Sierra Staatz had big plans for her high school career. Early on, the ambitious teenager decided she was going to have it all, and now, in the final days of her senior year, Staatz considers that goal fulfilled.

“We learned about Renaissance men in a class my sophomore year, and I thought, ‘I want to be a Renaissance man — or woman,” Staatz recalls with a laugh.

And so that’s what she did. Out of all her accomplishments, Staatz, this year’s Academic All-Stars scholarship winner, says “it’s the fact that I was able to cover all my bases” that she’s most proud of.

“I had every single aspect of social life, academic life and athletic life accomplished,” says the Tonganoxie High School senior. “And I worked hard and did well in all of them.”

That’s the truth. Staatz boasts a resume filled to the brim with school activities, awards, scholarships, special designations and more than 150 community service hours. She’s a National Merit Commended Scholar, a Kansas State University Presidential Scholarship finalist and, along with her teammates at Tonganoxie High, a three-time state champion in Science Olympiad, among other academic honors.

Between Science Olympiad, cross country, power lifting, track, debate, forensics and Family, Career and Community Leaders of America contests, Staatz qualified for state competition seven times, ultimately pulling medals in six, during her junior year alone. And that’s not all.

“I memorized the first 130 digits of pi in seventh grade, and to this day I still have it memorized,” Staatz wrote in her All-Star application essay, rattling off some of her more “unique” accomplishments. “I hold the girls’ pull-up record at my school. I was Homecoming Queen.”

Still, despite all her medals and awards, “I find joy no matter the outcome,” Staatz attests.

She says it’s her positive attitude that’s helped her “stay present in each moment,” even at the end of a long, tiring day. Every night, regardless of the hour, Staatz makes sure to read at least one book chapter, just for fun.

It’s a ritual she hopes to continue next year at Kansas State University, where she plans to major in chemical engineering.

“That actually started about a year ago,” Staatz said of her daily reading routine, “I was doing so many activities and I was always saying, ‘Oh, I can’t read this book because I have so much else going on.’ So I finally just said, ‘You know what? … You need to make reading a priority, because you love it so much.'”

These days, Staatz says, she reads “more than anyone” in her family. Staatz parents are both engineers, and her older brother is studying computer engineering at K-State. Lest anyone think Staatz is simply following in her parents’ footsteps, she still sees her decision to major in chemical engineering as her own small act of rebellion.

“I refused to go into electrical or industrial engineering, because that’s what my parents did,” Staatz says.

Instead, she plans to use her chemical engineering major — and food science minor — as a springboard to someday working in food sustainability, either as a researcher or in the agricultural sector.

At the moment, Staatz says she’s especially excited about joining K-State’s Food Recovery Network, a national student movement that provides food to those in need by recovering excess food on campus that would otherwise go to waste.

But she’s also keenly aware of her chapter-a-day reading ritual, and the stack of teen novels she’s yet to read. Staatz says she’s trying to finish as many possible before she graduates and heads up to Manhattan. As of press time, her assignment was John Green’s “Looking for Alaska.”

“I came to this realization in January that I only have a semester left in high school,” Staatz says. “So, if I want to be relatable to all these teenage, high school books, I better get cracking.”