There are very few adults who can say they have built their own laboratory, started their own business, attended some of the best universities and written their own book. Ten-year-old Linda Pistun has done it all.

The precocious Pistun has skipped three grades. It is likely that she will graduate high school by 14, possibly with an associate degree.

But age is just a number for the girl.

“She’s always up for a challenge. She needs it, and gosh we haven’t found anything she can’t do when she sets her mind to it,” Katrina Pistun, her mother, told The Daily Progress.

This summer’s challenge was taking classes at the University of Virginia’s Summer Language Institute. Linda Pistun’s language of choice was Mandarin, one with which she is already familiar.

“She had already been studying Mandarin Chinese for the last few years on her own and through virtual high school classes,” Katrina Pistun said. “She was only 10, but she very much wanted to study in this UVa program, and they gave her permission to apply. She still had to send in all the same materials, do everything the same, and when she found out that she’d been accepted, she was over the moon.”

The summer program is an eight-week course, though students can learn up to two years worth of language knowledge, according to UVa. Other languages offered include Arabic, French, German, Latin, Russian and Spanish.

Connecting to her academic peers is not difficult for the little Pistun, according to her mother. She fits into every room she walks into, she said, and is comfortable with anyone who shares an interest.

“She’s as comfortable on a playground with same age peers as she is in a college classroom with her academic peers, and she enjoys every aspect of her life no matter what the peer group is,” Katrina Pistun said.

UVa was not Linda Pistun’s first time in a university setting. So far, she has 18 college credits in math, science and Mandarin Chinese. She has completed courses at Arizona State University and the Johns Hopkins University Center for Talented Youth.

Linda Pistun has skipped first, third and fifth grades. At the end of kindergarten, she flat out told her family she wasn’t going into first grade.

“She asked for a meeting with her principal and brought in notes and the book that she was reading at the time and told her principal that she did not think she belonged in first grade the next year and got them to do some testing,” her mother said. “They said that she could have skipped at least two grades at that point, but we let her skip one. And then the next year the same thing happened, and we let her skip again. And the next year the same thing, and we let her skip again.”

Linda Pistun is a member of the Davidson Young Scholars for the Highly Gifted as well as the better-known Mensa high-IQ society. Only those who score at or above the 98th percentile on an intelligence test may qualify to join Mensa.

An educational psychologist advised Linda Pistun’s family to not share her IQ with her, according to Katrina Pistun. The family wants to avoid comparison “to other child prodigies or historical figures,” she said.

IQ is not the only thing Katrina Pistun tries to protect her daughter from. Like many parents she had hoped her discuss the birds and bees at an age-appropriate time, she said.

“You think as a parent that the best thing you can do is protect your child from everything that you’d rather they not see or know or learn about yet — and yet again I’ve had to learn as a parent that Linda is the exception to that rule too,” Katrina Pistun said. “When she found out that she was going to get to go to middle school, but she was going to be four years younger than her peers, she asked me for a book about puberty because she wanted to know and understand everything her classmates were going to be going through even though she was years away from any of that.”

The Pistuns began to realize how smart their daughter was when she entered pre-K and showed her family she could already read, according to Katrina Pistun. Another moment of realization was when she 5 and built a full laboratory.

“She turned five and she built a laboratory in her bedroom and was doing a mealworm experiment watching the life cycle,” Katrina Pistun said. “She did some research and found out that mealworms could be the solution to a whole bunch of world problems and started a small business out of her bedroom so that she could keep her mealworms and that became ‘Linda’s Lab.’”

Linda’s Lab is now a registered nonstock corporation operating as a nonprofit that aims to use mealworm protein to solve world hunger.

Linda Pistun has partnered with a chef and developed a recipe for “high protein mealworm bars” with mealworm flour directly sourced from her mealworm farm. Linda’s Lab also loans mealworm kits to schools that include a tank, bedding, mealworms and instructions.

The 10-year-old’s accomplishments don’t stop there.

Linda Pistun has published a book and is in the works on her second, her mother said. Her first book, “Linda and the Mysterious Footprints,” teaches its readers about the scientific method and carbon footprints.

Linda Pistun is now a rising freshman at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Alexandria. She hopes to soon go back to UVa to get her bachelor’s degree in astrophysics when the time comes — which seems like it will be sooner rather than later.

Eventually, she wants to land a job at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California.

“We are hoping that she will find that challenge, that academic rigor, at TJ and enjoy four full years and graduate high school at 14, most likely with an associate’s degree, because I have no doubt that she’ll continue taking college classes along the way because she does that for fun in her free time,” Katrina Pistun said. “I do hope that TJ, particularly with their space programs, is going to be able to offer her what her brain is looking for and give her the chance to really enjoy all four years.”