A proud tradition of excellence in the visual arts persists in my maternal line. As a girl, my mother had attended South Korea's most prestigious fine arts establishment, Yewon School, and it was understood that I would do the same at the age of twelve. In anticipation of that, from the time my sister and I were barely more than babies, our parents tested, observed and scrutinized us to determine which one would carry this mantle forward.

At the age of six, my family decided—based on my ability to draw a particular line that had perplexed me during a test—that I was the "gifted" child. From that point forward, my life became an exercise in preparation, concentration, and repetition. I practiced sketching like it was an Olympic sport. My days were sectioned into practice times. Talk of a future at Yewon unfolded around me like I had already matriculated.

I began training for Yewon's two-day entrance exam one year before I had to take it; learning how to draw a perfect circle, mastering the rules of shadow and perspective and practicing until I could draw a Coca Cola bottle so lifelike you might try to grab it and take a swig.

Becoming this trained in art was ultimately artless. There was no creativity to it; it wasn't creation but re-creation. But training for the test consumed me because it would please my parents and fulfill what I was told was my destiny.

Moreover, I took the sketching practice seriously because going to this particular art school would also be a reunion. Just three years earlier, my parents had sent my sister and me, along with our legal guardian, to the U.S. for a better education. Coming back to South Korea for school would reconnect me with my parents physically and historically. I would maintain the family tradition—with my family nearby.

Even though I know my parents relocated us out of their abundance of love for me and my sister, living without them in the U.S. left me lonely and self-conscious. At the end of the school day, my classmates threw themselves into the arms of their mothers and fathers, while I walked out the doors alone. My English-speaking skills were also limited; I couldn't communicate with my classmates and therefore couldn't connect with them. The language barrier just compounded the isolation I felt.

As a child, I interpreted separation from parents as a failure on my part. I thought, like many children must, that if I had been better or stronger or something, anything more, that we could have healed whatever had cleaved the family unit. Of course, my situation was not the same as refugees who are summarily stripped from their parents' embrace, but no parent would ever risk or arrange separation unless they were convinced that they were giving their children a better life.

So, the entrance examination was a chance at this better life, but in the same country I was born. Yet the expectations foisted upon me proved too heavy to bear. As soon as I walked into the examination room, my mind locked down. Everything I'd learned was inaccessible. The lights seemed too bright and the air felt too thin. Tears blurred my view of the canvas. When I tried to hold my pencil, my hand trembled. I could barely draw a straight line. I failed the entrance exam, the Yewon School rejected me and my family's tradition of excellence came to a halt.

My parents didn't punish me, but they didn't console me either. Instead, they shifted into planning for my future at a different school. Mentions of Yewon School evaporated from household conversation, and that erasure confirmed to me that I had failed.

Within a month, I had purged my room of every Winsor & Newton charcoal pencil, every stained palette, every empty canvas and sketchpad filled with mindless doodles. At the time, I didn't entirely understand my own feelings and reactions, but I was telling my parents, in word and deed, that I had deviated and would never make art again. The idea that I would openly defy my family was unthinkable, and yet I had already disappointed them, already failed them.

I knew that there was no replacement school in South Korea. My testing flop secured my return to the U.S. —not as a banishment, rather a continuation of the high hopes my mother and father had for me. It's not that I disliked America. I made friends and performed well in my classes in New York City.

Then, two years later, in a painting class—required of course, since I had abandoned art otherwise—our first assignment was to "paint anything you want."

I looked at my teacher, stunned. I was sure I had misheard her. The lack of limitations thrilled and frightened me. My stomach somersaulted as I reached for my paintbrush—I hadn't held one in my hand since the day of the exam. My eyes scanned the room, but I was alone, no watching teacher, no sighing mother or squinting grandmother, scanning to find the tiniest flaws.

Leaving art behind had never been quite as simple as throwing away my paint brushes, but I had never considered myself as flourishing with my art outside of family expectations of excellence. I had fused my hobby with the family, just like they had melded my future to attending a certain school. What I came to realize over time is that art is a part of your soul that nothing can scratch out.

There in that class, it was just me and a blank canvas. I dipped my brush into the paint and I felt my soul swing open like a door. "Welcome to the world you make for yourself," it seemed to say. "Welcome home."

I stayed at that school for the majority of my high school years; taking art courses when I could and adapting assignments in other classes so that I could talk about art history or poetry. Sketching became something I would do by myself for myself rather than something performative and achievement oriented. And my relationship with my parents softened. I can't tell if it was because I was growing up or because art had seeped back into my heart and opened it up. It's probably both.

We've hit a few snags since the college application process brought back some memories of the entrance exam; my mother insisted on traveling to the U.S. during the Omicron surge to oversee my applications. But I have experience with falling short now, so it's easier to navigate. My sense of self is more evolved and since that failure I have changed: I can hold two opposing thoughts in my mind: that I'm talented and worthwhile even if I or my work doesn't match what others want from me at a particular time.

My art work now explores issues of gender, race, and inequality: I want to amplify the good and discontinue the bad; challenge assumptions; expand knowledge of human rights. One painting of mine, "Portrait of a Teenage Girl," sheds light on how those in adolescence have been exposed to political turmoil, government instability and social injustice in the past year. I want to break patterns of supremacy and patriarchy and celebrate goals that seem controversial, but shouldn't be.

It was the insistence on perfection, the stripping of emotion from it that turned me away from art, not a lack of love for the medium.

Maybe it's part of being an adult, but sometimes I marvel at the way things turn out. After all the consternation about my future and the false starts, I've become the artist that I was destined to be all along.

Taylor Moon is an artist and a senior at The Chapin School in New York.

All views expressed in this article are the author's own.

Join half a million readers enjoying Newsweek's free newsletters