This is the fifth of 20 profiles of The Gazette’s Best and Brightest Class of 2018.

Carolanne Walls was drowning in junior year expectations to get excellent grades, ace the standardized tests, win scholarships, find a college.

Her high school days also were crammed with extracurricular activities like cheerleading, yearbook and swim team management.

“I thought I had to achieve impossible goals, be perfect in everything,” the Pine Creek High School senior says.

“I became overwhelmed, and started to doubt my ability to help others and to perform simple tasks that I could usually do without hesitation.”

Still, she thought she had control of her busy schedule and emotions.

It all came crumbling down after winter break.

“One of my friends took his own life,” she says. He sat with us at lunch every day, and was in my history class. It was hard for me to understand that he was not coming back. I would never hear his jokes or see his face again.”

She broke down and her school counselor helped her find her way through her grief and exhaustion and find a more realistic perspective on her life.

“I mourned him, and finally it helped me to look outward. I started to volunteer to help others in a more intentional way, not just to put in the hours, but to find joy in what I could do for others rather than what would benefit me.”

She joined Source of Strength, a suicide prevention program which strives to help students not feel hopeless. In the Friends of Rachel Club she helped spread kindness through schoolwide events.

She has played piano since she was six, so she volunteered to help tutor in singing and choreography for Mountain View Elementary School’s plays, including “Alice in Wonderland.”

“The confidence kids get is irreplaceable I want to teach them to interact when they are off stage, too,” Walls says.

She plans to study communications and secondary education in the honors program at the University of Wyoming. She loves teaching and would like to help people interact and solve problems.

“I’m learning that life is fragile, we are strong but will never be perfect,” she said, then laughed and added, “though perfection still haunts me at finals time.”

But, she is learning to cherish the moment. The other day as she waited to help grade-schoolers with a play rehearsal, she sat quietly gazing up at Pikes Peak. “People pay for that view and we get to see how beautiful it is any time.”