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Victoria Farr started volunteering at Weston Town Hall three years ago, right after she graduated from Weston High School in 2007.
"It's a really nice small-town feel," she said of Town Hall. "I know everybody at this point. I'm really comfortable. I kind of do the same thing every single year. ... When I come home for December it's the budget books, and in June and July we change over binders for the new fiscal year."
When her winter break is over, Farr, 21, will head back to the West Coast where she is pursuing a master's degree in urban planning at the University of Southern California. She earned her bachelor's in English from Boston University after only three years. "I had a bunch of AP credits from high school, so I came in as a sophomore," she said.
Her brother, Alexander, also interned at Town Hall and introduced her to the prospect. "A long time ago, my dad was chair of [planning and zoning], so he was always really into zoning stuff. When I started working with Tracy [Kulikowski, Weston's land use director], I got really interested in urban planning."
Her interest in planning grew when she studied old maps and plans, and read from the minutes of P&Z meetings.
"I'm really interested in transportation," she said. "Out in California, there's a whole lot more going on in terms of high-speed rail, which is not really applicable in Weston."
As a native New Englander, Farr has an affinity for the seasons, an aesthetic that California does not provide, she said. But career opportunities are there, especially in her field of interest.
Farr is also a writer, and she hopes to fuse her passion for the written word with urban planning. She has a head start with her school's blog, The Trojan Planner, where she writes about topics such as living in Los Angeles without a car and her tumultuous relationship with the Metro 37 bus line.
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