A Path Forward

In the Chinese class of Ms. Du Jinghui, Grace Li lost focus—for the first time.

That morning, decisions from Johns Hopkins University had been released. Another rejection. Her second of the season.

Thinking of her other applications at Northwestern University, Yale University, Rice University, Duke University, and the University of Pennsylvania—one by one, the schools she had imagined herself attending rigorous mathematics programs. The pressure of the application season broke her.

After class, she went to the bathroom and cried.

The next day, Ms. Du saw her again. Grace was back to normal—smiling, energetic, as if nothing had happened.

“She’s like water,” Ms. Du said. “Obstacles are just stones. She flows over them. Nothing really stops her from moving forward.”

“Many things shape outcomes, not just what we do,” Grace said of the setbacks that she refuses to stay in. “What we can control is doing our part well. Time keeps moving. If you stay stuck, you trap yourself. Feel sad, then keep going.”

On April 20, an email arrived from Princeton University. She opened it and saw a tiger and then paused, realizing it was Princeton’s mascot. A moment later: “Congratulations!”

For Grace, the meaning was simple. Rejection didn’t mean she wasn’t good enough. It just meant she hadn’t found the right place yet.

“Luckily,” she said, “I found it.”

Her teachers would put it differently. Nothing about this felt sudden.

Spring, after all, doesn’t arrive overnight.

That same afternoon, during Keystone Academy’s annual Cultural Mosaic event, Grace blended into the crowd. Math teacher Ms. Ashley Qiu saw Grace laugh with friends and move from booth to booth as if it were any ordinary day.

Just like the sadness after rejection, Grace said, joy is fleeting too. What remains is something quieter: the process itself.

“The experience and the effort, that’s what stays with you,” she said. “That’s what becomes part of your life.”

More than one version

Grace’s voice—clear, bright, impossible to miss—reaches people before she does. One would often see her striding down the hallway, quick and purposeful, nothing like the quiet, reserved xuébà (a Chinese slang for “top student”) people might expect.

When she was not in class, she and her close friend Sunny Gui could often be found talking—really talking—in their teachers’ classrooms. The conversations were fast, lively, and uninterrupted.

“It’s like watching a comedy routine,” Ms. Du joked.

This was the version of Grace most people would see first: expressive, open, full of energy. But for those who stayed longer, her other side appeared.

The same Grace whose voice would fill a room could turn completely inward when she studied. One would find a focused, composed, and almost still Grace. What looked effortless from the outside was, in academics, cool and collected.

Compared to the humanities, Grace prefers mathematics: it is clean, structured, decisive, much like her own way of thinking. Literature and history, by contrast, demand patience with ambiguity, with meaning layered and interpretation open-ended. She seems less adept at dealing with uncertainty in language, the arts, and history, carefully weighing nuances whenever she navigates deeper meanings and expressions. That is a stark contrast to the exhilarating experience she finds in mathematics.

It would have been easy to settle for adequacy, to do just enough to secure a solid grade, and then redirect her energy toward mathematics and dance, the areas she naturally gravitated toward. But even in subjects she didn’t love, or didn’t immediately excel in, Grace held herself to the same standard: understand it fully, or not at all.

In Ms. Du Jinghui’s class, that showed. She followed every thread of discussion closely, quick to engage when something sparked her interest. She retained key arguments, completed every assignment, and stayed consistently present, not out of obligation, but discipline.

In her senior year, the curriculum included One Hundred Years of Solitude and White Deer Plain, which Grace read in full and deliberately. First, she read for immersion, following the narrative without interruption. Only after finishing did she return to analyze structure, language, and technique. Separating the two processes allowed her to engage more deeply, without being overwhelmed.

That adjustment extended to how she used time. Waiting before dance class, she read a few pages of White Deer Plain. During summer school in the United States, she finished the entire novel. Even during a packed winter break, she found space to complete both One Hundred Years of Solitude and The Stranger.

