Viva Zapata

Working more than 40 hours a week and going to college would be a tall order for many people, but this year’s BALA valedictorian, Marilyn Zapata, thrived on this regimen. Her secret? “I’m very determined,” she observed. “And I think nothing of getting only three hours of sleep.”

The diploma Zapata received represented the fulfillment of a long-deferred dream. She first matriculated at QC in 1971 over the objections of her mother, a widow who expected the older of her two daughters to quit school and work. “She would throw my books out,” Zapata recalled. Within a year, the frustrated teenager—by that point married and a mother herself—left college to care for her infant son. At 21, she was divorced and living on welfare. “My ex-husband refused to pay child support,” she said.

In 1978, when her son entered kindergarten, Zapata got a job as a clerk for a television repair company. Subsequently, she became a sales representative for Verizon. Promoted in 1988 to technician, she was in her new position for all of 20 days when she had a serious setback: She was hit by a car and suffered injuries that left her bedridden.

A year later Zapata was back at Verizon, assigned to a clerical spot until she was fully healed. Watching her son continue his education—he had won a scholarship to Pace University—she resolved to finish her own, and took some classes at QC.

Ironically, none of that coursework counted in 1998, when, to meet new professional standards established by her employer, she began pursuing an associate’s applied science degree in telecommunications at Queensborough Community College.

“I thought I was as dumb as a box of rocks when it came to science,” Zapata recalled. “I spent vacations getting tutored in physics.” Her efforts paid off: She made the dean’s list, collected several awards, and graduated in 2002 as the valedictorian of her class. Her confidence boosted, she returned to QC, where she minored in the BALA program and majored in psychology, “to better understand myself and other people.” She also discovered, by working with Susan Croll-Kalish (Psychology), that she loved research. “I could work 12 to 14 hours a day in that environment,” she noted.

Zapata hopes to continue her studies in either neuropsychology or general psychology. “It’s a privilege to be able to go to school,” she said. Her goal is to teach at the college level and do research. But for the immediate future, she’ll still be juggling work and classes: With a year or two to go before she qualifies for a pension from Verizon, she doesn’t want to quit her day job.