{"id":686,"date":"2014-05-22T15:33:21","date_gmt":"2014-05-22T15:33:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/napopus.org\/?p=686"},"modified":"2014-05-22T15:38:04","modified_gmt":"2014-05-22T15:38:04","slug":"we-are-very-proud-of-grace-ng-a-4-year-opus-camper-named-to-the-chicago-tribune-chicago-tribune-2014-all-state-academic-team","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/napopus.org\/?p=686","title":{"rendered":"We are Very Proud of Grace NG, a 4 year OPUS camper: Named to the Chicago Tribune Chicago Tribune 2014 All-State Academic Team"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"2014<\/a>When Grace Ng began her freshman year at Naperville North High School, she felt like a \u201cgirl of the background\u201d \u2014 one who smiled a lot and worked studiously, but spoke softly and was particularly awkward around boys.<\/p>\n

To overcome her insecurity, Ng set lofty goals. She wanted to define herself as a uniquely accomplished person.<\/p>\n

Nearly four years later, she is the top-ranked student in her class with a weighted 4.78 GPA on a 4.0 scale. She\u2019s also an accomplished pianist and violinist, a member of the school tennis team, a math team captain and an active volunteer at her church, among many other accomplishments and leadership positions.<\/p>\n

Ng is fluent in the Cantonese and Mandarin dialects of Chinese and proficient in Spanish. And she has a green belt in kung fu.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe fits more into one day than most people do in several days,\u201d said Jennifer Witt, Ng\u2019s counselor at Naperville North.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s obvious that she\u2019s brilliant,\u201d Witt said. But what makes her unique \u201cis her true passion to learn and grow as not just an academic but as a person as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ng spent the past few years thinking hard about how to define a person\u2019s worth and significance. She sought out family and friends to discuss the question, concluding that \u201cmy worth is not dependent on the length of my resume or some arbitrary measure of success, but is justified simply by my position as a friend, a daughter, a student, a citizen of this world.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHigh school is definitely a growing time,\u201d Ng said in an interview this month. \u201cA lot of what changed the way I thought of myself was from the people I got to meet in high school. One of the things that I\u2019ll remember best about high school is the friends and the teachers that I\u2019ve gotten to know.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ng will attend Stanford University. She is considering studying bioengineering and piano performance.<\/p>\n

By Kim Geiger – Chicago Tribune – View the original article here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When Grace Ng began her freshman year at Naperville North High School, she felt like a \u201cgirl of the background\u201d \u2014 one who smiled a lot and worked studiously, but spoke softly and was particularly awkward around boys. To overcome her insecurity, Ng set lofty goals. She wanted to define herself as a uniquely accomplished […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-686","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opus-young-musicians"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/napopus.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/686","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/napopus.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/napopus.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/napopus.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/napopus.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=686"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/napopus.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/686\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":691,"href":"https:\/\/napopus.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/686\/revisions\/691"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/napopus.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/napopus.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/napopus.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}