BV’s Patzke will follow his dream

Rob Patzke

Story and photo by

LIZ ROBERTSON

Ini­tially con­sid­er­ing den­tistry as a call­ing, Buck­eye Val­ley senior Rob Patzke has decided to take a dif­fer­ent career path.

He first con­sid­ered chang­ing his career goal after shad­ow­ing a sur­geon, result­ing in an inter­est on oral surgery, which led Rob to go so far as to be awake dur­ing his own wis­dom tooth extraction.

But it was while he was in the midst of fill­ing out his appli­ca­tions to Ohio State Uni­ver­sity that a thick packet arrived from The Culi­nary Insti­tute of Amer­ica (CIA) — the dream col­lege his mother once told him to go for.

“I freaked out,” he said, as all thoughts of den­tistry and oral surgery went out the window.

He has since vis­ited the CIA, located along the Hud­son River in Hyde Park N.Y., twice.

“It’s real now. It’s noth­ing like I imag­ined,” he said. “I thought it would be less formal.”

The school is extremely for­mal — a pro­fes­sor can send you back to your room for not being in proper attire and shorts or cargo pants are not allowed on campus.

“It’s dif­fer­ent than most culi­nary schools,” Rob said, adding that accom­plished chefs Duff Gold­man and Cameron Mitchell attended the school. “So it’s amazing.”

Rob said his cook­ing aspi­ra­tions began when he was 2-years-old mak­ing cook­ies with his mom. She got a phone call, and he got impa­tient so he mixed up all the ingre­di­ents that were on the counter, rolled the dough into balls and placed them on the cookie sheet before she came back from the call.

“I was a sous chef at a young age,” he laughed.

While it can be a risky field, Rob thought that cook­ing would be a hobby. But once you attain junior sta­tus at the CIA, you already have three to four jobs set, he said. And alumni can always return for help with another place­ment if they lose their jobs.

You’ve heard of the fresh­man 13, he said. At the CIA, “it is the fresh­man 30,” refer­ring to the extra pounds fresh­man are said to gain their first year at school.

Rob thought a moment when asked what his sig­na­ture dish is.

“I do love cup­cakes,” he said, adding it was orig­i­nally fon­dant cakes. “I like tweak­ing recipes.”

He said he has been around Asian food a lot, and now would like to learn more about Euro­pean food — French, Ital­ian, “more iconic food,” he said. He has recently tried Julia Child’s Beef Bour­guignon, which requires each piece of beef to be dried individually.

“It is so time con­sum­ing,” he said.

In addi­tion to han­dling a full course load at Buck­eye Val­ley, Rob has been work­ing 20 to 30 hours a week at Molly Woo’s since Decem­ber doing a lot of prep work and some sauces to ful­fill the six-month intern­ship require­ment for the CIA.

He also had the lead in the school musi­cal “You’re a Good Man, Char­lie Brown.”

Rob has been involved with the drama depart­ment since the eighth grade.

“It’s bit­ter­sweet,” he said of his first lead just months before grad­u­at­ing. “It’s my first actual lead. I’ve had other major roles. It’s a nice way to end.”

Besides being in show choir, he is also active in stu­dent coun­cil, Teen Insti­tute and pres­i­dent of National Honor Society.

“Stu­dents like Rob are a big rea­son why I love teach­ing,” said Rachel Dye, BV social stud­ies teacher. “He’s opti­mistic, hard-working, friendly and has a won­der­ful sense of humor. He is a fan­tas­tic peo­ple per­son, which will serve him well going into the culi­nary indus­try. Over the two years that I’ve known Rob, he cre­ated a unique and humor­ous method of greet­ing me almost every­day which I truly look for­ward to. I have con­fi­dence that Rob will flour­ish in what­ever field he chooses to pur­sue after leav­ing Buck­eye Val­ley, but he will be missed dearly not only by me, but by the entire Buck­eye Val­ley community.”

Deana Hooper, Rob’s Eng­lish teacher, said “Rob is a con­sci­en­tious stu­dent. He is inquis­i­tive and com­mit­ted to suc­cess. Despite his busy extra-curricular sched­ule and course load, Rob always makes time to be help­ful to any­one in need. He is pas­sion­ate about his the­ater endeav­ors and excited about his future as a chef. He shares his tal­ents with enthusiasm.”

Rob has worked in the high school offices for sev­eral years as an aide.

“We love hav­ing him return every year because he is extremely com­fort­able with peo­ple. Rob is a very grounded young man, he has a sense of pur­pose and ser­vice for his life,” said Mar­jorie Har­rel, high school principal’s sec­re­tary. “In his posi­tion as NHS pres­i­dent, he leads with a pos­i­tive and car­ing energy which I admire in a young per­son. Dur­ing the play this past week­end, Rob had the lead as Char­lie Brown and was just fan­tas­tic. Rob is a born actor, singer, chef, moti­vated stu­dent and hum­ble indi­vid­ual … I truly enjoy talk­ing with him to see what his next project is, he is always in per­pet­ual motion.”

High school prin­ci­pal Susan Gooch said, “Sim­ply stated, Rob is a tremen­dous young man. He is con­sci­en­tious, com­pas­sion­ate, thought­ful, tal­ented, smart, and funny. As trite as it might sound, he is just a very nice per­son. That qual­ity alone — even if he didn’t have so many other admirable traits — will pay infi­nite div­i­dends for him in life. I think the world of Rob. He’s been a won­der­ful pres­ence at Buck­eye Valley.”

“Rob Patzke is an amaz­ing leader. He is dri­ven to accom­plish any­thing. Rob takes chal­lenges and over­comes them like a pro­fes­sional. It has truly been a plea­sure to have Rob as a stu­dent,” added Matt Miller, BV choir director.

“Rob has worked as on office worker for me three of his four years,” said DeeDee James, atten­dance sec­re­tary at the high school. He has always been will­ing to jump in and help wher­ever he can. He has been trust­wor­thy and a hard worker and able to bal­ance his very busy life. He has been a plea­sure to have in the office and a bless­ing to me. I’m so glad he chose to spend some time in the office each day and to have got­ten to know him bet­ter. He has shared his sig­na­ture, deli­cious cup­cakes with us, too! I know Rob will fol­low his dreams and become a fan­tas­tic chef some­day and I can say ‘I knew him when…’”

Rob is also very active in his Korean church in Mans­field, which includes being pres­i­dent of the youth group and per­for­mances in extrav­a­gant church the­atri­cal pro­duc­tions. He has been attend­ing the church since he was young as his adop­tive par­ents wanted him to have ties to his native country’s cul­ture, he said.

He began his rela­tion­ship with God while mem­o­riz­ing Scrip­ture in youth group. Now, he ties Scrip­ture to life sit­u­a­tions, strength­en­ing his faith.

Time man­age­ment is the key to Rob han­dling all his com­mit­ments. He has show choir con­certs still ahead this year, and the mock crash sim­u­la­tion, prom, aca­d­e­mic awards and graduation.

He offers the fol­low­ing advice to others.

“Live it up. It will be over before you know it,” he said. When you are in 8th grade, you think you have five years, he added, but it goes by a lot quicker than you think.

Rob is the son of Jef­fery and Eliz­a­beth Patzke of Ashley.

Posted by Liz Robertson on Mar 30 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.