{"id":15492,"date":"2016-12-28T08:03:53","date_gmt":"2016-12-28T15:03:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lastbestnews.com\/site\/?p=15492"},"modified":"2016-12-28T08:16:58","modified_gmt":"2016-12-28T15:16:58","slug":"competitive-twins-on-the-way-to-early-college-graduation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/2016\/12\/competitive-twins-on-the-way-to-early-college-graduation\/","title":{"rendered":"Competitive twins on the way to early college graduation"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Twins\"<\/a>

Ed Kemmick\/Last Best News<\/p>

Brenna (left) and Brittney Hoffman, sitting in the kitchen of their family’s home near Rocky Mountain College, talk about their amazing academic success.<\/p><\/div>\n

Brenna Hoffman is planning to graduate this spring from Montana State University Billings with a degree in finance.<\/p>\n

Graduation is scheduled for May 4, meaning she will be graduating from college a little less than a year since she graduated from Billings West High School.<\/p>\n

Her twin sister, Brittney, meanwhile, still has another year and a half to go before she\u2019ll graduate from MSUB. But please don\u2019t assume that Brittney is a slacker. Scheduling conflicts made it impossible for her to complete enough credits toward her degree in elementary education in time to graduate with her sister.<\/p>\n

\n
Twins on TV, too<\/h5>\n

KTVQ is also doing a story on Brittney and Brenna Hoffman. It is scheduled to air on Q2 News on Wednesday (tonight) at 5:30 p.m.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

She is also going to start her premed classes this spring. She\u2019s planning to earn the education degree as a backup, in case her plans to become a pediatric neurologist don\u2019t work out.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019ve been pretty fabulous,\u201d said their mother, Aimee Schaff. \u201cThey impress me to no end on a regular basis.\u201d<\/p>\n

She does have one concern about her daughters, though.<\/p>\n

\u201cI sometimes think they need to have a little more fun or relaxation,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Brittney and Brenna, who turned 19 on Monday, attended Orchard Elementary and Riverside Middle School, schools Brittney described as \u201cequally awesome.\u201d After kindergarten, though, they were in separate classrooms until they reached West High.<\/p>\n

Their mother thinks that separation brought them even closer. They were always protective of each other, she said, but also very competitive.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s true, Brenna acknowledged\u00a0with a laugh: \u201cWe got competitive to the point it was disruptive to other people.\u201d<\/p>\n

They were sophomores in high school when a representative of MSUB visited West High and talked about University Connections<\/a>, a dual-credit program that allows Montana high school students to take an unlimited number of college credits. The Hoffman sisters signed up and never looked back.<\/p>\n

\"CapreAir_Variable\"<\/a><\/div><\/div>Soon they were both carrying full college loads while keeping up with their high school classes and part-time jobs. In the spring of her senior year at West, Brittney was taking three on-campus and two online classes from MSUB. West High allowed her to take a two-hour break every day so she could attend college classes.<\/p>\n

Brenna, for her part, said there was a time during her senior year when she was in class or studying every day from 7 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. Last summer, after she graduated from high school, she took eight college courses.<\/p>\n

Brenna remembers toting\u00a0her business-law textbook\u2014a huge volume that cost $350\u2014to West High, so she could study in her free time.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would bring it to class and people would say, \u2018What class are you taking?\u2019\u201d she said. And when she took classes at MSUB as a high-schooler, there were some awkward moments.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was scary,\u201d she said. \u201cI walked in one class and I was like, \u2018Do I have to tell the teacher I\u2019m not in college?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Natalie Bohlmann, an associate professor of education who had Brittney in her educational psychology class last year, said the difference between Brittney and most of her other students was even more pronounced, because there are so many nontraditional students at MSUB.<\/p>\n

In most of her classes, Bohlmann said, the average age of her students was probably 23 or 24. She\u2019s had a few high school students taking a class or two in the past, she added, but \u201cit\u2019s very unusual to have someone like Brittney and her sister,\u201d who were taking full loads.<\/p>\n

\"Webster\"<\/a>

Ed Kemmick\/Last Best News<\/p>

During our interview, Brenna and Brittney were joined by their cat, Webster.<\/p><\/div>\n

Brittney was a confident, involved student, Bohlmann said, and the only difference she noticed was that she had fewer life experiences than the others in class.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut it didn\u2019t prevent her in any way from sharing her experiences in a relevant way,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Brenda Dockery, an internship adviser and adjunct marketing instructor at MSUB, said she was most impressed with Brenna\u2019s ability to work on her own.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe is very independent,\u201d Dockery said. \u201cShe does everything on her own. It\u2019s amazing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brenna and Brittney, who are part of a blended family with six siblings, are animated when they\u2019re together, constantly interrupting each other mid-sentence, correcting errors of fact or recollection and finishing each other\u2019s thoughts.<\/p>\n

They are both a little worried about Brenna\u2019s plans to move to Bozeman this summer. She has an internship with the Bureau of Land Management this spring\u2014which she plans to squeeze in around the final 24 credits\u2019 worth of classes she\u2019ll be taking\u2014and then will start an internship this summer in the Bozeman office of Edward Jones, the investment company.<\/p>\n

She also hopes to start her master\u2019s degree in finance this summer, and she\u2019s confident she can finish her online-studies course through North Central University<\/a> in one year.<\/p>\n

Brittney, after she graduates with her education degree in a year and a half, or two years at most, is thinking of going to San Diego for medical school. In the meantime she\u2019ll be studying for the Medical College Admission Test.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe MCAT is very expensive, so I want to make sure I do it right the first time,\u201d she said. But then she shrugged and added, \u201cIf the whole med school thing doesn\u2019t pan out, at least I could teach. I love kids.\u201d<\/p>\n

Both girls agreed that their high school classes, once they had begun their college studies, seemed incredibly easy.<\/p>\n

They also noticed, against all expectations, that not everyone in college was motivated and eager to learn. They were surprised to discover that you didn\u2019t even have to attend all your classes every day. But they didn\u2019t want to sound critical, either.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo offense to anyone,\u201d Brittney said. \u201cWe\u2019re just kind of weird.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Brenna Hoffman is planning to graduate this spring from Montana State University Billings with a degree in finance. Graduation is scheduled for May 4, meaning she will be graduating from college a little less than a year since she graduated from Billings West High School.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15493,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,14],"tags":[5315,5316,5313,2748,5311,5312,5314,5310],"class_list":["post-15492","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-billings","category-news","tag-brenna-hoffman","tag-brittney-hoffman","tag-edward-jones","tag-msu-billings","tag-orchard-elementary","tag-riverside-middle-school","tag-university-connections","tag-west-high-school","prominence-top-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15492","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15492"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15492\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15493"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}