Wearing tan Dickies, sandals and a blue and green button-down shirt that looks like graph paper, Emily Davis’ brown eyes lit up when she said, “I’m homegrown.”
Davis, 16, attends Liberty High School, where she is the focus editor for her school newspaper. She hopes to be the paper’s editor in chief in the fall, which will be her senior year.
In her spare time, she enjoys music, movies and friends, along with the comic strip “Get Fuzzy.”
“I enjoy normal teenage stuff,” she said. “I really like to write in my spare time.”
She also has some unique talents.
Davis has a brown bar going over her foot from wearing sandals. She has what she calls an “Okie” tan.
“I’ve got this nice brown bar going across, surrounded by white skin,” she said. “I can also pop my wrist (continuously).”
Davis said that her family is close and that they play card games a lot. “I whooped my family last night at May I (a card game),” she said.
Her father, R. Scott Davis, 50, works as a dentist for Clinica Sierra Vista. Her mother, Elaine, 48, works as a lab technician, testing body fluid samples.
She also has two sisters: Kim, 21, and Kari, 20. Kim just graduated from Cal State Bakersfield with a biology major. Kari works as an office manager for a trucking company.
She says she might follow in Kim’s footsteps and major in biology when she attends college. “I want to make money to go jet-skiing,” she said.
Davis hasn’t decided on a profession, but is considering computer graphics design for a magazine.
She said she wants to do something that’s more creative with writing on the side.
While school was out on summer break, Davis decided to attend the three-week journalism workshop at Bakersfield College.
“I wanted to improve my journalism skills. I wanted to improve my writing skills,” she said. “I wanted to shoot more art.”
One of her happiest moments was when the bell rang on the last day of school recently.
“I wasn’t really proud, I was just relieved when I made it through junior year,” she said.
Davis’ life hasn’t always been full of good times though.
Her uncle was in the World Trade Center when the nation was horror-stricken by the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.
“I had no idea if he was all right or if he was even alive,” she said. “Luckily he was.”