Rising to the Challenge

Jamie Petty hurdles obstacle-laden path to degree

A baby copperhead once slithered into the building where Jamie Petty worked off campus. Since no one else would touch it, petite, 99-pound Petty picked up the snake by its head, put it in a bag and asked the security guard to take it out to the woods and let it go.

“I was, like, ‘This is nothing at all, and I ain’t scared of snakes, and I hope you don’t kill it,'” Petty said in a voice like honey.

That fearlessness may explain why Petty, a native of Walnut Grove, never gave up on her degree despite the several times when she could have quit.

Petty’s rocky path to earning her Bachelor of Arts in psychology at the University of Mississippi began nine years ago, the summer before she was to enter the university as a freshman and first-generation college student.

“My father passed away June 2011, and that was the only person I had in my life,” Petty said.

Petty arrived at UM but faced another obstacle: her college readiness. Though she had an academic scholarship, she had gone to a high school with few resources.

“I had never been in a science lab until I got to Ole Miss,” Petty said.

After struggling in her first semester in college, she received a letter stating she was on academic probation and learned she had to take the required EDHE 101: Academic Skills for College.

“I was actually really upset when I found out I had to take EDHE 101,” Petty said. “I don’t know if you’ve met kids who really don’t like authority. That’s what I became when my daddy died.

“I didn’t want anyone making me do something, so I was really angry when I started in the class.”

Luckily, the professor, Rebekah Reysen, was patient with her.

“She never really talked to the mad, angry person in me,” Petty said. “She always talked to me like who she knew I was, basically.”

After Petty completed the class, Reysen, UM assistant director of academic support programs and adjunct assistant professor in the Center for Student Success and First-Year Experience, asked her to speak to students who faced struggles similar to her own and then offered her a work-study job as a peer mentor and tutor for EDHE 101.

“It was enlightening to be a peer mentor,” Petty said. “I was able to encourage many students to keep going and to believe in themselves. Crazy thing is many of my good friends now are people that I once mentored, and a few have (spoken) about how much I helped them, and I never even knew I had such an influence on them.

“I had one person who was much like me, and she wouldn’t go to class because she didn’t have anyone to sit with or walk with, and she felt very alone. So we got permission from her teachers for me to sit in class with her, and the classes that I could not, due to capacity, I’d walk her to class and then meet back up with her.”

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After completing the requisite classes, Petty participated at Commencement in 2016. While she was eligible to graduate, she didn’t receive her degree because she still needed to take two more classes that summer. She enrolled in classes, but dropped them after the drop date.

“I was thinking, ‘Do I take these classes or do I work and take care of my kid?’ – which, I had a little girl at the time (Adalyn, who was born in 2014) – and so I was kind of like, ‘I’m done with school,'” Petty said. “I kind of panicked and started working full time as a housekeeper. I didn’t take the classes and ended up owing Ole Miss a lot of money. I tried to pay it off a little bit at a time.”

In February 2017, she was hired as a desk clerk at Baptist Memorial Hospital-North Mississippi in Oxford, then trained to be an emergency medical technician. Her plan was to become a paramedic, enter a nursing program and become a flight nurse.

However, when she applied to a paramedic program at Northwest Mississippi Community College, UM wouldn’t release her transcript because she still owed money.

“I felt like I was a hamster in one of those little circle thingies,” she said.

Then a chance meeting enabled Petty to finish her degree at Ole Miss.

In February 2019, Petty and her boyfriend went to a couples’ date night, and Ed and Becky Meek asked if they could join them at the table. A few months later, Petty emailed Ed Meek, a former UM director of public relations, and asked if he knew anyone in the bursar’s office who could lift her hold so she could finish her last two classes.

Soon after, Becky Meek texted her to say a check has been sent to Ole Miss to get her started.

“I almost threw up,” Petty said. “The last week in July, I called the bursar’s office and said, ‘Hey this is Jamie. I’m just calling to check on my balance.’ She was like, ‘Hold on for a second.’ She got back on the phone (and said), ‘Your balance is zero.’

“It was 4:44, and I’m like, ‘I’m on my way.’ I got to the bursar’s office right when they were closing, and I said, ‘I need a printout of that’ because I could not believe it. It was a check for $3,200, balance paid in full. I was like, you have to be kidding me. I could not even contain what I was feeling at that moment.”

Because of updated catalog requirements, Petty had to take three classes rather than two. She took a 6-hour Spanish class last fall and an online sociology class this spring. Something had clicked in Petty since 2016, something she had never truly achieved during her previous years at Ole Miss.

“I created a plan; I became disciplined,” she said. “I knew what I was capable of, and I gave it everything I had.”

Last fall, not only did Petty earn a B in the Spanish class, but she said her life suddenly felt effortless despite a tiring schedule of going to class, studying, taking care of her two children – Adalyn, 5, and Ace, 2 – working until 8 some nights at the hospital, working part time as an EMT and working part time at an adolescent recovery center on weekends.

Now that she will finally have her degree after nine years, she is thinking about applying to a clinical therapy master’s program and said she feels rejuvenated.

“Jamie is a primary example of someone who has gracefully risen to every one of life’s obstacles, all the while showing incredible strength and resilience in overcoming these challenges,” Reysen said. “And when life places these hurdles in one’s path during college – a crucial stage of development that can be overwhelming in and of itself – Jamie has done an excellent job of making strides not only in her academic work but also in her personal life.”

Petty said she plans to help others the way people have helped her.

“There have been so many people who have helped me on my journey to where I am; it’s like I’m going to be that person for somebody too. Like what Mr. Meek did for me, I’m going to do that for someone one day.”

By Benita Whitehorn/University Marketing & Communications