School has always been easy for Sydney Folsom. But that never caused Lakeland High School’s 2011 valedictorian to stop challenging herself throughout her educational career.

During her four years at Lakeland, Folsom always pushed herself to do more in order to better prepare herself for higher education.

“I wanted to be able to challenge myself, because otherwise I would have gone to college without preparing myself,” she said.

Folsom said she never planned to be valedictorian, but making the grade went along with her main goal of getting into her dream school, the University of Florida.

That school’s incoming freshmen class had an average GPA of 4.2, so Folsom knew she had to make great grades.

“I had to be competitive if I wanted to go to that school,” she said.

In order to keep that competitive edge, Folsom worked tirelessly while at Lakeland, taking seven AP classes.

“I don’t know what people are talking about when they say senior year is the easiest,” she said. “This year probably was my toughest, but I made it that way. I wanted it to be my hardest.”

She also balanced her schoolwork with extracurricular activities, including volleyball and senior BETA club.

But all that hard work helped Folsom gain the educational résumé and 4.53 GPA that got her into Florida.

Folsom has always wanted to go to the University of Florida, because her grandfather and most of her uncles went to the school.

“I grew up in a big Gator household,” she said.

But aside from the family tradition, the school’s engineering program was also attractive to her.

Folsom decided she wanted to be an engineer when she attended a forum at NASA’s Langley Research Center two years ago and met various types of engineers.

“Every single person I met there was the kind of person I wanted to be when I grow up,” Folsom said.

When she gets to Florida, she plans to take an introductory engineering course to help her identify the field of engineering she will ultimately pursue.

Also, she is serving as a summer research assistant for Old Dominion University professor Nickos Chrisochioves, who is working to combine computer methods and medical models in order to improve surgery techniques.

“It’s really impressive technology,” she said. “My goal is to translate what they do so people my age can understand it.”

In addition to exploring her career options at college, Folsom said she is excited about being around likeminded people.

“It’s going to be interesting to be around people who are more interested in engineering,” she said.

Folsom said she is looking forward to being among other top-ranking students who are goal oriented.

And although she is eager to head to Florida, Folsom said she is more anxious about keeping up with schoolwork than she has ever been.

“I’m a lot more intimidated now about academic life as I go to college than I ever have been,” she said. “There’s going to be a lot of pushing to get to the top of the class now.”

But she is trying to not worry too much and just enjoy the transition from high school to college.

She said she hopes to be at the top of her class at Florida, but more so, she just wants to be successful at whatever she does.

“There are so many things you can be the best at when you get out of high school.”