Planning was part of her system. “If it’s something I have to do, I finish it early,” she said. “If I don’t read ahead, I won’t follow the class. Then I won’t be able to write essays. It becomes a cycle. I don’t want to make things harder for myself later.”

Ms. Du recalled how Grace would search for past papers. For the subsequent exam, Grace practiced on her own and rewrote arguments to reinforce her memory. Step by step, the student built familiarity where instinct didn’t come naturally.

“People don’t see how much work she puts in,” Ms. Du said.

For Grace, this was what learning meant. “Being bad at something doesn’t make it unimportant,” she said. “Literature gives us another way to understand the world. Life has setbacks. Literature helps you learn how to face them.”

Ms. Du saw that mindset clearly.

“Grace is calm, patient, and grounded in her studies,” she said. “She learns from everywhere, without arrogance. She values what’s around her. Knowledge flows to her naturally, like water finding its way to the sea.”

In Ms. Du’s view, learning was a collaboration between teacher and student, shaping something together over time. And Grace, she said, was the kind of student who grew steadily within that process.

“Grace isn’t impulsive, bored, resistant, perfunctory, superficial, nor lazy.” These were the phrases Ms. Du used to describe Grace. Ms. Qiu and Dance teacher Zheng Yang also expressed similar views.

“Someone with that level of focus will find a way to succeed, whatever she chooses to do,” Ms. Qiu said.

Math as a method and a bridge

For Grace, mathematics is not just a subject, but a way of moving through the world.

If mathematics were a destination, she believes, there would be countless paths that led to it. Some were linear and predictable; others wound through unfamiliar terrain. But each, in its own way, would arrive at something precise and true. That sense of certainty, reached through exploration, is what draws Grace in.

Working through familiar formulas, she looks for alternate routes, small openings that lead to new ways of solving the same problem. Over time, this has become instinct. When faced with a question, she can map out multiple approaches in her head, then settle on the most efficient one.

That instinct is the result of long-term practice, as evidenced by the bulky math notebook she has kept since around eighth grade, long before coming to Keystone. Each page, she explained, is structured the same way: key concepts, followed by a representative problem. It’s simple but deliberate, designed for clarity and return.

While many students began reviewing just before exams, Grace would start midway through each unit and then consolidate as she went on. “When I try to recall something from long ago, I’ve usually forgotten it,” her friend Sunny said. “But she remembers it clearly.”

Teachers would describe Grace in similarly plain terms: disciplined, focused, consistent. Not flashy, but exacting. Her classmates saw her as someone who set a standard for herself—and then would act to meet it.

“Every time I knock on her dorm door, she’s studying,” her friend Annie Wang said.

In the summer of 2024, Grace studied university-level mathematics, including discrete mathematics and graph theory, in the Program in Algorithmic and Combinatorial Thinking (PACT) summer program under the guidance of professors. She later participated in a full-year project on theoretical computer science in the program at the height of her Diploma Programme (DP) phase at Keystone.

In the following summer, Grace was finally admitted to Stanford University Summer Mathematics Camp (SUMaC), one of the most selective math programs for high school students. That year, only 40 students worldwide were admitted to the in-person program; two were from Beijing, including Grace. She got it on her second try.

At SUMaC, she studied discrete mathematics, abstract algebra, and number theory, which pushed her beyond competition math into a broader, more conceptual landscape. That shift reinforced something she had already begun to explore: mathematics as a bridge.

Since ninth grade, she has been interested in how mathematical thinking could intersect with other disciplines. During the pandemic, when in-person ballet training was suspended, she turned to that question directly. Ballet demanded alignment, timing, and control, and without an instructor’s feedback, that precision was difficult to maintain.

So, Grace built a system.

Using quantifiable data, she designed a motion-recognition program to help dancers assess the accuracy of their movements. The idea was not to replace artistry, but to support it: to give dancers clearer, grounded feedback, based on measurable patterns.

