he says. "You end up running around talking to people you don't know and making deals with people you don't like. I'm not saying to be a candidate you have to sell your soul, but I think you have to compromise what you truly believe in."
Yellin's new goal: To teach history at the college level.
"I'd like to believe in a world full of good people working together to build a better society," he says. "The best defense against tyranny is to have a strong democratic society where people take their responsibility seriously."
3. The MySpace Millionaire
Ashley Qualls, 17
Here's a riddle: How do you take $8 and turn it into a $1 million? Put it in the hands of Ashley Qualls. Three years ago, Ashley borrowed $8 from her mother, purchased the domain Whateverlife.com, and began posting her own MySpace backgrounds, free to download.
Heavy on hearts, frills, and lyrics from popular songs, the designs were a huge hit with MySpace's massive female population. Attracting hundreds of thousands of hits each day from 14- to 17-year-old girls, the site was a natural for advertisers. Last year, Whateverlife.com brought in $1 million in ad revenue and 7 million unique visitors each month.
It wasn't quite as easy as it sounds, says Qualls. With the profits from the site, she bought her mother a house and set up Whateverlife's Detroit headquarters in the basement. Long days and nights followed. The demands of running the business forced Ashley to quit high school, leaving behind a 3.8 GPA. She hired her mother to help her run the site, which produced its own set of tensions. Despite her success as an entrepreneur, she couldn't sign contracts by herself because she was too young.
"The biggest challenge I've had is my age being a big factor in anything and everything I do," she says. "It sometimes can be difficult to have business owners take a 17-year-old seriously. I'm glad I'm finally legally turning 18 this year."
Her age hasn't limited her ambitions. Whateverlife has branched out into an online magazine and a virtual store (though Ashley turned down an offer to star in a reality show based on her life). Nevertheless, she's still a girl at heart.
"I do miss the fact that I won't be graduating with my friends this year," she says. "They're all getting excited, and it's sad to know I won't be a part of that exact moment. But they are here with me, and I'm still going to my prom!"
4. The Quiz Master
Andrew Sutherland, 17
It started with a French test. Andrew Sutherland, then a 15-year-old high school freshman in Albany, California, had to memorize 111 French terms for animals (including "winnie l'ourson," better known to us as Winnie the Pooh). Most kids would write up flash cards or badger their parents into helping them prep. Instead, Sutherland created a software program that ultimately turned into Quizlet, a Web-based tool that anyone can use to memorize vocabulary terms.
Users enter the terms they need to memorize and the correct definitions, and Quizlet does the rest--logging their correct answers and retesting them on any they miss. Since Sutherland publicly launched Quizlet in January 2007, some 130,000 users have taken more than 12 million quizzes on subjects ranging from Animal Farm to Zoroaster.
To handle the business aspects of the endeavor, Sutherland formed a company called Brainflare, with his father Howard as CFO/Secretary. But Quizlet fans may have to
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