Success Stories

For Emme Jennings, Saving Time Through Modern States Was as Valuable as Money

More than 300,000 learners have turned to Modern States since we debuted in 2017 as a solution to taking on college debt. For some people, however, the most valuable aspect of our philanthropy is its potential to save time, freeing students to live extraordinary lives.

“Modern States is an amazing opportunity for anyone seeking college credit, but it’s an especially nice fit for homeschoolers like me and those with packed schedules,” said Emme Jennings, who saved enough time to accomplish so much more than her studies.

Jennings, from Cypress, Texas, is a freshman at the University of Houston – Downtown, and member of the school’s Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC). A Criminal Justice major, she is committed to serving in the U.S. Army upon graduation and has a full four-year college scholarship.

“When you graduate and finish with your Military Science classes, you are commissioned as an officer,” Jennings said in an interview. “I’ll be a second lieutenant. It’s something I always wanted to do and with the scholarship, it seemed like the right decision.”

Jennings, 19, took dual-credit classes through Lone Star College as a homeschooling high school junior and senior, but wanted to do more. So, she took six of our college professor-led online courses that help prepare learners for the College Board’s College Level Examination Program (CLEP) exams. By passing those tests, she earned 18 credit hours toward college. The self-motivated learning gave Jennings the flexibility to think toward the future while having time for the activities she loved.

`Constantly Going’

“Especially in high school, every night I would be gone until 8:30, 9:30, sometimes 10:30, and up early in the morning, constantly going and doing things,” she said. “Being able to move quickly, as I like self-paced learning, was definitely a help for me, especially considering how busy I was back then.”

Keeping up with Jennings’ seemingly endless extracurricular activities isn’t easy. She began taking martial arts classes as a 3-year-old and continues to train and teach taekwondo as a second degree blackbelt.

At around the same age, she started classically training in violin and piano, and currently plays with Virtuosi of Houston, an orchestra for young artists. (Asked to play something, she gladly shared a bit of the first movement of Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto!)

“A lot of [my drive] came from doing music when I was younger,” Jennings said. “In the music world, you are always competitive, being evaluated. It’s go, go, go, go, go. With everything I did, I always knew I wanted to do it to the best of my ability.”

Air Pistol
 
And those abilities also include competitive Olympic-style air pistol shooting. Introduced to shooting at age 11 by her parents, she’s been competing ever since. Jennings is president of the 4-H club she founded with her family and is a member of the Texas 4-H Air Pistol Team.

She also volunteers for her church, putting her growing photography skills to use.

“Modern States is an amazing opportunity for anyone seeking college credit, but it’s an especially nice fit for homeschoolers like me and those with packed schedules,” Jennings said.

Jennings owes much of her interests and success to the support of her family, she said. Her father and both her grandfathers were in the armed forces, and her dad is in law enforcement.

“If I decide to get out of the Army, I want to be a Secret Service agent,” she said. “With the traveling, the protection detail, the training, it’s always been super-duper interesting to me, and something I want to at least pursue.”

It wouldn’t be surprising to see Jennings someday fulfilling that dream, working in the Secret Service to protect our highest-ranking elected leaders.

That said, we could also picture her as one of those leaders herself.