Meet the Pennsylvania high school seniors earning college degrees: "It's been a journey"

It's graduation day for Thatcher Respicio, an 18-year-old senior at Downingtown East High School.

"We are super proud," Ashley Respicio, his mother, said. "He's worked really hard."

But this isn't high school graduation — that's still weeks away. Thatcher is earning his associate degree in engineering from Delaware County Community College.

"It's definitely exciting for me," he said.

He's not alone in the college head start. About 30 young students are walking with associate degrees Thursday while simultaneously attending high school.

Marcella Ballisty, a Downingtown West High School senior, is earning her diploma in Liberal Arts studies. Her next stop: Penn State for aerospace engineering.

"My real dream job is to work at Formula 1 racing to build cars because I'm so interested in cars," she said.

Respicio will pursue mechanical engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology.

Both students said adjusting to time was important at first.

"It was a lot leaning about time management," Thatcher Respicio said.

"My sophomore year, I was trying to balance school activities and stuff and sometimes I did get behind, but I eventually got into a rhythm," Ballisty said.

Ballisty and Respicio have each left strong impressions about working hard and studying.

Respicio is an up-and-coming entrepreneur. Already helping his mom, as he says, "workshop" an idea.

"It's sort of a machine learning quantitative and analytics for stocks and things like that," he said.

"It's been a journey for sure," Ballisty said. "Very grateful for my parents and my school."