Reservoir High School senior girls basketball player Brianna Bradford is so busy with extracurricular activities, it isn’t surprising that when she sets goals for the year, she keeps them separate.

“I think I probably departmentalize more than most people,” she said. “One of my main school goals is, besides keeping my grades up, to build my art portfolio. IArt is something that has just blown me away. I never imagined I could be this good at it. I mean I took the first course because it’s required for graduation, but I just completely fell in love with it. It's been three years now and I’ll take the AP exam at the end of the year. You work on your exam all year. You have to have 24 pieces, 12 of which have to have a theme."

But there is a lot more. Bradford is a member of The National Honor Society, The National Spanish Honor Society, The National Society of High School Scholars, The Math, Engineering, Science Achievement (MESA) group, The 2009 Senior Class Board, The Howard County Youth Summit and Howard County Connections. She is also on the board of the American Heart Association and has an internship at the Fulton Animal Shelter, where she puts in five hours a week.

She crams all that in to her days that usually start at 5:45 a.m. and end at 11 p.m.

I’m guessing from the time school is out at 2:10 or so, until you go to bed, it’s go, go, go. And you’re 17, and it doesn’t feel like too much?

"There are a lot of times when one of the groups want me to do a special presentation and I say no. And if there is a test that I really have to study for, I say no to a meeting. School is No. 1 and that has never been a question for me. If there is any kind of conflict, between school and anything else, well, I’m not going.

"During the fall and spring, I do my internship at the Animal Shelter on Tuesdays and Thursdays after school. In the winter, I do it on Saturdays, because you have to give five hours a week and during the winter with basketball games and practice and homework, there just isn’t enough time.”

Is your mom an active volunteer? Or your dad? Where do you get all this volunteerism?

"Well, my mom was a diarist for Howard County Connections before and she asked me and my sister to come to one of the meetings and I guess it just stuck, because I’ve been there ever since eighth grade.”

Do you set goals for each of your activities?

“I do. In School I have a goal for every class. Overall to keep to no more than one B, and even then it should be a really high B. I should be struggling to get an A. In basketball, I’m just trying to run the team as best I can and get my number of assists up. They’re OK, but they could be better. When I drive and the defense collapses on me, I want to be able to control my thoughts and movements enough to kick the ball out.

“At my internship I’m working on an amazing project about preventing pet obesity. On the Class Board, we’re working on fund raising for the prom and decorations; In MESA, the goal is to come in first in regional competition with our model electric-powered cargo plane and go to states; The Youth Summit works to gather input from teens in Howard County about [things that concern them] and discuss what we can do to correct it by taking it to the County Council; and on the American Heart Association board I want to see if I can get a lot of volunteers from the National Honor Society to help with the Heart Ball this spring.”

Sandra McKee