FORT DETRICK, Md. -- The letters just kept coming.
Christiana Adeyemi, an 18-year-old high school senior, was amazed as she received acceptance letters from eight prestigious universities, including two Ivy League schools and the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York.
“At first, I was stunned,” she said. “I had to read them over and over again. I just felt really excited that I was given those opportunities.”
Christiana, daughter of Army Maj. Tolulope Adeyemi, is one of millions of children the Army is recognizing this April, known as the Month of the Military Child. The month serves as a time to honor the sacrifices made by military families worldwide.
She is the oldest of three children belonging to Maj. Adeyemi and his wife, also named Christiana. They have a son, Tolulope, named after his father, and a younger daughter, Emanuela. The family resides in North Carolina.
“I’m just so proud of Christiana and all my children,” said Maj. Adeyemi, whose service has spanned over 20 years, including the last 10 months as a student in the Medical Logistics Management Internship Program (MLMIP) at Fort Detrick, Maryland.
MLMIP is a program run by the U.S. Army Medical Materiel Agency, a direct reporting unit of Army Medical Logistics Command. Both organizations are headquartered at Fort Detrick.
Christiana said she’s narrowed her list of finalists. West Point -- where she has already received immediate provisional admission and final acceptance to attend -- is on that short list, along with Duke, Cornell and Columbia universities.
The other schools include the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, as well as Boston, New York and Wake Forest universities.
About 350 miles south of Fort Detrick, Christiana is a student at Village Christian Academy in Fayetteville, North Carolina.
In addition to her academic strengths, extracurricular activities, like mock trial, student government, yearbook and varsity soccer, also played a big role in her successful college acceptances, she said.
“All those activities really helped me cultivate my leadership, collaboration and critical thinking skills,” Christiana said, adding that her success has been a result of working hard, staying focused on her end goals and persevering through difficult times.
“It took a lot of delegation of tasks and time management,” she said, “and sleep discipline at some points.”
While she hasn’t yet made a decision, Christiana said she plans to study chemistry, with the end goal of becoming a surgeon.
Could that be as an Army surgeon? She said she could see herself attending West Point and entering the service in the medical field, like her father.
“As a military child, leadership and hard work were instilled in me at a young age,” Christiana said, when asked what impact her father’s service has had on her. “So when I was looking at where I was going to spend the next four years, I was looking for a school that could cultivate those skills as well.”
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