Hyejeong Shin is 29 years old and missed something very specific: the bustle of school hallways.
In New Brunswick, New Jersey, she forged a birth certificate to enroll as if she were another teenager. For four days, she attended classes at the local high school without anyone noticing the difference. She sat in the same classrooms and walked through the same hallways until the administration reviewed her documents and something didn’t add up.
The school notified the police, and Shin ended up being formally charged with falsifying public documents. What she described as loneliness and a desire to relive that stage of her life was, in the eyes of the law, simply a crime.
