Her favorite subjects are math and science, and when she heads off to Connecticut College in the fall, Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School valedictorian Shaelah Huntington said she plans to study biochemistry with a premed concentration. As a student at the high school, she’s loaded up her schedule with advanced placement and honors courses. But at heart, Ms. Huntington said she’s really a bit of a beach bum.

“Any chance I get, I’m at the beach,” she said in an interview this week. “I work during the summer, but really, if I’m off, if I don’t have to work, I’m at the beach, no question.”

She likes to swim — in typical Island-kid style she learned to swim as a baby — and to bodysurf in the ocean. But mostly, she likes to lie in the sand, reading. And her literary choices are a little different from what you’d expect from such a driven and devoted student. She’d rather read Harry Potter than Wuthering Heights, and she’ll pick up the latest Dan Brown before she reaches for Dickens.

“I hate intellectual books!” joked Ms. Huntington. With all the time she spends focused on complex math equations and scientific theory, it’s no wonder she likes to escape to the light world of fantasy books.

But she admitted that she’d probably be more apt to enjoy the books she has to read in school if, of course, she had any choice in reading them. “I’ve always had a lot of trouble reading them, just because they’re assigned,” she said.

When it comes to other assignments, Ms. Huntington has much less difficulty. “Science and math are my stronger subjects, what I pretty much enjoy doing,” she said. It was her preference for those two subjects, and her own medical history, that pointed her toward a career in medicine.

At age 10, Ms. Huntington was diagnosed with Type I Diabetes, and she has been working hard to manage the disease ever since. The condition has brought her face to face with medical personnel, and she said a particularly close relationship with one of her nurses sparked an early interest in pediatric endocrinology.

“She [the nurse] has diabetes too. I have her pager, her cell phone, her home phone, her work phone. We’re pretty close, and she’s always there, anytime I need help. That was really what got me interested in dealing with kids and helping them get through what I went through,” said Ms. Huntington.

About a year after she was diagnosed, Ms. Huntington began spending two weeks each summer at a camp for diabetic children in Oxford called the Clara Barton Camp. She loved that the camp was designed to help young, diabetic girls think about things other than their illness for a couple weeks. “It’s just sort of like everything’s taken care of for you. So it’s just sort of a chance to escape the real world of dealing with it on your own,” she said. Following her goal to go from being just a patient to eventually helping others combat the disease, she stepped up to become a counselor in training as soon as she was old enough. She now acts as a full counselor for select weekend programs, and hopes to be able to continue to do so while at college next year.

When she’s not at camp, and not at the beach, you might find Ms. Huntington in the pit at one of the high school’s musical productions. “I’ve been playing the violin since first grade,” she said. “So I take private lessons outside of school, and I’m in the orchestra and the quartet . . . I’m really involved in the music department.” So involved, that she could not stand the thought of missing chorus, another one of her musical activities, when it turned out it wouldn’t fit into her schedule for her senior year. “I was in chorus freshman, sophomore, junior year,” she said. And this year, she stood by chorus teacher Abigail Southard to work as a teacher’s assistant. “It was fun, working with the younger kids.” she said. “[Ms.] Southard was amazing and I loved working with her. She’s new this year and she was great.”

Another teacher who made a lasting impression on Ms. Huntington was her calculus teacher, Craig Dripps. And they’ll both be able to say their final farewells to the regional high school at the same time, as Mr. Dripps is retiring this year. Ms. Huntington said he stood out because he always went above and beyond the call of duty as a teacher.

“He was my calculus teacher for two years, junior and senior year. And he was great. He was such a good teacher. He has all these little anecdotes and ways to remember formulas and stuff that no other teacher would ever teach you. And calculus is crazy hard. Having him for two years was awesome because he knows you, and he knows how you work. And he’s always available for you to go in for help,” said Ms. Huntington. If the class needed to prepare for a test, Mr. Dripps would make time in his schedule before or after school for extra practice. In the weeks leading up to the A.P. calculus exam, he brought in pizza for their three-hour Thursday night study sessions. “He was just super devoted to making sure we knew what we were doing,” she said.

Ms. Huntington is the daughter of Peter and Susan Huntington of West Tisbury. Her 13-year-old brother, Aidan, is a student at the Falmouth Academy. As a 13th generation Islander, she said it’s not always easy to keep a low profile on the Vineyard, and she’s regularly stopped by people who know her mother or father. But she loves the Island — of course there’s the beach — and she said it won’t be easy to leave in the fall. “I have friends that are definitely like, ‘Get me off this rock, I can’t wait to leave’ ” she said.

“But I’m going to miss it a lot.”