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Title: In smarts, she's a perfect 10
Source:
Seattle PI
URL Source: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/232514_msftarfa14.html
Published: Jul 14, 2005
Author: TODD BISHOP
Post Date: 2005-07-14 11:41:17 by Mr Nuke Buzzcut
Keywords: smarts,, perfect, shes
Views: 24
Comments: 2
By TODD BISHOP Under the circumstances, the question wasn't so unreasonable. Arfa, a promising software programmer from Faisalabad, Pakistan, is believed to be the youngest Microsoft Certified Professional in the world. The designation, given to outside experts who prove their ability to work with Microsoft technologies, has also been achieved by some teenagers. But it's far more common among adults seeking to advance their computer careers. Arfa received the certification when she was still 9, an impressive accomplishment in its own right, according to older programmers who have gone through the process. And others called it an encouraging sign of the continued emergence of women in a country where they have historically struggled to advance. The situation illustrates "another side" of Pakistan, said Anand Yang, director of the University of Washington's Jackson School of International Studies. "That's another reason to celebrate someone like her." Arfa's one-on-one meeting with Gates was part of a visit this week to the company's Redmond campus, arranged and sponsored by Microsoft to better introduce Arfa to the company, and to give people at headquarters a chance to meet her. The week included lab tours and a series of informal sessions with Microsoft executives and employees, including a Pakistani employee group. She made an impression through a combination of charm, flattery and boldness uncommon for someone her age. For example, during Arfa's meeting with Gates, she presented him with a poem she wrote that celebrated his life story. But she also questioned him about what she perceived to be the relatively small proportion of women on the campus. "It should be balanced -- an equal amount of men and an equal amount of women," she explained afterward. About 75 percent of Microsoft employees are men, according to company data. Recounting their conversation, Arfa said Gates acknowledged her concerns and talked about the broader industry's struggles to increase the proportion of women in technology-related fields. Other topics they discussed included her Muslim faith and her hometown, an industrial city known for its textile businesses. Afterward, Arfa described Gates as an "ideal personality," explaining that he had been second only to Disneyland on her list of things she wanted to see in the United States. Previously unaware of the casual dress code at Microsoft, she said she had expected Gates to be wearing a suit but was surprised to find him in a casual shirt with the top button open. "I expected that all the people would be here in suits," she said with a giggle, wearing a hat acquired during her earlier visit to the company's Xbox game studios. Later in the afternoon, she sat outside with S. "Soma" Somasegar, a Microsoft corporate vice president, and described her vision for a self-navigating car. He listened to her ideas and told her about some of Microsoft's existing software for cars. To be sure, despite her question to Gates about employing people her age, Microsoft wasn't about to offer a job to someone so young. But Somasegar talked about the possibility of an internship in a few years. "The thing that's exciting to me is her passion for technology at this age," said Somasegar, who decided to invite Arfa to Redmond after reading a story about her in MicroNews, an internal company newsletter. The visit to Microsoft headquarters was the culmination of a meteoric rise that has turned Arfa into something of a celebrity in her country. It began at age 5, when she walked by a computer lab at her school and started wondering about those strange "boxes," the computers and monitors. Later, when she found out what they did, she was amazed. "When you push a button, something magically appears on the box," she said, recalling the experience. She eventually persuaded her father to buy a computer, and she demonstrated unexpected aptitude, using Microsoft PowerPoint and other programs. Encouraged by what she was doing, her father took her to Applied Technologies, or APTECH, an advanced computer institute nearby. "I saw her doing something extraordinary, making presentations," said her father, Amjad Karim, who serves with a U.N. peacekeeping force in Africa and came with his daughter to Microsoft this week. "That made me think that she could use some professional coaching, and she could do better in her future life." Karim said he is careful not to push his daughter, but wanted to make sure that the opportunities existed for her to pursue her interest. He said he first noticed something unusual when she started displaying a remarkable memory, perhaps photographic, at a young age. The people at the computer institute required some persuading, because of her age, but they accepted her as a student, taught her about programming and ultimately told her father that she appeared to be in a position to seek Microsoft certification. The institute instructors assumed it would take Arfa about a year to go through the process of certification for developing Windows applications. But after four months of study and work, over summer vacation, she passed the required exams. Her programming experience so far has been as part of her studies. She has created basic Windows applications, such as a calculator and a sorting program, primarily in the C# programming language. The certification she received was as a Microsoft Certified Application Developer. She says she plans to pursue a more advanced certification, as a Microsoft Certified Solution Developer, which involves building programs into a broader system for a business. Arfa's accomplishment is "very impressive," said Michael Earls, 33, a software consultant and Microsoft Certified Solution Developer in Atlanta. "The type of thinking that goes into correctly answering those questions is pretty mature. ... Microsoft certifications are not a joke -- they're highly respected in the industry." Ultimately, Arfa says, she would like to go to Harvard University or MIT, and then either go to work for Microsoft, in its developer division, or become a satellite engineer. Since learning about Arfa from her father -- and validating her programming abilities through an additional exam of their own -- Microsoft representatives in Pakistan have held her up as an example in the country. "We discovered her, we ran into her, we feel very lucky," said Jawwad Rehman, Microsoft's country manager in Pakistan, who also accompanied her to Redmond this week. "But I'm sure there are many others out there, as well, who don't have access to the computers or the proper education system" as Arfa did. As word of her accomplishment has spread in her country, Arfa has appeared on TV, in newspapers and spoken at Microsoft events. One youth magazine called her "Pakistan's girl wonder." A U.S.-based reporter for GEO TV, a 24-hour news and entertainment channel in Pakistan, came to Redmond this week to document her visit to the campus. Although she has had a birthday since passing the certification test last year, Arfa is careful to point out that she was 9 when she took the exam. More precisely, she says, she was nine years, nine months, 11 days, and six hours. Fully aware of the fact that she's the youngest Microsoft Certified Professional, she wants to be specific about her age at the time, in case another young programmer emerges someday to challenge what she calls her "world record." Her mother and two brothers, ages 3 and 7, stayed home while she and her father came to the United States. It was the first trip to the country for both. After some sightseeing in Seattle, they're scheduled to return home tomorrow from their Microsoft adventure. Next time, Arfa says, she hopes to visit Disneyland, as well.
