WARWICK –– There’s no doubt that Shannon Hyle, this year’s valedictorian at Warwick Veterans Memorial High School, has book smarts.

She started high school in first place, having been the highest-ranked student in her class at Gorton Junior High School. And she ended in first place.

In the fall, she will be at Providence College as she starts a five-year engineering program that is run in concert with Columbia University.

She kept her grades up while tackling advanced math and science classes and found the time to be class president and captain of the swim team in her senior year. She also volunteered at local senior citizen centers and nursing homes and helped organize a student group to raise awareness of the genocide in Sudan’s Darfur region.

If it all sounds too good to be true, you should know that friends and family love to tease Hyle that, for all her intelligence, she sometimes gets tripped up by a little thing called common sense.

When Timothy Kane, an assistant principal at Vets, introduced Shannon on graduation night he did so by telling the story of how he had run into her just a few evenings before at a local drug store. He said he heard a loud crash in one of the aisles as dozens of cans of soda came tumbling down. The next thing Kane saw, he said, was Shannon and her friend running toward the exit, giggling and completely flummoxed as to how to handle the incident.

“That’s our best and brightest here at Warwick Vets,” he said with a smile.

Shannon still laughs at Kane’s introduction and says that Kane was pretty much on target. She describes herself as quiet except when around friends. She plans to spend the summer “going to the beach” and “resting” her brain before starting engineering studies.

Her mother, Dolores, said her daughter is a “total type A” personality and the drugstore confusion over the fallen cans was what family and friends have come to call “a Shannon moment.”

“She’s book smart, but when it comes to common sense, sometimes she’s just like, ‘What do I do?’ ” Dolores Hyle said.

She remembers that not so long ago the family loved the fact that every time they drove by a parking garage near the airport that advertised with a banner that proclaimed, “Park for peanuts,” Shannon was convinced that it meant that every customer received a free bag of nuts.

“She took it literally,” her mom said.

“Still, she’s a girl who kept her nose to the grindstone all through school and we are very, very proud of her.”

bpoliche@projo.com