#metoo

Recently, I've been attempting to get back to my writing roots.  I have been journaling more and brainstorming ideas for short stories, plays, children's books, and an ergodic/multimedia/interactive novel that's been sitting in the back of my brain for ages.  I've been having trouble getting any of those projects off the ground.  However, a couple times in the last few weeks, I've mentioned an experience or a perspective and someone will say, "You should blog about that."  In fact, three separate people in different realms of my life have said something similar.  I thought I'd return to blogging by recounting a silly little poem I dashed off the other day as a sort of marker of my jumping down the rabbit hole of writing again.  Yet, I never got the motivation to type it up and post it.

The #metoo hashtag is different.  That lit a fire under me to actually get on here to say something.  And, be forewarned, I have a lot to say.

At first, I toyed with the idea of just letting the #metoo thing go by.  I thought I could scroll through my Facebook stream liking or loving and supporting other people's posts and stay on the periphery.  

Until I saw how many of my female friends and family members posted it.

Until I saw how many of my former students posted it.

Until I saw other people, like me, who also felt like their experiences "weren't that bad" or "weren't that important" thinking they shouldn't bother to post and did anyway.

Until I saw other people talk about how this needs to stop, no matter how "minor" the sexual harassment they experienced was.

Because it needs to stop.

I don't want this to be a part of my culture anymore.  I don't want my students to experience it anymore, no matter how "minor."  I don't want my son to grow up in a world where he has to stand up for his female friends and classmates and coworkers in the face of sexual harassment.  I don't want to contribute to perpetuating that a sexist culture is the norm simply by not speaking up.

So....#metoo.

Assault has never really been on the list, but harassment definitely has.  Cat-calling, obviously, because you can't escape that as a woman. Being a 6'1" target doesn't help things, which is ironic considering how frequently the phrase "shawty" has been used in the catcalls themselves.  (Although, apparently, it does prevent me from being a target for rape and assault because it would "make too much of a scene."  That's according to my high school self-defense instructor.)

There was the time when I was celebrating my birthday at an amusement park with friends - I think I was 13 - and the much older teenager in line behind me decided to grab my butt.

There was the time when my eleven-year-old friend and I were hanging out with some boys of roughly the same age at a water park and they thought pressing their crotches to our back ends would be a good idea.  For them, maybe.

There was the time I was sitting with my husband before we were married at a restaurant and the man a few tables over - also on a date - chose to make lewd gestures in my direction when his date and mine weren't looking.  Luckily, we were done eating and I asked to leave so as not to make a scene.  I told my husband (fiancee at the time), much later, which was good, because he probably would have started an argument.  

There was the time, when I was nineteen, that I was working as a hostess at a chain restaurant and was propositioned nearly every day by men all north of 40.  My favorite was the guy in his fifties who gave me his card and offered a free helicopter-flying lesson.  Thanks, but no thanks.

There was the time in college that my friends and I went to Mardi Gras and, as per the tourist culture there, I was repeatedly asked to flash men for beads.  Fed up, I yelled, "Hell, no" at one of them and got some beads from the woman on the balcony above him as a reward.

There was the time, a few weeks ago, when Billy and I ran into male seniors we've both taught near a local movie theater that they all went out of their way to say hello to "Dr. P." but neglected to acknowledge my presence.  Billy, not willing to let them leave our school without learning the importance of respecting the women in their lives, or women in general, schooled them on how inappropriate their reactions were.

None of these overt moments of harassment, though, compares to two situations I've experienced that involve the cultural tendency, in general, of treating women as being inferior to men.  Because it is the two moments that I'm about to describe to you that made me feel like a lesser person.  You see, in the previous examples I provided, I never felt powerless.  I never questioned my worth.  I moved on and didn't really give them a second thought.  These two shook me to my core.

One all comes down to a simple off-handed comment.  I was in grad school at the time, but working as an admin for a local publisher, who my husband has nicknamed "Professor Tiddly Winks," who owned a series of storefronts.  I worked most directly with the woman who ran the storefronts - a cafe, gallery, art lesson studio, and bookshop - but he would come in from time to time.  I figured I might be able to get a job learning editing from him on the side, but that never transpired.  My husband, however, did manage to grab a free-lancing job editing a book for the company.  I was turning in his edits one day and Tiddly Winks started up a conversation about my goals after grad school.  At the time, I thought I had wanted to continue on to the Ph.D. and we talked about what types of schools I would prefer to work at. 

"But, of course, if it's a spousal hire, you'll end up having to move where your husband decides to go, so it doesn't really matter."

