You go on these Internet blogs and people say the meanest things. I'm a normal person. Just because I'm in the spotlight doesn't mean I'm God's gift to the world. I'm learning and making mistakes just like every other 17-year-old girl out there.

I like to dedicate myself wholeheartedly to a cause so that I have more impact. My goal is to shed light on the beauty of the ocean and how important it is for our planet.

I've always wanted to be a Meryl Streep or a Natalie Portman. I want to do all kinds of different movies, to be a chameleon. I don't want to limit myself.

I remember hearing in first grade, 'Oh, why does she get to skip school?' It wasn't like I suddenly started feeling different. I always knew that I was. I never felt I missed out.

The deep learning techniques, while relatively easy to learn, are quite foreign to traditional engineering modalities. It takes a different mindset and a relaxation of the presumption of control. The practitioners are like magi, sequestered from the rest of a typical engineering process.

I talk about acting to students making the transition from high school to UCLA. Kids going into this profession really need to know the reality of it.

I didn't know Penn was an Ivy League school - I didn't know what the Ivy League was. When I got in, they sent me the package, and the tuition was my mother's salary for a year. My mom said, 'We can't afford it.' So I went to the library and found several scholarships and grants and was able to cover 90 percent of my education that way.

My mom grew up in poverty in Oklahoma - like Dust Bowl, nine people in one room kind of place - and the way she got out of poverty was through education. My dad grew up without a dad, with very little and he also made his way out through education.