She later expanded the program into a Personal Project product and shared it with the school community. “Beyond standard movements, I want to include more dimensions, like how movement aligns with music, so that technical knowledge can better support artistic expression,” she said of her hope to continue refining the program while in university and possibly integrating it into a formal dance assessment scheme.

Her Capstone project extended that line of thinking in a different direction. Studying the Nine Chapters on the Mathematical Art alongside Elements, she began to see mathematics not as purely objective but as shaped by cultural and philosophical context.

That realization mattered to her because it situated mathematics within the world, rather than above it.

“Mathematics isn’t abstract,” she said. “It’s connected to how we live.”

That belief also shaped how she shared knowledge. In tenth grade, she launched a student-led Mathematics Club course under the Keystone Activities Program (KAP) for middle school students. The aim was simple: to share not just knowledge, but ways of thinking, especially for those who felt stuck or uncertain about the subject.

When the course began, there were only a dozen or so students. Now, the club has grown to more than 30 students.

In class, she stripped problems back to their foundations. Step by step, she rebuilt them, explaining each stage until it landed. If it didn’t, she would explain it again.

“You have to think from the student’s perspective,” she said. “Don’t skip steps. Make every part clear.”

It was an approach she learned from her math teachers, Ms. Qiu and Mr. Jason Roy. She recalled how Ms. Qiu would work through a student’s incorrect solution in full before pointing out where it went wrong, treating the mistake as part of the process, not a failure. And for Mr. Roy, Grace liked how he would break down concepts into smaller, structured units “just like a recipe” so students could follow them and build on them.

That patience showed in Grace’s KAP club. There was one student who struggled repeatedly and considered dropping the course. Grace worked with her one-on-one, returning to the same concepts as many times as needed.

Slowly, the student began to keep pace. This year, she no longer needed that extra support. “Now, even if she gets stuck, a bit of guidance is enough,” Grace said. “She can move forward on her own.”

Ryan Yu, who has known Grace since she transferred in fifth grade, remembered her as someone who not only solved problems but shared them, often stepping up to the board to walk others through her thinking.

“She’s not just good at learning,” Ryan said. “She makes sure others can understand, too.”

That instinct to connect, translate, and share was something Grace saw as part of Keystone’s culture. Knowledge moves between people. Ideas are passed on, reshaped, and built further.

“And mathematics,” she said, “is the bridge that lets me connect with more people.”

Another pair of wings

The curtain rose slowly. On stage, Wanqian danced gracefully in a white dress. There was no dialogue. Instead, she and more than twenty dancers traced a life in motion: childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. The story unfolded through bodies, rhythm, and silence.

“She once believed possession was the answer, that becoming everything meant freedom until desire hollowed her out, leaving only an echo. The pendulum stops, the screen falls away, and in the quiet she finally hears: what she was chasing was never far from her.”

As the students wrote in the synopsis, Wanqian was not just a character but also a mirror—on stage, in the audience, and in ourselves.

On April 14, Keystone’s fourth original student dance production, The Thousands (titled Wanqian in Chinese), premiered at the Performing Arts Center. From script to choreography, music to stage design, every part was student-led. It was one of the ways students turned inward—then outward again—giving form to what they think and feel.

Two years earlier, Grace stood on that same stage, also in white, performing in Mirror Self. She was not only the lead but also part of the choreography team for the first time.

Her relationship with dance began much earlier. She first stepped into a ballet studio at two years and eight months old. It was one of several activities her mother encouraged her to try. Piano, tennis, and skating came and went. Dance stayed. What began as exploration became habit, then commitment. More than a decade later, it remains one of the most constant parts of her life.

For Grace, ballet does not tolerate interruption. “If I stop for three days, I can feel the difference.”

