MOUNT VERNON — “From a young age, I knew that I had no other option than success,” Sabrina Cooklin said.
This past spring, she graduated from Florida Gulf Coast University with a Master of Business Administration, the youngest student at FGCU to ever do so.
“Since my most recent interview last year [when Sabrina graduated with a bachelor’s degree at 18], a lot has changed in my life,” Sabrina said. “I started a new job at a major transportation company and was subsequently promoted to a management position with 30 direct reports.” Besides earning an MBA and starting a new job, there was another big accomplishment for Sabrina this year: she is now a first-time homeowner.
“Life as a homeowner has been exciting,” she said. “I’m thrilled to own a house at such a young age; if you had told me that I’d be a homeowner a year ago, I would’ve laughed.”
Sabrina says that she is currently busy restoring her antique 1910 house to its former glory, and with the help of her boyfriend, Brayden, she has laid down a new floor, replaced windows, painted and repaired the lawn and garage. Sabrina was able to become a homeowner so young because of the financial grants and scholarships she had earning her bachelor’s degree from Maharishi International University at 18. Sabrina worked in restaurants and paid for her master’s degree as she went.
Sabrina credits her strong support system for her success, which includes her mom, Sanja, her two brothers, Viktor and Adam, and her boyfriend.
“There is no such thing as ‘self-made,’” she said. “Everybody receives support and guidance in some way or another. Although I have had lots of achievements in the few years I’ve been on this Earth, I did not do it alone.”
Furthermore, Sabrina still has big goals for herself despite her long list of accomplishments. She aims to keep excelling in her field of supply chain management, and wants to become an executive at her organization. Sabrina says she also wants to start investing in real estate in order to provide stable, reasonably priced housing within the community.
“With the help of my mom, Sanja, and younger brother, Adam, I pulled myself up by my bootstraps to get my family and myself out of a rough situation,” Sabrina said. “It’s easy to blame external factors that are out of your control for reasons why you’re not where you want to be, but at the end of the day, the way you react and choose to move forward is what sets the tone for your future.”
However, Sabrina isn’t the only Cooklin to have graduated ahead of schedule. Both her brothers, Viktor and Adam, did the same.
Adam obtained his associate degree from Iowa Western Community College while still enrolled in high school at Iowa Connections Academy. Adam was enrolled in five dual credit courses each semester, which is a full course load, meaning that he was a full-time high school and college student at the same time.
What makes these achievements all the more impressive is that Adam did this all while still working an estimated 10 hours a week during the school year.
“I have two work-study positions at Cornell College,” Adam said. “One as a circulation assistant for the Cole Library, and one as a web developer, where I maintain and update an academic website.”
Besides being a working college student, Adam says that one of the bigger challenges he has encountered this far has been the transition from high school classes to college classes at Cornell College in Mount Vernon.
“Before coming to Cornell, just about all of my tasks could be done from the comfort of my own room, since all of my high school experience was online,” Adam said. “Needing to actually physically go to different locations has put a bit of a strain on my time management skills, since I’m so used to just needing to change tabs on my computer to shift between tasks.” Despite his many academic achievements, Adam, a cybersecurity major, says that he didn’t necessarily love the traditional school format growing up.
“If you asked me in middle school what my favorite part of school was, I would have said lunch,” he said. “However, I am deeply interested in computer science and cybersecurity. Taking an associate of applied science meant almost all of my college courses were directly in my fields of interest.”
Adam wants to be an offensive security consultant after he graduates, which means that he would help clients find the vulnerabilities within their website software and help prevent hackers from exploiting them. Adam has known what career path he has wanted to follow from a young age and made the discovery with the help of one of his middle school teachers.
“Back in middle school, while working on a shared Excel sheet, I managed to crash every single computer in the lab by accidentally adding billions of rows,” Adam said. “After I confessed to my teacher, he told me about cybersecurity as a field and that people could even get paid to do what I did, without even getting in trouble.”
Throughout high school Adam was involved in marching band, Lego robotics and Venture Crew. He is also working toward becoming an Eagle Scout.
As far as what Adam’s best advice for incoming college students is, that’s simple: stay involved and organized.
“I cannot overstate how important it is to be organized,” he said. “You need a master to-do list and a master calendar, and you need to check them both every single day. Otherwise, you miss activities, events you were looking forward to for months and even important deadlines.”
Like his sister, Adam believes that a good support system is crucial to his success and says that the accomplishments of his older siblings motivated him to graduate early and pursue a college degree.
“It definitely wasn’t easy, and I’m lucky to have a mom and sister who were able to push me the way mine have,” Adam said. “I definitely wouldn’t be where I am without them.”