Yep.  He said it.  To my face.  Like it was nothing.  I should note that, at this point, Billy had only finished his master's degree and had not yet started applying for Ph.D. programs.  But, according to this guy, we would have to go wherever Billy got us a job.  And I wouldn't matter.  And he was right.  Much of academia is structured that way.  It doesn't mean the rest of us have to continue to buy into that mindset anymore, though.

Oh, and, for the record, both Billy and I earned our current jobs on our own, but we came onto the school's radar because of my teaching experience, not Billy's Ph.D. (which he didn't have yet).  Take that, Professor Tiddly Winks.

I'm still getting over the other one that also occurred during grad school.  You see, my high school English teacher had an affair with a student several years after I had graduated.  This was a man who I not only idolized but who also had encouraged me to pursue my English degree because of all the support and effusive compliments - and challenges - he had provided to make me a better writer.  I was shocked, hurt, and appalled.  And I no longer trusted my instincts about people.  I had modeled much of my now successful teaching style on his!  Though I wrote a letter to the editor in support of the school during this awful time, I didn't know what I thought about the whole thing.  Was it all a lie?  Did he just compliment me because that's what he did with all his students?  The weird thing is that I even found out he had a "type."  I didn't fit the mold, so maybe his reassurances were genuine and not based on some perverted sexual attraction to me?  I kept trying to justify all of it somehow.  

I eventually ended up having his same job at my alma mater.  

That's when the dreams started.  For some reason, in them, he was still allowed to be at the school and his sole purpose there was to taunt me at how I would never be as good at his job as he was.  This statement was usually followed by his hearty laughter, at which point I would wake up.  Every time I was stressed or questioning my methods or abilities, he would pop into my nightmares again.  Slowly, with a few more years of experience and a few more successful graduates under my belt, he receded into the background until, during one stressful portion of the semester, he showed up again to haunt my dreams.

"You'll never be as good of a teacher as I was."

And I punched him right in the jaw.  I haven't had the dream since.  Something else helped.  As part of taking his former job, I had access to his files.  I read my college letter of recommendation from him.  It's good.  It's damn good.  And so am I.  And even with the fog of his relationship with a student, and possibly others, tainting everything, it doesn't change my abilities.  I keep that letter as a talisman to remind myself to be the person I always thought I had the capability of being.  

And that means I need to be a role-model for my students.  I need to make sure that this type of thing doesn't happen to them.  I need to talk about it and write about it and speak up about it so that we no longer normalize this sexist treatment, harassment, and, yes, assault on the women and men in our society who are having their power taken away from them by people who don't deserve to be in power.

So, yes, #metoo.

#OnceASEMGirlAlwaysASEMGirl

Hello Ladies.

First, Congratulations. And to my residential girls, “Gong shi, gong shi.”  I’m very proud of all that you have accomplished and I want to thank you for giving me the honor of representing the faculty in bidding you farewell and good luck as you move into your lives beyond SEM.

You all know I value honesty and straightforwardness so I’ll be honest here.  Secretly, since returning to SEM as a teacher eight years ago, I have wanted to be the faculty speaker at graduation.  I have always felt a small pang of jealousy mixed with admiration for the people who have had the opportunity to do so.  I think, on some level, being selected represented some kind of validation that I had managed to make a positive difference, no matter how small, in your lives. 

The problem is I’ve had trouble writing this speech.  I’ve written and rewritten it about a hundred times in my head.  I thought about previous speeches full of Dr. Priest’s inspiration, Ms. Miller’s kindness, and Mrs. Greene’s encouragement and wondered what I had to offer you. I didn’t really understand what was making this so difficult until yesterday at Class Day when I didn’t notice I started crying and then, I couldn’t stop.  It became clear to me that the reason I’ve been having so much difficulty figuring out what to say is that you’re not the only ones saying goodbye – this year, I am, too.  And, like you, I’m excited and ready for something new, but I’m also a little bit terrified (I mean, teaching boys?  That’s kind of terrifying).  But, luckily, I know that my time as a SEM girl has prepared me to venture into my new life with the skills to survive and to thrive.  And then I understood that I could send you off with a reminder: that you have an incredible community cheering you on and supporting you because, once you’re a SEM girl, you’re always a SEM girl.

I have essentially been a member of the SEM community since I was in 7^th grade.  Back then, there was an all-day workshop that SEM held to try to get middle school girls to see where the proverbial magic happens.  That year, the subject was English (the title was Semantics – I loved a great pun even then) so two of my Catholic school classmates and I decided to check it out.  I walked through those iconic wooden doors and knew there was something different about this place.  It didn’t hurt that we got to dress up as characters from a book and that the day began with a costume contest. Multiple literature-based activities later and a chance to see the nooks and crannies of the building, I was hooked. 

