Ariel Amber Schmidtke, daughter of Michelle Schmidtke of Clinton, is a senior English major at Western Washington University. She was named to the president’s list for the fall quarter of 2009.

But beyond her scholarly achievement, Schmidtke is flying high in other realms around the Bellingham campus.

Schmidtke counts herself as one proud member of the Bellingham Circus Guild, for which she juggles and performs balancing acts and aerial dancing when she is not busy writing stories for her creative- writing classes or working her café job.

She has been involved in circus for two years, one of which she’s been part of the guild.

She’s currently rehearsing a tissue act which involves shimmying up a swath of silk fabric hung from the top of the center ring and performing a series of aerial tricks. The performer wraps the fabric around her body and rolls out of it this way and that with graceful abandon.