By Roslyn Ryan
Editor

A quick word of caution: if you’re feeling a bit overwhelmed by your own workload these days, it’s probably best that you don’t pause to consider a typical day in Dillon Harding’s recently-concluded high school career.

Harding, who’s 4.7 GPA earned him the distinction of being the 2011 PHS valedictorian, not only juggled a mind-boggling course load –including four AP classes his senior year–he was also the captain of the varsity track, golf and cross country teams. And he served as SCA president. And he worked as a lifeguard at the YMCA.

Exhausted yet? How about this: on the sidelines of one of the few sports he didn’t play (football), Harding still put in his time as the school mascot.

If it all sounds like too much for one human being to handle, Harding admits it wasn’t exactly easy.

Even his teachers warned him he was taking on too much, but the UVa.-bound Harding says he thrived on the pressure.
“Some of my teachers pulled me aside and said ‘You can’t do this’,” he remembers, “but I just said I was going to try.”

He smiles, all those hectic high school days now behind him.

“I guess it worked out.”