Emily Glanton just graduated from Windsor High School and is headed for UCLA to study genetic biology. Press Democrat photo by Jeff Kan Lee

By MARY CALLAHAN
THE PRESS DEMOCRAT

During most of high school, there were three weeks each year when Emily Glanton had to find time for varsity cheerleading and varsity swim team without compromising her Advanced Placement studies, her part-time job or her sleep.
Glanton, 18, said she was able to juggle so many balls because of an intense ability to focus and high expectations for herself. She said she thrives on a busy life.
“I’m definitely a Type A personality,” said the Windsor High graduate who is headed for UCLA in the fall. “I’m definitely, definitely a perfectionist, so that kind of helps me do everything.”
After four years of swimming outdoors in the harshest part of winter, Glanton said these days she saves the pool for suitably hot, sunny days.
But she’s not going soft, and as she waits for college to start this fall, she’s champing at the bit to push herself intellectually and absorb the brilliance of her professors and fellow students.
She’s also ready to trade in her comfort zone of Windsor for life in the bustling metropolis of Los Angeles and the city within a city that is UCLA.
“Forty-thousand diverse people . . . will be surrounding me all day. I think that’s really exciting,” she said.
Glanton has declared a double major in Spanish and Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology, thinking she’d like both to be a Spanish teacher and a genetic researcher — someone who doesn’t actually have to handle mammalian tissue but works more at the test-tube level.
She thinks it would be ideal to conduct her own research and write about it in scientific publications and magazines.
But it’s hard to imagine Glanton finding it easy to narrow down her choice. Her interests are so diverse that, asked her favorite class in high school, her answer is, “Everything.”
She can’t wait to explore “fun classes” outside her majors at UCLA.
In addition to three years on the varsity cheerleading squad, four on the varsity swim team, an Advanced Placement core curriculum and her job at The Honor Manor resort in Healdsburg, she served as copy editor for the Windsor High yearbook and spent two weeks volunteering at an orphanage in Lima, Peru, last year and traveled to Costa Rica in June.
She also found time to volunteer through Key Club with Russian River clean-ups, for instance, helping out at an assisted living home of the elderly, and raising money to supply soap and basic necessities for the Peruvian orphanage.
She loves classical music, theoretical psychology, writing and reading, being a homebody and traveling abroad.
“I really like to keep myself busy and feel really challenged,” she said.

You can reach Staff Writer Mary Callahan at 521-5249 or mary.callahan@pressdemocrat.com.

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