In smarts, she's a perfect 10
'Pakistan's girl wonder' is likely the youngest certified Microsoft expert
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER 
Sitting down for a personal meeting with Bill Gates this week, 10-year-old Arfa Karim Randhawa asked the Microsoft founder why the company doesn't hire people her age.
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#1. To: Mr Nuke Buzzcut (#0)
Yeah, I remember another one of these "child geniuses" named Adragon DiMallo. Got a degree in astrophysics before his voice cracked. Last I heard he was painting houses.
 | Gold and silver are real money, paper is but a promise. |
#2. To: Elliott Jackalope (#1)
Feb. 15, 2000 "This child might follow in the steps of da Vinci or Einstein." Agustin De Mello, father of Adragon (CBS) When Morley Safer first interviewed Adragon De Mello for 60 Minutes in 1987, the 10-year-old's father thought he was a genius. The boy, known as A.D., was in college because his father said there were no schools, public or private, that could challenge his son's intelligence. But A.D.'s road to a higher education was a rocky one, and so was his life at home, where the pressure to succeed often became overwhelming. Before finding out how that 10-year-old is coping as a 23-year-old, review the profile of the boy 13 years ago. On campus, A.D. De Mello resembled somebody's little brother who had come to visit and lost his way. But this fellow was a full-fledged sophomore at Cabrillo College, a two-year community college in Santa Cruz, Calif. He took a much heavier workload than most college students - 21 hours a week in physics, political science, calculus, astronomy and meteorology. "I like doing the things they have in college, like finding - doing calculus formulas and finding out how the weather works, finding out what the real raindrop looks like," he said, adding about the raindrop that "Instead of being a nice circle, it's - instead, it's a big, bulgy blob." A.D.'s life was orchestrated by his father, Agustin De Mello, who took on his son's life as a full-time career. His main income, he said, was a settlement from an auto accident. They lived quite modestly, but the father had big plans. "He can probably earn doctorates...in several areas - physics, astrophysics and science education," said his father, Agustin De Mello. "And probably by the time he's 16 or so, start teaching." "He's just always reeling off facts,...little obscure facts that's he's picked up and just remembered," said Professor Richard Nolthenius, who taught A.D. astronomy. "He remembers everything, which tells me that he's very concentrated. " "At that moment that he's on that idea, his mind is completely there. And that's why he absorbs it. That's why it stays," Nolthenius added. Agustin De Mello has always claimed his youngster was no ordinary child. "Perhaps," he once wrote, "this child might follow in the steps of da Vinci or Einstein." When A.D. was in nursery school, the curriculum was inadequate, according to his father. Additional work was added at home. "I was reading to him," his father recalled. "I had him watching educational programs on television. He took a great interest in them, and, of course, music. " "And he had a great affinity for...all the classical composers," said Agustin De Mello, who introduced his son to great musicians from very early on. When asked if he misse not having kids his own age around, Adragon responded, "Sometimes yes and sometimes no." "I feel kind of strange being around adults all the time and not being around children my own age," he admitted. Other kids didn't usually come around, Adragon added, indicating that he hadn't gone to a kid's house to play in a long time. When it comes to A.D.'s schoolwork, his father sometimes pushed him to study harder, the youngster said. "I just have to," said young Adragon. "And if my father doesn't push me that hard, usually my grade's not as high as it was when he did push me harder. He makes me do a calculus problem five times over, and then I know it by heart." That is even if he got the answer right. "I have a lot of hope for him because I know if I were his age and if I'd been going through what he's going through, I think I'd be a lot less open and bubbly and - and just out there - than he is," said Prof. Nolthenius. "He's got a lot of strength," the professor added, noting that he thought the father was pushing him too hard. To young A.D., his growing up experiences reminded him of raising hamsters. "There would be two hamsters, and there'd be another little hamster, and one time I saw one tugging it this way and another one tugging it this way," said A. D. "It's like one person wants you to do this, and another person wants you to do that, and you're just stretched and you don't know what to do." "The end result will verify, justify my - my particular action," declared Agustin De Mello, referring to how he thinks his son will "benefit our civilization" in the future. A.D.'s mother remained something of a mystery. Mr. De Mello said she left them; others said she cared deeply about the boy. 60 Minutes tried to find her, but she indicated she did not want to talk. Clearly, the father was pushing his son way too hard. It turned out CBS News didn't know the half of it. Find out what A.D. ends up doing and saying today, 13 years later. No, he didn't win a Nobel Prize by age 23. "It didn't quite work out