So, she went on. Two to three sessions a week, sustained over ten years. During the pandemic, she practiced at home. While traveling, she kept up her basics. In eleventh grade, while attending a math program at the University of Pennsylvania, she found a studio off campus to continue training. The following summer, at Stanford University, she contacted a teacher on her own and joined local sessions. During the pressure of twelfth-grade undergraduate applications, she was still messaging her dance teacher every few days, asking for studio time, training from late afternoon until evening, then hurrying back before curfew.

Her teacher, Zheng Yang, described that dance for Grace was like having “another pair of wings”.

Ms. Zheng witnessed her student’s consistency and response to correction. “She doesn’t take feedback as criticism,” she said. “You tell her what to adjust, and she takes it directly—as something to work on.”

After nearly a decade of ballet, Grace began exploring contemporary dance in sixth grade. Compared with ballet’s precision and discipline, contemporary dance offered her fluidity, openness, and space for interpretation.

Yet, Grace doesn’t see them as opposites.

For her, ballet builds the frame: every angle, every extension, every beat, exactly. It is that discipline that creates its beauty. Contemporary dance, then, breaks that frame, reshaping it into something more personal and expansive.

“Ballet gives you the structure,” she said. “Contemporary lets you move beyond it.”

In Mirror Self, she carried both languages into her choreography. The third act, which she designed, followed the protagonist Zhong as she left a disordered utopia and returned to reality. It was a passage from confusion to clarity.

At the center of the piece was a simple object: a chair.

Zhong stepped onto it, looking outward, re-seeing the world. Order, she realized, was not a constraint but a condition of living. Gradually, she returned to the group. There was friction, judgment, and responsibility—but also recognition. In the final moment, she was lifted by others, a gesture Grace designed to mark arrival: a place found, not alone, but in relation to others.

Dance, like anything sustained over years, came with fatigue. But for Grace, there were moments when that exhaustion gave way to something else.

“When you reach your limit,” she said, “and the stage lights hit your face, the world becomes vibrant.”

She recalled a summer afternoon at Stanford. Dance class began at 12:30, cutting into lunch. Afterward, she and a few classmates would pick up coffee and bagels, eating as they walked in the sun, wind in their faces, talking, laughing. Then back to mathematics in the afternoon.

It was, she said, a glimpse of the life she wanted: movement and thought, structure and freedom, held together in the same day.

It is another pair of wings, not separate from who she is, but part of how she moves forward.

Because of you, I became who I am

When I reached out to Sunny Gui for an interview, she wasn’t on campus, so we spoke online. I had prepared a list of questions. I barely used them.

Once she began talking about Grace, our conversation moved on its own. One story led to another. Through her voice, I felt immersed in their years of friendship—unpolished, specific, full of small moments that carried more weight than any summary.

Interestingly, Sunny didn’t even like Grace at first. “I remember thinking, how can someone be this loud?”

In ninth grade, they lived next door to each other in the dorms. They became what they jokingly call “bathroom buddies”, and then classmates. Through spending time together, the first impression gave way to something more layered.

“We kind of became frenemies, but in a good way,” Sunny said, laughing.

Their circle eventually grew to four: Sunny, Grace, Kiki Liu, and Annie Wang. Kiki had known Grace since first grade; later, Grace encouraged her to transfer to Keystone. Annie joined more gradually, through shared meals, long tables, and the slow familiarity of everyday routines.

In that group, Grace is often the one who notices what others would miss.

“She looks carefree,” Sunny said, “but she’s actually very sensitive and perceptive.”

In group settings, when someone drifts to the edge of the conversation, Grace is usually the first to notice. She doesn’t make a scene of it. She simply pulls the person back in—starting a conversation, shifting the tone and making space.

With quieter students, she does something similar in a different way.

“She’ll compliment them, sometimes intentionally, sometimes not,” Sunny shared. “Things like, ‘I’ve been learning this for so long, you’re already this good.’ It sounds simple, but it really lifts people.”

That instinct resurfaced in another moment. One student, usually more comfortable alone, had planned to spend the day resting instead of joining activities. “Grace insisted he stay with us,” Sunny said. “Before, I probably wouldn’t have noticed things like that. But being around her, I’ve started to pay attention and do something about it.”

