Junior Ema McGee made the 130-mile move from rural Ashland, Mo., this summer, the third significant move of her life. Born in El Salvador, McGee moved to Columbia as a toddler. She lived there for five years until moving again, this time to Ashland. She spent the next decade there until the Summer of 2024, when her family moved again. This time, they moved to Clayton.
Being born in a different country impacted McGee’s worldview and set her apart from a young age from her peers in Ashland.
“Most of the people that live in Ashland are people who have been in Ashland their entire lives. They stay in that area because they don’t want to experience anything different, or they have experienced something different, and they’re like, ‘Oh, I really hate this!’ so they go back to what they’re used to,” McGee said. “I’ve experienced a lot more diversity, so I’m more comfortable with that.
McGee learned she would be moving only two weeks before making the move. The first person she told was her best friend Lizzie, who she had known since she was six.
“That was incredibly hard because we’d been neighbors for 10 years and super close best friends,” McGee said. “We did everything together. That was an incredibly hard goodbye.”
Her move was so abrupt that as the school year started, she got dozens of texts asking where she had gone.
“I got a lot of texts because things started to spread. People were like, ‘Is she alive?’ Because me and my brother just disappeared off the face of the earth. I only told a couple of people [I was moving], and not everybody found out,” McGee said.
She had to say goodbye to not only her friends but also the home she had lived in for most of her life.
“It was horrible. I hated every second of it because I was moving away from my house that I lived in for 10 years. I loved that house. It was on a lake,” McGee said. “It was such a pretty house, and it was in the woods too. So I could go camping and be in nature whenever I wanted. I could also go swimming, tubing or wakeboarding.”
The Clayton School District was the reason her parents chose to move. Just one week after arriving in Clayton and three weeks after learning she would be moving, McGee began school.
“At my old school, I didn’t have to study, and I got straight A’s because it was so easy, and the teachers were rough,” McGee said. “Now I have to study, which is kind of crazy, and it’s just adapting to being okay with not getting straight A’s.”
The strength of the curriculum was not the only difference McGee noted in her new environment. She also noticed differences among her peers.
“There’s a lot more diversity here. I’d never met a Jewish person before I came here,” McGee said. “That’s Ashland. It’s rural Missouri. There are no people of color or anything. It’s all white, straight, Christian conservatives.”
Ultimately, her move has taught her a lot about adversity and how to grow in the face of a challenge.
“I don’t get down with myself too much, even if things don’t go my way. It’s not that serious. School feels like the end of the world, but it’s not. You gotta have a broader view of things like getting a bad grade on your test is not going to kill you or affect your entire life,” McGee said. “The transition was definitely difficult. I’ve learned I can be resilient and make friends easily. It’s opened me up to newer things [and] helped me become more open to change.”
