To get the most out of college, “you have to grab hold and run with it”

Toward the end of the first semester of her sophomore year at Wooster, some of Lindsay Zella’s friends were excitedly making plans to study abroad in the spring.

“Most of them were going to London or Australia,” she recalls. “When they asked me, I told them I was going to Parris.”

Parris with two r’s. As in the Marine Corps Recruit Depot in Parris Island, SC.

Zella had joined the Marine Reserve that summer, in part because, “in college you’re supposed to experiment,” she says dryly.

She headed for boot camp in February 2001, taking a leave of absence from the college. She returned to Wooster in August and remembers watching President Bush address the nation a few weeks later, in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

“After that, I knew something would be coming, but I didn’t know when. I started taking my cell phone to soccer practice.”

The history major plunged back into her academic work, signed up to take classes at Ohio State the following summer, and put herself on track to complete her B.A. in three years. Her senior Independent Study topic, appropriately, dealt with the changing role of women in the military.

When the call finally came on March 3, 2003 Zella was ready. By the end of the month, she was with her unit in Iraq. Her parents came to commencement two months later and collected her diploma for her, crossing the stage to thunderous applause from her classmates and their families.

Zella spent three months in Iraq, then returned for a second tour of duty from February to October 2004, driving Humvees and five-ton trucks in convoys through the western part of the Sunni Triangle.

Today Zella is a police officer in Lake County, Ohio. She has completed her four-year reserve commitment, but remains on inactive ready reserve status until 2009. Down the road, she may explore opportunities in federal law enforcement.

“Wooster gave me a great education,” she says. “The college does a good job of preparing you for the next step, but it’s all what you make of it. You have to grab hold and run with it like I did. Between my experience at Wooster and in the Marine Corps, I feel like I’m set up to be successful.”