Kairan, on the other hand, was ecstatic.
“I’m going to college! I’m going to college!” he screamed.
Kairan started community college two months later and earned an associate’s degree. Then he attended Santa Clara University in Silicon Valley, graduating on Saturday with a bachelor’s degree in computer science and engineering.
Now 14, Kairan’s next stop is SpaceX. He’ll start work next month as a software engineer for the space technology company’s Starlink division, which provides satellite internet access. (SpaceX did not respond to requests for comment. The Washington Post reviewed the email Kairan received from the company offering him a position there.)
Kairan wants people to know about his unique situation so companies can “reevaluate the biases” in hiring.
“Hopefully, I can open the door for more neurodiverse people like myself,” he said.
For Jullia, it’s the next step of a journey she has had to take “one moment at a time” since learning that her son had an intelligence quotient and emotional intelligence higher than most kids his age.
“Never in nine years did we think our child was one of those kids we see coming on TV or reading about on the news,” she said.
Kairan developed interests in politics, math and technology early on. When he was around 7, he read Cathy O’Neil’s “Weapons of Math Destruction,” which examines how algorithms perpetuate inequality. The book inspired Kairan to pursue engineering, he said, and more specifically, ethical artificial intelligence.
He also pored over news headlines every day. He could make conversation with people several times his age, Jullia said.
His parents encouraged him and engaged him in conversations about things he’d read, she said. Some of Kairan’s teachers had mentioned that he discussed unusual topics in class, but Jullia and her husband never thought much of it, chalking it up to their son picking up verbal and social skills earlier than normal.
But in 2018, when Kairan was in third grade, his teachers told them his behavior was becoming disruptive. Jullia and her husband also noticed their son’s personality changing. Their 9-year-old, who had once loved school, started looking miserable every day.
To learn how to best help him, they took Kairan to a psychologist, who conducted tests and interviews.
After they got the news that Kairan was ready for college, Quazi and her husband were distraught. While their son was thrilled at the prospect, his parents weren’t so sure.
“We were nervous that we were setting him up for failure,” Quazi said. “Because we still believed, and we only knew, the traditional, sequential process of how learning occurred.”
Over the next few weeks, they made a plan. Kairan would attend fourth grade part time while starting college — if he could get into one.
“You can’t just show up at the door with your third-grade transcript saying, ‘I’m ready,’” Jullia said.
She called multiple colleges near their home in Pleasanton, Calif., but none answered. So she phoned them repeatedly until an administrator from Las Positas College in Livermore, a 10-minute drive away, picked up. They agreed to meet Kairan for an interview.
They also gave the 9-year-old entrance exams, including one for math, which showed that he was ready to take calculus.
That June, Kairan started classes at Las Positas. When the school year started that fall, he went to fourth grade part time at an elementary school for gifted students, and family members took turns driving him to college in the afternoon. When he came home each evening, Kairan was happier than he had been in months, Jullia said.
He excitedly told his parents about everything he was learning at Las Positas. He talked about his college professors and classmates, with whom he’d quickly bonded.
Meanwhile, staff at the elementary school Kairan attended informed his parents that he would not be invited back for fifth grade — unless he dropped out of college. The staff explained that it was hard to accommodate Kairan within the traditional curriculum, at times making it difficult for other students to learn.
A professor from Stanford University had visited Kairan’s fourth-grade class to give a guest lecture on supply and demand, for instance. In the middle of the lesson, Kairan brought up the United States’ trade policy with China. The professor then began discussing policy intricacies with Kairan as his classmates looked on.
That was one example, his teachers told Quazi, of something that happened nearly every day.
With elementary school out, the family tried to find high schools that Kairan could attend while in college so he could be around younger peers, but they had no luck. Instead, Kairan took California’s high school equivalency exam, and by the next school year he was only enrolled in college.
After earning an associate’s degree in math at Las Positas, Kairan studied at Santa Clara University, where he took graduate-level electives in AI and algorithms. He was also elected to serve two years as a senator in the student government.
As he neared graduation, Kairan and his parents started thinking about what he would do next.
They researched federal labor law, which sets the minimum age for employment at 14 but limits the types of jobs teens can perform and restricts hours for those who have not completed high school. Since Kairan is 14 and had passed the high school equivalency exam, those restrictions didn’t apply to him.
By the time he began applying for jobs, Kairan had already completed two full-time internships in machine learning in California, where the legal working age is also 14.
Federal regulations allow minors to work in technology fields not considered hazardous. Those regulations do not account for other factors though, including how digital work affects health, said Anibel Ferus-Comelo, who teaches labor studies at the University of California at Berkeley.
“Health and safety laws and existing minimum wage laws haven’t really caught up with this arena of work,” Ferus-Comelo said, adding that with young people, it’s important that they understand their rights in the workplace.
“You have increased vulnerability to exploitation because they’re less likely to ask questions,” she said. “They’re less likely to insist on protections for themselves.”
Jullia said she hopes Kairan’s internships have helped prepare him for the workforce.
“He’s already demonstrated that he can handle it,” she said, adding that he’d be on his computer anyway “tinkering on his personal projects.”
Landing his new gig didn’t come without challenges. Kairan had applied for dozens of positions and had taken coding and technical assessments for several companies, including SpaceX.
Ninety-five rejections followed.
SpaceX was the first company that “seemed really excited about him,” Quazi said.
And Kairan was excited about SpaceX. He’d read on the company’s website that its employees “take pride in solving hard problems,” and he felt that he would fit in.
In April, Kairan and his mother flew to Seattle for his on-site interviews with the company. His parents had “prepared him for disappointment,” Quazi said, because the job search had been difficult.
But when Kairan checked his email on April 12 after his return flight to California, he had a message from SpaceX. They wanted to offer him a job.
Next month, Kairan and his mother will move to Seattle. Jullia will drive him to work as he starts full-time as a software engineer — something she knew was the right decision as she watched him open the SpaceX offer.
“The last time I saw him this excited was when he found out he would be attending college after third grade,” she said. “It was just absolute joy.”
