Girls Rule

Pomp and Circumstance

Each year millions of high school seniors walk across the stage to receive their diploma. In the coming weeks, students from the community will graduate from high school, leaving home to seek jobs or education away from home.

This week, a sunny Wednesday morning Sarah Ryu and Shubhi Goyal donned their caps and gowns for the first time. The two girls smile as a camera shutters and captures their last images as high school seniors.

Failure Makes You Stronger

Shubhi Goyal is a bright young woman with a firm grip on her future and a clear vision of her goals. In August she will leave Johns Creek and travel over 1,000 miles to Cambridge, Mass., to attend Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

“I’ve found you can find a great education at any college,” said Goyal. “But I wanted to go somewhere people would have the same interests. People there talk about world events, politics, real problems, not just themselves.”

Goyal’s plan is to study Neuroscience, she said MIT attracted her because the Cambridge and Boston community are curious and innovative; a city that matches her personality.

“It is a culturally active community,” she said.

However, it is the academia that is calling her. She developed a curiosity for medicine at an early age; when she was about eight-years-old her father told her that her uncle had been diagnosed with polio when he was five.

“I became interested in the field, I want to research these diseases and help find vaccines,” she said.

After college and medical school one of Goyal’s goals is to head to West Africa to conduct medical research.

“I think it would be a good place to settle down to research,” she said.

This ideal of providing medical help and support to the global community extends from her family heritage. Goyal and her family moved to the U.S. from Dehli, India when she was six. Along with English she speaks Hindi, and French and finds her bliss in the traditional Indian Dance.

“In India dance is a big part of film, and life. I didn’t take classes until I was 12, but when I was younger I would sit in front of the T.V. and watch dance,” she said.

While she has been intensely involved in her studies, which has led to her becoming her class Salutatorian, her grounding activity was dance.

“It created an equilibrium,” she said. “What you feel when you dance is amazing.”

While the world is calling Goyal, she understands that Johns Creek is her home, the community that has supported her.

“I am going to miss my friends and family. I have already written them all a letter,” she said.

She said she will remember the lessons she learned while at Northview High School; both those in the classroom, and the ones that come with being a teenager.

“I have learned to accept failure, it happens to everyone,” she said. “Learn from it, it makes you a stronger person.”

Hard Work, Discipline and Respect

A few days ago Sarah Ryu was cleaning her room, while going through her old things she found a list of goals she had written for herself as an incoming freshman at Northview High School.

“It feels like yesterday when I wrote that. It feels like yesterday I walked into Northview, and now I am about to graduate,” said Ryu.

While the Northview Valedictorian didn’t accomplish all of her goals, Ryu did achieve many of those goals, including getting accepted at the University of Pennsylvania.

“The people there are friendly and excited to be there,” she said.

Ryu, who could be described as friendly and excited about life, said when her senior year first rolled around she was ready to leave Northview.

“At first I just couldn’t wait to leave, but this place has given me a lot, and I think I am going to miss it,” she said.

But, she is says she is leaving prepared to enter college, and she understands hard work.

“I wouldn’t say I am one of those people who just gets it, who is naturally smart. I had to work hard for my grades. I had to be diligent,” said Ryu.

She said that at times high school has been tough because she was battling to stay ahead in Advanced Placement classes, while maintaining a life outside of school.

“If I didn’t work this hard I probably wouldn’t know how to survive in college. I have developed a good work ethic,” she said.

That work ethic Ryu speaks of is not limited to schoolwork; she is an accomplished violinist of 13 years. She calls it her passion.

“It defiantly makes me happy,” she said.

Ryu has spent countless hours mastering her violin skills and says she learned not to get sucked into the competitive nature of music.

“If you get too involved in being the best it can take away the joy of music,” she said.

While Ryu has very specific life goals, she has not firmly decided on a major.

“I thought I wanted to study medicine for a long time, or maybe law,” she said before throwing her hands up and laughing. “I don’t know I guess I will figure it out.”

She does know she wants to study languages and expand on the ones she already speaks. Ryu has studied Spanish and having been born in Korea, speaks Korean fluently.

Her family moved to the U.S. when Ryu was two. This summer she is traveling back to Korea to visit family and learn about her roots.

“A big facture in Asian culture is discipline and respect,” she said.

These are two skills Ryu has mastered and will never do her wrong.

The Secret Ambitions of a Brilliant Girl

Rachel Meng is trying to decide whether or not she should minor in Quantum Physics when she begins college this coming fall.

“It has always been something that fascinates me but I don’t know,” she said.

Meng is the Valedictorian of Chattahoochee High School in Johns Creek; on Saturday she will receive her diploma.

“I am nervous, but the idea that you’re near free; you can ponder on all of your accomplishments,” she said.

Meng describes her senior year as both traumatic, and freeing.

“For so long I have been concentrated on the school side of life,” she said.

On Sept. 29 she will begin her freshman year at the University of Chicago, a school she picked because it was “quirky and nerdy.”

“It isn’t like other schools. When they have parties it is calculus, in a fun way,” she said.

Meng, is thrilled with her chance to explore her opportunities at the University while she figures out what she wants to do with her life.

“The future is not really set in stone,” she said.

Meng is a very disciplined young woman who has studied violin since middle school, and played the piano since she was 10.

“With the violin you have to keep on practicing, or everything you have learned will all go away,” she said.

She loves classical music, particularly Chekovsky. During the course of her high school career she played first violin in the Advanced Symphony.

She says she has loved school from day one.

“I have always enjoyed coming to school and learning new things, it is almost home to me,” she said.

This past school year she took a physics class that she found to be demanding and hard, but admits it was the challenged that she loved.

“Because it was challenging it was almost poetic in a way,” she said.

Meng, who was born in Wei Nan, China, is an only child who is a little nervous about leaving home.

“In theory I am very practical, but I think I have a naive perception about life. I just want to be a student forever,” she said.

And in her own way Meng might be a student forever. When she graduates from college, and grad school, and whatever might come after that, Meng wants to travel and study languages.

“It is my own secret ambition to learn every language possible,” she said.

Meng has a lot of ambitions, both public and private that range from becoming a novelist to traveling to England to research her favorite fictional character, Sherlock Holmes. In fact, Meng has read all of the Sherlock Holmes mysteries written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. She has even read other works about the character written by other novelists.

“I am obsessed with him, he is my favorite non-real character,” she said.

Meng might not have a her life road mapped, but she offers this advice to others: “Take your time with life, make the most of life while you have it, time goes by so quickly.”

Head on over to our senior photo gallery http://www.johnscreekpost.com/image/tid/50.

To submit a picture of your own senior email: lydia.senn@thepost-news.com