Despite her good grades and attendance, Carrie Costellow will not be graduating next year with her fellow seniors at Bowling Green High School.

In fact, she won’t be going to prom or even get to dance her senior solo, for which she’s been preparing since she was 4 years old.

For the past three years, the 16-year-old has been featured in newspapers and on TV for all her accomplishments and school involvement – but next year, don’t expect to see much of her at all.

Costellow will spend her entire senior year studying in Egypt under an American Field Science scholarship. And while she has spent the past two summers in Egypt and Jordan studying Arabic, she has opted to spend an entire school year submerged in the foreign country in an effort to improve her language skills and one day become an ambassador or federal government employee.

Costellow said she is nervous about attending a different school, but comfortable with the environment where she has already spent two summers immersed in the culture.

“Math is hard enough in English, I’m just nervous about how I will handle it in Arabic,” Costellow said. “But I think this will definitely help me in my language skills. I feel if I miss my senior prom, it’s going to be worth it because this opportunity is totally paid for and I may never get to go again … (going now), I may have a better opportunity later.”

Just months after getting her driver’s license, Costellow will pack her passport, along with a special necklace given to her by her mother, and fly overseas. The senior will be living with a host family, and will not return home to her own family until the end of the school year. With permission from school officials, Costellow will still receive her diploma from BGHS, she said, but will probably not make it home to walk the line.

Her family is planning to fly to Egypt in February to visit.

“I’ll definitely bring my pictures with me, I want to try to represent America the best I can so I’m not only learning about their culture, they can also learn about mine,” she said.

A curiosity for the Middle East is what drove Costellow to study Arabic with Bowling Green High teacher Touria Myers. Myers said she quickly realized Costellow had a dream and a drive to succeed in language studies.

“When she first came to me she said, ‘It’s my dream to study in an Arabic country,’ ” Myers said. “She’s really very impressive. She wants what she wants and goes after it.”

And the opportunity to study abroad was exactly what she was after.

Costellow competed against hundreds to receive the National Security Language Institute scholarship sponsored by the U.S. Department of State and thought she would be turned down for the yearlong program since the institute had already funded two study abroad trips.

In previous trips, Costellow had attended language schools in the summer, but this year, she may spend her full school day in an Arabic-speaking school in a village in Egypt. When she goes for a training session in New York later this summer, she’ll get details of her trip.

On this trip, Costellow said she plans to pack more skirts and T-shirts because they will be more comfortable than jeans. She said the women dress in varying degrees of conservatism with some covering even their eyes and others wearing shorts.

“The experience of getting to live there is such a unique thing that you cannot get in a book or a classroom,” she said. “It’s incredible the way it enhances not just your language skills and cultural understanding, but your maturity as you find things out on your own and become independent.”

Costellow said her parents and family have been very supportive because they understand this is what she wants to do. She said they have plans to communicate through the Internet video communication site Skype.

“We still get emotional,” she said. “When you think I’m not going to be here for a year.”

Costellow said she just found out she received the scholarship in April, and has become a little anxious thinking about how she will apply for colleges while she’s overseas. Despite some anxieties, she said she’s looking forward to seeing how Egyptians celebrate holidays like Ramadan, while also gaining more understanding of the culture as a whole. When she arrives in late August, Costellow said she might even give soccer a try.

“I think the best thing we can do to have better relations between nations is to stop and see things through their eyes,” she said. “If we see all the sides of the picture, we are able to empathize with each other.”