She opens the car door and hesitates before making her way toward the entrance of yet another new school. The lights flicker to a silent beat and the shiny floor squeaks beneath her sneakers as she is surrounded by strangers chattering among one another. It’s an alien environment to her but a familiar feeling. Always the new kid. Never able to fully tie herself down to one place.

Junior Grace Kang resembles the textbook version of a typical high school student, but unlike many of her peers she holds a lifetime of experience living in new environments. Just three months ago Kang and her family returned to the United States from China.

“Moving around for me is almost unstable; I can’t do one thing and [solely] focus on one thing,” Kang said. “I think living in many places and moving so much, you never get too attached to one place, and if you do it’s just harder when you leave.”

Kang was born in Daejeon, South Korea and in 2007 moved to Dallas, Texas where her father pursued music education. Afterward her family relocated to Las Vegas Nevada, for her father’s job and later found themselves in North Carolina.

She was only halfway through seventh grade, at the time living in Fayetteville, North Carolina, when her life was flipped upside down. Her family decided to take part in a mission trip through their church that relocated them to the city of Weihai in the Shandong province of China.

“When I first moved to China I was lost because it was seventh grade, and I was [just] entering my teenage years,” Kang said. “When I was in China there were a lot of difficulties [with] friends and how to act in school because my parents were teachers. The language barrier is so big; I really haven’t, for three and a half years talked to people fluently in English, I really wanted to express myself and my emotions but I was [always] limited.”

Throughout her three and a half year stay in China, Kang and her family visited various villages teaching the locals English and music as part of their mission trip. During the schooldays she attended the Weihai Zhongshi International School, where her parents doubled as the music and orchestra directors.

“I think just even being away for only three or four years there’s been a lot of changes in America, and I think I really became who I am [now] when I was in China,” Kang said.

Toward the end of her sophomore and final year living abroad, Kang took a total of nine International General Certificate of Secondary Education tests. She passed all with satisfactory results. If she had continued the program she would have been awarded an equivalent level of achievement to a high school diploma for the Cambridge curriculum.

“When I moved back it wasn’t much of a shock because I felt like I was moving back home,” Kang said. “In the British international school that I went to in China there were a bunch of Korean kids but they were not very good at English and now [that] I’m back here surrounded by people who just speak English it’s a bit of a challenge.”

Although the idea of re-immersing herself in a new school environment on the opposite side of the world is quite intimidating, Kang did not let that stop her from enrolling in a challenging course load. She opted to double up in courses related to her future field of focus, science, currently taking both AP Biology and AP Chemistry, as well as varsity choir and English.

“I don’t have a lot of juniors, but she stands out among the seniors even because she is dedicated [and] has an amazing work ethic,” AP Biology teacher Rebecca Delozier said. “I think because she grew up moving so much and experiencing life outside the United States that her parents gave her more responsibility and she understood that her education was her job.”

On top of her immense level of school work, Kang still manages to pursue a healthy social life by squeezing in time during the day to interact with her peers. When she is not studying for school, she can be found taking part in a plethora of activities ranging from playing soccer with her friends to reading fantasy novels.

“Right now I’m not in too many clubs,” Kang said. “I am in Student Council and in Texas Future Music Educators, which is basically a bunch of people who love music and want to pursue it later. I love music because [my] family is very music oriented. I don’t [necessarily] want to pursue music as a major but maybe as a minor or hobby in the future.”

Although in theory the idea of being able to find the perfect blend of personal activities and academics in an unfamiliar environment might not seem entirely daunting, the task is almost impossible to achieve successfully without the guidance of friends.

“It’s hard; it’s not that I don’t have friends but it’s just hard to keep in touch and have a lasting friendship [moving so often],” Kang said. “But I’m very much about friends that are in the moment. At school I’ve met great friends like Sophia and she’s also Korean American so we get to relate a lot. I think God puts certain people in my life when I need them.”

Because of the way Kang carries herself and interacts with others while at school, she has been able to form friendships with unlikely peers. She has no issues with authentically being true to herself and it shows in how quickly she has been able to create a group of friends she can call her own.

“She’s super new here yet she kinda just fits in,” junior Sophia Lee said. “She does her best to join everything even though she isn’t familiar and she keeps up with everybody here [at school]. She teaches me a lot, so I’m always learning things from her about how to be a better student.”

Although not every aspect of her life is under her control, Kang finds stability in her ability to choose her own unique path. Throughout her busy schedule, she finds various ways of intertwining her passion of science and aspirations to enter the medical field.

“I think science is really intriguing because it’s basically how our lives work,” Kang said. “I really like thinking about the future [and] I have a desire to become a doctor. I really want to be able to heal people because I know when I go to a hospital or when I’m sick I want people to understand why I’m sick and just take care of me in the best way possible. I want to do that for other people.”