97 TOO YOUNG AT HEART

NEED A GREAT, EXPERIENCED ENGLISH TEACHER OR PERSONAL TUTOR? Contact Teacher Jack!

[Convenient New Feature: ARCHIVE of All Articles]

TWENTY-NINE-YEAR-OLD WOMAN POSES AS TEENAGE HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT

A 29-year-old South Korean woman who forged her birth certificate in order to pose as a 16-year-old teenager and enroll at a New Jersey high school claims that she did it only out of nostalgia.

Hye-jeong Shin, a 29-year-old South Korean woman and legal resident of the United States of America, made international news headlines after being caught pretending to be a 16-year-old girl at New Brunswick High School in New Jersey.

Just a few days into her high-school adventure, New Brunswick staff discovered that she had faked her birth certificate in order to gain admission. The discovery was made during the vetting process, but recently revealed information suggests that Shin had also been reported by a number of students as acting “weird.”

Shin, who graduated from Rutgers University, majoring in political science and minoring in Chinese, wrote in a university autobiography, “I can be very quiet, but I do slowly open up and start talking more as I become more comfortable. A fun fact about me is that I love meditation, and I sing when no one is around.”

The young Korean woman claims that she never intended to hurt anyone and that she merely wanted to relive high-school experience that had made her feel the safest growing up.

“At no time was anyone or any student in danger, and this entire case is more about my client’s wanting to return to a place of safety and welcoming and to an environment that she looks back on fondly; it was nothing more,” Darren Gelber, Shin’s attorney, told a court of law.

Ms. Shin recently pleaded guilty to a number of charges that could carry a maximum penalty of five years in prison, but her attorney is desperately trying to convince the court that his client was lonely and confused.

She had just had a contentious divorce, and her entire family was in South Korea, so she had no one around to support her. Shin finally recalled her time in high school and the atmosphere she missed so much, so she decided to fake her way back into school.

Attorney Gelber admitted that the whole situation is very bizarre and that it may be very difficult for people to understand, but he added that, while there are personal issues Hye-jeong Shin needs to deal with, she never intended to hurt anyone.

Shin’s youthful appearance fooled both the high-school staff and the other teenage students. Almost no one suspected that she was over a decade older than her peers.

However, one student stated that, when he inquired about Hye-jeong Shin's age, she looked at him strangely, and he realized something was wrong.

That reaction, plus the admissions-document checking process and her “weird” attitude with other students whom she had invited to hang out with her, finally gave her away.