Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, May 23, 1990 TAG: 9005220576
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: Medium
She has a secretary to type, file and answer the telephone.
And she's just 19 years old.
Sharrar works for the prestigious law firm of Sharrar McGuire Woods Battle & Boothe, where she combs over regulations and documents and assures that the registration of financial securities is legal and proper.
On Saturday, she received a degree in philosophy - with honors - from Virginia Commonwealth University.
Now that she has her first full-time job, as a legal assistant, Sharrar wants her first car. Perhaps a red convertible, she said.
She enjoys going out with her sorority sisters and meeting guys. She likes watching "Twin Peaks" and "The Simpsons" on television.
Although she is finishing college at a time when many people her age are just beginning, she said she is more like her peers than different from them.
"I'm just like anyone else," she said. "If you tell me I have an extra week to do something, I still don't do it until the night before. I'm no different in that regard."
But her educational experience has been different. In a sense, she simply skipped high school.
In 1985, Sharrar's parents, David and Gloria Sharrar, enrolled her in a program for gifted students at Mary Baldwin College in Staunton. The program was for eighth- and ninth-grade pupils and allowed them to complete both high school and college in five years.
"In the middle of third year, you'd get your high school diploma, and then have two years left of college," she said.
But by 1987, for a variety of reasons, she became disenchanted with the program. "It just wasn't right for me," she said.
She took a test to receive her general equivalency diploma and transferred to VCU. By then, a job transfer had moved her family from Tennessee to Richmond.
Coming from Mary Baldwin, a small, private women's college, to VCU, a large urban university, was a shock, she said.
"I remember going to my first fraternity party," she said. "It was really different. The preppies I went to school with listen to really calm, boring music. I go to this party, and the music was loud. Then my friend gets up on the bar and starts bar diving. I had no idea what this was. She stood on the bar, and these people would stand below her and she would jump into their arms. I was totally flabbergasted."
But adjusting to college with classmates who were considerably older wasn't as difficult as she thought it might be.
"I've never been really giddy or anything," she said. "I've never been real deadly serious, but I'm not a giggly girl. So I blended in really well with my peers."
The work at VCU was a challenge, she said. She emerged from the Mary Baldwin program without a solid grounding in basic subjects such as English and history, she said. She felt like she was playing catch-up.
"They just assumed you knew everything," she said. "I had a hard time my first semester at VCU. I got good grades, but I worked my butt off at 100-level classes because I knew nothing about any of this stuff. In the end, I feel like it did a disservice to the people who were in it.
"My [Mary Baldwin] class has all graduated now. I'm the only one who got a job in the real world. They all went to graduate school."
She plans to attend law school but decided to work at McGuire Woods first to see how she liked it. She figures she has plenty of time.
"I'm so young," she said. "I could kill two years and still be the youngest one in my class."
She credits her parents with keeping her feet on the ground despite her accomplishments.
"The best thing they ever did for me is they never put me on a pedestal," she said. "I didn't get out of doing the household chores because I was smart. I did the dishes. I did everything like anyone else. They also taught me practical things. I do laundry very well, and I'm perfectly capable of cooking."
Her only regret is that she didn't explore her creative side more. She is slightly envious of her brother, David, who plays bass guitar in a rock band.
"I used to play the French horn," she said. "Sometimes I think, `What if I were a musician?' I used to be in plays, and I think, `What if I tried this for a year?' But now I feel too committed already to even think of something like that."
She likes her new job but finds the trappings of an office and a secretary unsettling.
`I'm very respectful," she said. "I've done a lot a clerical work. The hardest thing for me to learn was how to give [my secretary] work to do. I've done all this work. I type well, I've done all my own typing and filing. So now I have to say, `You do this.' It's very strange."
by CNB