Have you ever been told you’re too young to do or understand something? I’m going to jump out on a limb here and assume the answer is a resounding yes. When I was about 14 years old, I announced that I had started writing a book and was met with a superfluity of you’re too young’s and the backhanded compliments of save it for when you’re older so you can rewrite it. Why would I want to put so much effort into crafting something and then let it sit in the hard-drive of my computer until I reach this ambiguous old enough age?

Malala Yousafza was shot by the Taliban, survived, continued to educate herself and push for the education of others, and has now been awarded the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize. She is only 17 years old. Bello Eniola, Duro-Aina Adebola, Akindele Abiola, and Faleke Oluwatoyin invented a generator that turns urine into energy. Eniola is 15 while the others are 14. Jaylen Bledsoe, a 13 year-old, started a tech company that is now worth $3.5 million with 150 contracted employees a mere two years later. Mohamed Altoumaimi solved the Bernoulli numbers problem—a formula that has stumped even the greatest mathematicians for the past 300 years—at the ripe age of 16! And you want to tell me that because the first digit of my age is still a 1 that I can’t write a book? Don’t make me laugh. You might just end up on my acknowledgements page: Thanks to everyone who ever told me I couldn’t—it just made me work ten times harder.