The little Mexican Einstein that U.S. universities fight over
She is 8 and wishes to study astrophysics in Arizona to become an astronaut, and is about to make her dream come true.
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Adhara Perez Sanchez prefers to study black holes than play video games - "they're just a waste time," she says - but her favorite doll is an astronaut Barbie because, at age 8 and after graduating from elementary, middle and high school at the speed of light and studying two careers online, that's what she aspires to be.
She wants to study astrophysics at the University of Arizona and investigate Mars, says this girl born in a very poor colony in Mexico City whose IQ is 162, much higher than that of great geniuses like Albert Einstein, who she says is her superhero, as well as Stephen Hawkins and Madame Curie.
When the president of the University of Arizona (UA), Robert Robbins, read her story on the Internet, he immediately sent her a letter that was published in The Arizona Republic, inviting her to attend their courses:
"We have many outstanding space science programs, you would have many opportunities to work side by side with the world's leading experts," Robbins wrote to her and offered to connect her to the faculty of the astronomy department or the lunar and planetary science laboratory.
"She has a bright future ahead of her, and I hope to welcome her to campus one day as a Wildcat," he concluded.
Now the family is looking for a way for Adhara to get a scholarship and has signed her up for intensive English, but sometimes this little prodigy, who was considered by Forbes magazine to be one of the most powerful women in Mexico in 2019, doesn't have it all her own way. Especially because of the high costs of her endless hunger for knowledge and the lack of resources for people as special as she is.
Diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome, she suffered from bullying at school - "the kids locked me up, but I got over it" - and also had problems with teachers.
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"They sent me messages that she was falling asleep, that she didn't want to," explains Nanelly Sanchez, her mother, who remembers that "at a ballot signing I saw Adhara playing in a little house and they locked her up. And that's how they started: Weird, weird!', and they started hitting her in the little house. So I said, I don't want her to suffer. And she was telling me that she didn't want to go to school, and she got very depressed."
On the recommendation of a psychiatrist, her mother took her to the Center for Attention to Talent (CEDAT), where all the teachers are super talented and confirmed that she was one of them.
However, there are no public schools for outstanding children in Mexico, and since they could not afford the costs, Adhara did not continue her studies at the center.
After these experiences, she published a book entitled "Don't Give Up", where she records the vicissitudes of her short life as a prodigy and is working on an intelligent bracelet that measures the emotions of people with autism and coma patients.
She says she was so anxious when her peers "locked her up" that she went into convulsions, and she doesn't want the same thing to happen to others.
In a couple of years, there may be one more genius in America. And maybe we'll soon meet the first teenage astronaut to travel to Mars.
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