RESERVE — It’s a good thing Jennifer Lopez-Avila is good in math.

Otherwise, the 15-year-old sophomore-to-be might need all of her fingers and maybe a toe or two just to keep track of how many schools she has attended in her young life.

The daughter of Mexican nationals with residency visas, the U.S.-born Jennifer has been to schools in California, Washington, California again, Arkansas, South Carolina and two different towns in Louisiana — so far.

Her dad, who is a welder, brought the family from South Carolina to LaPlace in January as he pursued work in the area.

That put Jennifer at East St. John High School right in the middle of a school year.

She said the faculty and students welcomed her.

“Everyone was really nice,” she said.

“It just takes a while to get to know people. Sometimes it takes me a while to open up.”

Despite the upheaval in her life, Jennifer managed not only to make it through her freshman year of high school, she excelled.

Jennifer scored a perfect 800 on the Algebra I end-of-course exam, surprising even herself.

“Sometimes it’s difficult,” Jennifer said.

“Sometimes I’m a pretty slow learner, but once I get it, I get it. Math, I don’t know why I like it. It’s just fun to do sometimes. The teachers asked me what I had learned last and then helped me learn what I hadn’t learned yet, then I started on the stuff they’ve been learning.”

Not all schools are like that, she said.

“Some are better than others,” she said. “East St. John is pretty good.”

Jennifer says it isn’t easy being constantly on the move with her family.

Each move requires a purge of non-essential belongings.

“We always have to throw a bunch of stuff away,” she said. “I have a blanket and a pillow I’ve had since I was real little. I keep those. They come with me.”

Every new school offers its own challenges, as well, but she usually finds teachers who are quick to help her catch up with what she may have missed.

“It is hard getting used to the schools, especially when we move in the middle of the year,” she said. “You sometimes skip stuff from the last school to the new school.”

She also misses out on some teenage rites of passage. She can’t join many clubs or extracurricular activities because she doesn’t know how long she will be in one place.

“My dad works as a welder and, once the job finishes, he has to move,” she said.

That means it’s pretty likely she will not be an East St. John High graduate someday.

“There’s like a 100 percent chance that we will move again,” she said.

Wherever she ends up, though, Jennifer said she would continue to take her studies seriously.

She doesn’t know what career path she will follow, except that it won’t involve blood. She used to want to be a doctor until little brother, Javier, cut his thumb.

“I almost passed out from the blood,” she said. “I would like to do something to help people.”

In the meantime, she will help little Javier, who is 5 and is about to start his first year of school in LaPlace but likely will have his own list of schools attended one day.

“I would just tell him not to be afraid to ask for help,” she said. “That’s the big mistake.”