Doing what makes her happy earns Megan Spencer valedictorian spot

Megan Spencer, 18, insists that she's no smarter than the average person.

If you want to see real smarts, she says, you should talk to her friends.

"It's never been easy for me at all," she said. "My friends are geniuses."

For Spencer, it's all about what makes her happy.

What makes her happy, though, has reserved her a seat at the top of her class.

In elementary school, Spencer, then a self-described average student, says she watched as her best friend got straight Os. "O" for "outstanding" is the equivalent of an "A" in higher grades.

She adopted and followed her mantra — "Only do what makes you happy" — and never looked back.

"You only feel good if you do your best," Spencer said. "If I didn't like what I was doing, I just stopped."

For instance, though she said she was obsessed with running and cross country her freshman year, she quit because it didn't make her happy.

She says quitting helped allow her to take classes that her friends who participated in sports couldn't take. That's one of the major reasons why she became valedictorian.

Until her senior year, Spencer never stayed up past 9 p.m. Why? You guessed it.

"Staying up late didn't make me happy," she said.

Spencer said her parents never pushed her to work any harder than she wanted to. She said she's just hard-wired that way.

Spencer will start next year at Brigham Young University, where she'll study either environmental science or nutrition.

She doesn't know whether she wants to go into environmental education or become a private nutritionist. She'll always have a green streak running through her, but she has some reservations about making it a career.

"I don't know if I want to be a tree hugger," she said.

Spencer's young face lights up when she talks about nutrition, particularly milk.

She said American cows are pumped with bovine growth hormone and that studies show that it may cause everything from excess mucus to breast cancer.

As a nutritionist, Spencer hopes to clear up commonly held diet misconceptions.

More than likely, she said, she'll take what she learns about nutrition and spread it in developing Spanish-speaking countries.

That, too, she said, will make her happy.

"I really care about what I'm doing," she said. "I know exactly where I'm going."

Contact reporter Amanda Dyer at amandad@lodinews.com.