For Grace, none of this feels deliberate.

“It’s just how the Keystone community is,” she said. “It’s a place where people are kind to each other. What I felt, from the beginning, was sincerity.”

She recalled her first day at Keystone, feeling unsure, adjusting, and trying to find her place. A classmate, Amy Zhang, approached her first. That simple gesture made the unfamiliar feel manageable.

She remembered her teachers, too, like how Ms. Du’s encouragement shaped her confidence in Chinese class; how Ms. Qiu supported the KAP math program from the start; how Ms. Zheng, behind the scenes, helped bring the student dance production Mirror Self to life.

None of these were dramatic interventions. But together, they formed something steady.

Growing up in that environment, Grace shared, shaped how students would feel open, grounded, and moving forward. And the influence is not one-directional.

“People say I have a lot of energy,” Grace said. “But actually, Sunny has even more. She’s generous, always sharing resources. She’s always optimistic. When I’m with her, I feel relaxed.”

That ease is rooted elsewhere, too. Grace’s family is the constant beneath everything else. Her mother, in particular, is both structure and support, helping her manage time, keep track of applications, and sort through information during the busiest periods.

For Grace, her mother is not only an academic partner but also her strongest emotional support.

Once, after school, Grace called her mother from a classroom and broke down in tears. It may have started with something small—a lost blind box—but it wasn’t really about that. Ms. Qiu, Grace’s math teacher, knew it was pressure, released, everything at once. Her mother listened without rushing or dismissing it.

Because Grace was a boarding student, they didn’t see each other often, sometimes only once a week. For a period of time, her mother would visit every few days, bringing a box of fruit, sitting quietly while she ate.

Of course, they also argued. “We both have tempers,” Grace admitted, saying their disagreements would flare quickly but wouldn’t linger, because “we’ve learned to consider things from each other’s perspective.” By the next day, they’ve moved on.

That balance between firmness and care has shaped Grace and given her room to try, fail, and choose without hesitation.

When our conversation turned to the future, Sunny spoke about her own plans. Like Grace, she had chosen mathematics early on.

Sunny’s math scores were among the best in the class; yet she considered Grace not a competitor but a partner in mischief.

When I asked what she would miss most about school, she didn’t hesitate.

“My teachers. My classmates. And most of all, Grace.”

Then she stopped speaking.

For a moment, I thought the connection had dropped. I called her name. What came back was quiet, then unmistakable. Sunny was crying.

I didn’t interrupt. Some moments didn’t need to be guided or resolved.

There were friendships that needed no explanation because they existed in shared time, in ordinary days, in the way one person changed how another would see the world.

“Life is a solitary journey,” she said at one point. “But I met you. You’re not me—but in some ways, you are another version of me in this world.”

On the Keystone quadrangle, Grace rose into a jump—ballet shoes pointed, body suspended for a split second. The camera caught her midair.

In the photograph, sunlight settled across her face and hair. Behind her, late spring had taken hold, with grass thick, green, and alive. The image looked still, but nothing in it was static. Movement was everywhere, in Grace’s figure, in the light that illuminated her, and in what that moment suggested.

It called to mind a line:

For the sake of reaching sunlight, for the sake of fulfilling its will to live, something will find its way upward—no matter the weight above it, no matter how narrow the space. It bends, twists, and pushes through. Roots burrow into the soil, shoots press toward the surface. It is a force that cannot be held down. Even the stones that try to contain it are, in time, shifted aside.

This is how Grace moves forward.

“Find what you love,” she says. “When you make an impact and bring about change to society in a way you love, perhaps you’ve fulfilled your mission in this world.”

Grace calls it, half-jokingly, her “Declaration of Growth”. It’s a way of summing up her twelfth-grade year.

But it reads more like a beginning than a conclusion.

What comes next is still unwritten.