Leaving Ukraine

Isabelle Boyd gave her father one last hug and boarded the bus. Sitting with her mother and sister, she watched the embassy fade into the distance as the journey began. She and the other families from the American Embassy in Kyiv, Ukraine, headed to an airport to catch a chartered plane.

The 11-hour evacuation flight from Kyiv to Dulles International Airport in Virginia was long and loud with babies crying, dogs barking, and tension mounting. It was January 2022, a month before Russia declared war on Ukraine. When they said their goodbyes to the country known for sunflowers and European culture, the Boyds believed they only would be gone a month. When the conflict ended, they expected to return to their home in Kyiv, where Boyd’s father had remained as essential personnel, and the family soon would resume their lives.

But they never returned to Ukraine. On Feb. 24, 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine, launching a full-scale attack on the country. The conflict continues today.

Meanwhile, Boyd now is a junior at Virginia Tech studying professional and technical writing and psychology.

She has called eight different countries home in her life. But it is her time of living and leaving Ukraine that has left an indelible mark. Although the often-transient life of a foreign service officer’s daughter gave her resilience and adaptability, Boyd said her understanding of conflict gave her a perspective on the value of helping others see the world a little more clearly.

Right before the evacuation, as she and her friends walked home from the small international school in Kyiv they attended her junior year, the students discussed spending weekends in places of thousand-year-old history, general high school gossip, and the possibility of an invasion.

“We joked that this would make a great college essay,” she said. 

And it did. Boyd eventually solidified her thoughts about what it means to grow up overseas. Writing those in her essay not only secured her place at Virginia Tech, but it helped her hone her perspective on what she learned as a global citizen.

International moves were standard activities for Boyd. She was born in Lithuania, where her father was first posted in the Foreign Service. Then there were her early years in Armenia. Once the State Department assigned her father to Afghanistan, she, along with her mother and sister, moved to her grandparents in Moldova. From there, the family went to Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Turkey, and Ukraine, spending several months in Northern Virginia between locations.

“My grandma on my dad’s side always told my sister and me how strong we were when we were going through all these places,” Boyd said. “She didn’t know how we did it, but it’s just what we’ve always done. When the war happened, that was the first time that I saw the resilience that it all took. It just felt normal.”

Despite moving every couple of years, in 2022, even in Ukraine, Boyd’s life resembled that of many other teenagers. She went to classes, enjoyed time with friends, and read novels. Previously, she had navigated high school in Ukraine online during the COVID-19 pandemic until in-person classes resumed. There she gained a tight-knit group of friends and felt connected to those around her.

“That was probably the saddest part, having such a great group of friends after a year of being fully online and knowing nobody, and then having to go [leave Ukraine] at the drop of a hat,” she said.

After abruptly relocating to Virginia, Boyd worked to keep her Ukrainian connections with her friends and her school. Her classes resumed online, but with one crucial difference. Because many of her peers remained in Europe with a seven-hour time difference, she slept during the day and attended class at night to finish the year.

“We were all going through it together even though we were all in different places,” she said. “We would log into Zoom and see each other’s tired faces in the middle of the night, or at least for those of us that were in the U.S. Most were in Europe somewhere. That was probably the way I coped, constantly talking to those people, trying to keep that friend group alive, trying to be a group of teenage friends in high school.”

For Boyd, this meant honing her ability to adapt to new situations. Moving to different countries, schools, and cultures felt natural, and adapting was automatic, but leaving Ukraine differed from her earlier moves. It was abrupt, unfinished, and driven by danger. Yet, she still had to finish high school.

School in Oakton, Virginia, differed from the one she attended in Ukraine with a class size of 80. In her new American high school, there were 700 students. The sheer size of the school was daunting, but she adapted, making new friends along the way.

After graduating, Boyd became a Hokie and began her first year at Virginia Tech.

“I don’t know how well I would have done at Virginia Tech if I hadn’t come back to the U.S. before that, because going from a bigger environment in high school to a massive environment here, it was like a stepping stone,” she said. “Whereas I think if I had come straight from the 80 students to here, it would have been a lot harder for me.”

Also making the transition to college life easier was her lifelong love for reading and storytelling, which drew her to the Department of English. For one of her majors, she chose professional and technical writing because the skills she will acquire offer employment flexibility.

“It felt right,” she said. “I like the career opportunities that it leads to. I knew it also was versatile, so if I wanted to pivot, I could.”

Boyd said that psychology interests her because of the constant change she experienced in so many settings and how place affects how people think.

“Part of it was because of what I went through — moving so much, the difficult things, being in a new country,” Boyd said. “I liked the idea of becoming a therapist or doing some kind of mental health-related work, because I just love learning about it.”

Although she is still figuring out what she wants to do after graduation, she has gained a lot of global insight in a short period. She hopes her story will resonate with others. Because she lived through a global crisis firsthand and returned to a country where many others have not experienced world conflicts, Boyd said she understands how distance can make these events seem very far removed. The depth of concern and emotion may be hard for others to comprehend. Boyd believes people should share their perspectives of what it is like to live through such turmoil. Such conflicts may seem like distant headlines, but these are real, lived experiences.

“People who are living within conflicts have very personal opinions about what is happening or has happened,” she said, noting how frustrating it can be to hear these ideas dismissed. “I think just approaching people with open-mindedness, and trying to understand their perspective is very valuable.”

Boyd is settled in Blacksburg, having found a community with similar interests in English and psychology. Through her two jobs on campus, Boyd divides her time between her two possible career paths. As a Writing Center coach, she helps other students with writing assignments or projects. To satisfy her psychology interest, she is a Peer Assistant for Learning (PALS) and serves as a digital task force coordinator the PALS program. Both roles involve outreach and helping other students understand the resources available to them through the center.

She is a member of the 2026 spring cohort of Words & Pictures, a field study in the Department of English. With this she is part of an undergraduate team of communicators, producing content that can be added to their professional resumes.

Through these outlets, she has made many new friends whose pasts are unlike her own. As many have grown up primarily in the United States, she finds value in their differences.

“All the people that I have known since being in the U.S. have been in one space forever, lived in the same house for 18 years before moving here,” she said. “I always think about the difference in our experiences, but I do like it. It is finally comfortable, and when you are somewhere for so long, it feels like a person can actually build something, such as meaningful relationships.”