Grace and Michael Buchmann had been high school sweethearts. By the time 1986 rolled around, they were the parents to four rambunctious boys. Both had only two and three siblings, respectively, so their family of six was already sizeable but not out of the norm for many in their neighborhood. Their fifth, and last child, Zara Grace, was born on a holiday of all things, July 4th of 1986, and their family was complete.
Being the baby of the family, and only girl would figure into all kinds of being spoiled, but the family tried to not let any kind of special treatment happen. With two parents who were often busy (Grace was a high school history teacher at nearby Newton High School, Michael a member of the city council for their neighborhood of Roslindale), Zara spent most of her childhood with her brothers Michael, Alan, Paul and Kevin. Growing up in a household of all boys, sans her mother, made Zara have a pretty strong stomach to what others might consider gross or awkward but it did cause problems too.
Since they were just so loud and pretty much well-known through most of the community because of her parents, it meant that growing up Zara tended to be on the shyer side, to be comfortable with a small group of friends but to miss out on some of the normal growing up things like multitudes of friendships and was nervous to have many romantic relationships since most of the guys she knew were friends with her family and she didn't want to deal with that complication. She finally grew a bit into her own by not following her brothers in high school and attending Boston Latin School, graduating in 2004.
Zara had always considered herself extremely driven and always focused, partially because of family pressure to succeed and mostly from herself. This quality means she has had more success in her professional/school life than ever thought possible, including attending Boston University in the fall of 2004. With such a large family and being the last one to go to college, it just made sense to stay close to home. She entered BU a bit unsure of what she wanted to do, eventually finding that teaching, much like her mother, was where her interests lay. Instead of high school though, her focus was elementary education and she would student teach in a number of schools around the Boston area before graduating in 2008. She would start out her career as being one of many substitutes on a long list, trying to continue on to get her master’s degree in education until finding a full-time position.
In 2011, she would move to teaching second grade full time in nearby Allston, Massachusetts. After doing that for two years, Zara found herself at a crossroads. While she had spent nearly her entire life in Boston and loved the city immensely, there was always a feeling of knowing everybody between her parents, siblings or herself and never being seen as a true adult. When a college friend called to say that she was going for teaching positions in New York City and needed a roommate, Zara took a chance and decided to join her. It took a bit of time to find a neighborhood they both liked, finally settling on Astoria in Queens. Zara was lucky to find a position teaching in a charter school in nearby Elmhurst. New York was nothing like Boston, but Zara thinks the move was entirely a positive one to stop being known as someone else’s sister, or the youngest Buchmann. Now, she is finally just herself.
