Why I'm Here

To Buck the System, My Friends.

As an instructor in creative writing at an arts school, I work with artist/ instructors in vocal and instrumental music, drama, visual arts, and dance, in fostering students’ creative self-expression through the mediums that make us tick. We see them through four of their most creatively and socially formative years- from freshman through senior years of high school. On day one, they are told to call us by our first names. We see their struggles and breakthroughs, at their most magical and their most real.

So, when I was talking to a school administrator and off-handedly characterized a relationship with a student writer as being friends I was taken aback when she said, “We are not here to be their friends, Laura,” in that condescending tone adults sometimes take when they think they know best that drives me out of my mind. I nodded, because I was in a hurry to get to class, but what I thought was we are not here merely to be their friends. Friendship is one of the things that the school, by its nature and mission and other “leveling the hierarchy” conventions, like first name protocol, actively encourages. In addition to being friends, we are also instructors, mentors, advocates, fans, voices of reason, ports in storms.

I think over all the times I’ve been instructed against friendship. At my other school, which had a conventionally formal structure, I was told “don’t smile until Christmas.” As a mother, I was told by maybe a million people (but never once by my mother, who was my dearest friend) that I was a parent, not a friend.

Come to find out, that’s not how I roll. As I should have told that administrator last week, actually, I am here to be friends. In fact, I suspect it’s my raison d’etre, and not limited to school. Me being me, I am constant striving to connect, on common ground, and you, my friends, are no exception.