that way," says A.D. "A lot of the dreams that people heard about, of winning a Nobel Prize and going to doctorate school, is mostly my father....It wasn't something I cared about doing." In fact, it was never his idea, he says. What he is doing today is his idea: training to be an estimator for a commercial painting company. There are no Nobel Prizes in this line of work - no sure pathways to the cover of Time magazine. His job does demand a certain accuracy so his degree in mathematics from the University of California at Santa Cruz, gained when he was only 11, does come in handy. But was he really a genius or was he just a collector of information? "Genius?...I don't thinso," A.D. says. "Later on in life I realized that a lot of other kids put in the same situation probably could have done the same thing. And - so I don't think that makes me a genius." His mother, Cathy Gunn, didn't think so either. She was horrified by the father's obsessive pressure on their son but there was nothing she could do about it, she says. Remember: In 1987, she was not interviewed. "I wasn't allowed to use the phone," Gunn says. "I was not allowed to answer the phone. I was not allowed in certain rooms of the house. And I had to be out of the house at certain hours." "For example, when (the team) came out originally from 60 Minutes, I was not allowed to be there, had to be somewhere else," she explains. His father had told him not to even mention his mother, A.D. says. "He didn't want me to talk about her, and he didn't want her talking to anybody either." Agustin De Mello would go to any lengths to get his way, according to Gunn. "He threatened to kill himself in front of me. He did that in front of A.D. in order to get him to do things," she recalls. "When he got angry, he was really scary," says A.D. "That was one of the things I was real angry about when I was older, is why...he treated me like that." Agustin De Mello scared A.D.'s mother so much that she went into hiding. She tried to gain legal custody through lawyers - but to no avail. "She feared more for my mental - my mental safety," A.D. says. "She didn't want me getting pushed around." "I really, really missed my mother because I didn't see her much at all," he adds. "She finally took me out, I think, because of that." As Gunn's fears grew, she alerted the police, telling them of a cache of guns DeMello kept. They stormed the house. Agustin DeMello, claiming to have a heart attack, was wheeled out, examined, released, then arrested for suspicion of child endangerment. The case never went to trial because court-appointed experts thought that having A.D. testify against his father would be too stressful. Instead A.D. was put in foster care. In 1989, he went to live with his mother. "I went back to junior high, actually," A.D. says. "It was nice because no one knew who I was. And that's - I was worried about that. I was worried that kids would treat me differently because of that." His academic path was rather unusual. He went from primary school to university - and then from university to junior high. "I didn't take math in junior high," says A.D., explained that he was rather advanced in the discipline. "But I did take all the other classes. I took English classes and history classes and science classes, etc....But I still had fun doing what I was doing and working with the other students." He even made it to Little League. "I remember the first couple o games I played I threw the bat every - every time," he recalls. "Every time I swung the bat, it let loose, and I ended up hitting a coach in the shoulder one time." In junior high nobody knew who he was because he changed his name. "I loved James Bond," he says. "And I thought what better to have than James. And then I went by my mom's last name, Gunn." After junior high, though, his secret was out. "At my junior high graduation, the local newspapers published a front-page article," he says. "I was really upset because I didn't want this extra burden. You know, I was trying to have fun, you know, meet new people. And now, all of a sudden, everybody thinks I'm something that I'm really not." "People perceive me as a human calculator....They'd walk up to me and ask me to solve these problems just out of the blue. And I wouldn't," he says. Today, nobody is thinking about him as a human calculator, though. He has a large group of friends, lives in his own apartment and loves his job. He sees his mother and father often. (His father said he was too sick to appear on 60 Minutes and claims he had a heart attack.) Does A.D. ever think about where he might be today if he stuck it out? "I think I would have stopped," A.D. says. "I really do. Because I was already getting to that point where I was - I wanted to - I had enough. And I- I didn't want to go through it anymore." Have his unusual experiences growing up in any way affected his ambition? For example, does he want to be a superior paint estimator? "I'll definitely try my hardest to be the best. And if I don't, that's OK," he says. "As long as I know I've tried, you know, and I don't slack off, then I'm happy."
What Price Genius?
Adragon De Mello says that he is
not really a genius. (Photo: CBS)1987 Profile
2000 Update
- "Let me ask you this: A guy breaks into your house, but you don't have a gun. How are you going to shoot him?" ~~Dale Gribble
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