Stephanie Patrick

Jerry Thull

PR 372W

1 December 2021

Backgrounder Assignment:

Final Draft

Stephanie Patrick was born in Tucson, Arizona in 2001 and lived in Tucson and the Vail

area throughout her childhood. She went to various schools throughout Tucson, but ended up in

the suburbs in the Vail school district after a move from the city. Patrick went to high school at

Cienega High School where she took challenging AP classes and participated in multiple clubs

and school activities. She graduated from high school in 2019 and moved to Flagstaff to attend

Northern Arizona University. She is pursuing a double major in Applied Indigneous Studies and

Strategic Communications with an emphasis in Public Relations. Patrick recently added a minor

in Political Science. She plans to graduate in spring of 2023 and continue her education in

Washington state with a Master of Public Administration in Tribal Governance.

Throughout her life, music has been important to Patrick. She took her first piano lesson

when she was six years old and has continued to experiment with music since. She participated

in children’s choir throughout grade school and in third grade, she decided piano and choir

wasn’t enough. Patrick took up the cello when she was eight and the next year, in fourth grade,

she decided to try and follow in her dad and grandfather’s footsteps and join band playing

percussion. She continued with all four until junior high when she decided to scale down to just

the cello and piano in the seventh grade. Patrick never envisioned music as a chore and enjoyed

it, finding value in every instrument she played.

 Writing and reading was another important part of Patrick’s life. With an English teacher

for a mother and a family of educators, it might seem inevitable that she would value reading and

writing. Her parents and family enriched her and read to her consistently. By two years old, she

was reciting books by memory, pretending to read and by three she was determined to learn her

letters. Patrick loved telling stories and writing her own short stories in grade school. Her love of

books continued throughout adolescence and she collected books, read well above grade level,

and loved to write her own stories for her family and friends.

Patrick’s enthusiasm for music comes from her family. Her dad plays drums and had his

own band that played all around Tucson when she was younger. Her grandfather on her dad’s

side had two bands--the Tom Patrick Band and the Big Band Express--that played throughout

Pima County. In fact, her grandpa continued to play the drums with his bands until he was

eighty-one years old. Patrick’s mom was in the choir at church and played piano, her other

grandfather played the flute, and both of her grandmothers played piano and were in choir as

well. Patrick grew up surrounded by music and her love of music blossomed.

Patrick’s family was constantly impressed with her dedication to music. At only eight

years old, she played in a piano concert at Centennial Hall at the University of Arizona. In junior

high, where most of the students were in the orchestra to get out of a review session, Patrick was

in orchestra for the experience. When the teacher changed and many students complained that

the new teacher was “too hard” or “mean”, Patrick thrived with a teacher as dedicated to the art

as she wanted to be. She even put together her own Christmas concert in eighth grade with two

friends. She found the music, held practice times, set up the concert at her house, and even

invited the new music teacher everyone else didn’t like.

 By high school, her cello skills improved and she continued to play piano at the

University of Arizona every year. By the time she graduated high school, she had been a

participant at the UA concert for ten years and was one of the longest-participating performers.

Her freshman year of high school was the first year that the school orchestra went to

competitions and by her senior year, the orchestra scored the highest possible score at the state

competition. Patrick was dedicated to learning the cello and being the best she could be, even

though she never had a private lesson the way she did with piano. Senior year, she was Orchestra

Representative and second chair cello. Her dedication paid off when she received multiple

awards for both piano and cello when she graduated high school.

Patrick’s experience with reading and writing started very young. She began reading

before preschool and telling stories before kindergarten. Her mom tells a story about a time when

Patrick was three years old. She had a pretty little purple notebook with Anne Greddes babies

dressed like flowers on the cover and she got a pencil and wrote a “book” about planning a

garden with her mom. Of course, most of the book was all scribbles with a few strategically

placed letters, but she was proud of that book and she read that story to everyone she saw. As she

got older, she continued to read more books and write more stories. Her collection of books grew

each year.

In fourth grade, Patrick’s class was assigned to handwrite and illustrate a short story.

Patrick loved the assignment and her “short” story ended up being sixteen pages long. Her

classmates couldn’t understand why she liked to write, but that didn’t stop Patrick from

continuing to write. In fifth grade, her teacher allowed Patrick to stay in for recess to read and

Patrick never turned down that offer. That same year, the class had a book exchange for

Christmas and Patrick unwrapped a book called Dragon Slippers by Jessica Day George that
became her favorite book of all time. She continued her love for reading and writing in junior

high where she would write stories at lunch with a friend instead of going outside with her peers.

Patrick continued to read and write throughout high school and excelled on the papers she

had to write for her classes. She took Advanced Placement (AP) classes to challenge her writing

skills and stopped asking her mom to edit her papers so that she could learn to do it on her own.

In her AP English Language class, she never got below a B on her papers and by her senior year

of high school, she was getting As. Her greatest achievement in high school was her senior exit

project paper. As part of the project, she had to write a formal, academic 10-12 page paper on a

controversial topic in her AP English Literature class to graduate high school. Patrick not only

excelled at the paper, but she was the only one in her graduation class who got a one hundred

percent on the first submission. Today, Patrick continues to write and collect books.

Patrick is confident that these experiences will help her to succeed in PR 372W. Writing

and proficiency in music are skills that can only be learned through hard work, discipline, and

practice. She showed dedication and engagement in her music studies and never let practicing

become a chore. She showed that reading and writing were never just school subjects and could

be hobbies as well. Patrick’s achievements in both music and writing indicate that her hard work

and dedication paid off and will help her in her future endeavors. These attributes will help

Stephanie Patrick to succeed in the Public Relations Writing class.