailed their list of essays, application deadlines, letters of recommendation and task list. Once a week, they would check off what they had completed – all in addition to their AP and Honors course work.
“Being organized helped the process a great deal,” Diane said. “I would tell parents to get involved in this process because in the end, the children will get money.”
She was amazed at how being organized made a difference at a college fair the twins attended. Diane decided to put portfolios together for the sisters, including their resumes, ACT test scores and letters of recommendation.
“And it was like a feeding frenzy,” Diane said.
Sharing knowledge
So far, being at Howard University has been the “one of the best experiences I’ve ever had in my life,” Brianna said.
“All of the teachers expect so much from you because you got to Howard,” Errynne said. “They are preparing us to be successful.”
They also are learning about working with different personalities and staying on task. “The teachers don’t like excuses,” said Errynne. “If someone in your group didn’t show up, then you should still have the work done. You have to get it done and get it done right.”
That’s not really new for the twins. It’s something that their mother ingrained in them at a young age. You share and help your classmates, Diane told them.
Diane remembers one day when the twins were in second grade, she came in the class to find Brianna sitting at her desk with a line of kids waiting to ask her a question.
Diane said, “I tell them, ‘You have to help your classmates. If you know it, you have to share that knowledge.’”
“Teaching it to know it – we’ve lived by that doctrine,” Brianna said.
Errynne hears some people say that they don’t have time to help others study; they have too much to do. But she sees it as part of her studying.
“I’m forced to study because I have to stay on task in order to help others,” Errynne said.
“What’s the point in hoarding all of this knowledge to get an ‘A?’” Brianna said. “If you get an ‘A’ and keep someone else down, it doesn’t help you because you won’t have any friends in the end. You’ll be alone.”
Working together
Vicki Ferris, the twins’ former Spanish teacher at McCluer High School, said that a lot of students reject group work because some students feel it holds them back.
“I learn so much from students like this,” Ferris said. “They help us become better teachers.”
Ferris said this time of the year, teachers start getting a little tired and start looking forward to winter break. But getting visits from students like the Page twins, as she did over Thanksgiving break, refreshes her.
“They have discovered so much about themselves and the world they are easing into,” Ferris said. “It makes me feel like my job matters a lot more than I remember.”
Diane believes that people like to give things to people who are nice. So her strategy for raising her children was to focus on developing good citizens, not geniuses.
Errynne and Brianna have been in gifted programs ever since they were caught reading to their peers in the first grade. Diane said several people have helped them along their path, from the very beginning of their education.
What makes Diane the proudest of all is that they haven’t forgotten that, and are still helping their fellow students in college.
She said, “It makes me proud that they haven’t forgotten their community.”