How does a girl from a small town in New Hampshire with a population of 2,000 mostly white Christians end up in San Antonio, a city with more than a million people, 12 percent black and 14 percent Hispanic?
As someone who loves children and cannot wait to be pushed out of her comfort zone, Marilyn Petzy is a political communication major who will not be going on to a career in politics. Instead, she will be volunteering a year of her life to service.
Petzy, 22, is joining City Year, a national service program that takes people of different backgrounds and ages and combines them to make a team of elementary school mentors. Petzy will be working for after-school programs mentoring students and doing community projects.
“For those who don’t know me, it sounded a little shocking that I wasn’t taking the normal route that most (political communication) majors take, but I just love kids,” Petzy said. “They have the most interesting ideas, and I’ve always been fascinated by how they see the world.”
Petzy has had the typical political communication internships: working in a law firm, serving as a political communication research assistant, and even working at CNN and receiving a Larry King Scholarship, but her real interests are psychology and education. She attributes these interests to her parents. Her mother, a forensic psychologist, and her father, an assistant superintendent, influenced her decision to join City Year.
“I had this really strong parental support system growing up, and not everyone gets that. I want to be the support system for these kids who may not have someone to give them back-up at home,” Petzy said.
When Petzy was five-years old, she said looked her mother in the eye on Christmas and knew that Santa Claus was not real. If he was real, then why did the less fortunate not get as many presents as those children whose parents were well-off? This idea struck Petzy at a young age and has been reverberating ever since. It pushes her to volunteer, and even though she has never been to the Lone Star State, “where everyone could carry guns and be pro-Texas,” her desire to help children makes it all seem too simple to give up.
“The idea behind doing volunteer work and that people should help each other out has been with me since I was a little kid.”
After City Year, she said she has no concrete plans. Maybe one day she’ll go to South Africa and work in an orphanage, or maybe she will teach for a while. For now, she’s trading in her New England past for a taste of Tex-Mex.