In traditional Admissions Office fashion, that landed me on the SEM mailing list and the rest is history.  After two years performing with the school’s former summer program Broadway at SEM, I, of course, had to shadow.  I was admitted and attended.  Which led to staying with my best friend and her family from sophomore to senior year when my father had to move for his job and I didn’t want to leave.  You see, SEM was my family when mine was far away.  And that connection has only become stronger.  I knew that graduation didn’t mean the end of my bond with Buffalo Seminary, particularly because of the lifelong friends I had made here.

Imagine my surprise, years later, when I heard about a job opening for English teacher only a couple of years after ending up back in Buffalo after multiple other adventures.   Three weeks before the school year started.  A job I swore up and down I would never do.  Oh, and, did I mention that I hadn’t really taught before in the full sense of the word?  Right.  That didn’t stop the inner SEM girl in me, though.  I promptly contacted my former teacher Robin Magavern and found out what I could do to rejoin the SEM community as a faculty member.  Apparently the hiring committee deemed me worthy – or else they were a little crazy, the jury’s still out on that – because here I am.  Thanks, guys. It’s had its ups and downs, but it truly has been a gift.

Why? It sounds a bit Dead Poets’ Society, but SEM really is a community that stretches across time and space.  You will have lifelong friendships not only with classmates, but also with teachers, and with the others you encounter through the school.  I never expected when I first walked in those doors in 7^th grade that one of my best friends from the class of ’99 – Caitlyn Lawton – would  be present in the delivery room to support me when my son, Noah, was born last year and then, for all intents and purposes, become his aunt.  Or that one of my first seniors– the Class of 2008’s very own Catherine Knauss – would come back to work at SEM and end up becoming one of my closest friends.  Or that the girl who I shadowed during eighth grade – you know her as Molly Greene – would join the faculty at SEM the same year I did and that we would both be teaching Freshmen at the time.  Or that my favorite history teacher from high school – SEM legend, Harry Schooley – would become a cherished colleague and then a dear friend.

So, since I have all of these amazing connections at hand, I thought I would do a little crowdsourcing to help me with this speech.  Because, let’s face it, those who do things at SEM, never have to do them alone.  For those of you who don’t know, the inaugural Media and Communications class did a little experiment this year.  We created and sent out a hash tag - #OnceASEMGirlAlwaysASEMGirl - to see how far and wide and under what circumstances it would travel.  With responses ranging from the local environs all the way to France and Norway, as well as from recent alums to graduates in their fifities and retired former faculty members, we discovered that SEM is still very much present in the everyday lives of those on whom it has had an impact.  I re-tweeted that hashtag recently and asked friends of SEM to tell me what they learned here that still helps them in their lives today.  Here’s what several of them said:

“I learned to be honest and [to] take responsibility for my actions.  And to lead!”

“That 21 years after Freshman Orientation, you will still be best friends with someone you met that day.”

“How to be independent enough to get the job done, but I am also not afraid to ask for help when it is needed.”

“Confidence, integrity, critical thinking.”

“I learned that being a strong, intelligent, independent woman is something to be proud of.  Also I learned how to perfectly flip a grilled cheese sandwich without a spatula.”  (We used to be able to go into the kitchen and make food.  I’m pretty sure the health department didn’t know that.  It’s a long story…)

“Never fear your own thoughts, ideas, and aspirations.  Being quiet will get you nowhere.”

“Do not be afraid of making mistakes.”

“Exuberance and laughter are essential.”

“Embrace your own inner weirdness and the importance of caring.”

“Growth and change are not one and the same.”

“Just because you don’t agree with someone, doesn’t mean you can’t be friends.”

Pretty good advice, right?  I agree.  But as I was writing this, I couldn’t shake the sense that something was missing.  I mean, I have my awesome experiences to share with you and I’ve compiled other sound advice to contribute to helping you embark on a new adventure with a support network, but it still felt, somehow…hollow.  And then I realized.  The best part about the last eight years has not only been having the opportunity to return to SEM and working with my unparalleled colleagues and being able to put myself out there, make mistakes, and try new things in the classroom, but it has also been you – my amazing, funny, thoughtful, energetic, intellectually curious, brave students.  The most important thing that I have learned at SEM is what you have taught me.  And those are lessons I’ll never be able to forget.

First, you taught me patience.  Patience with you, with myself, with technology…  Your class, especially.  You are big and bold and loud – let’s face it, this class has a lot of personality.  I keep trying to forget that one class your Freshman year that was so rowdy that I gave about 80% of you red slips, but you keep bringing it up.  But I wouldn’t change that.  You helped me to realize that patience is, indeed, a virtue.  And it has paid off.  Look at you: you are strong, independent, opinionated – still loud – young women who have already been doing incredible things and now you’re about to go out into the world and do even more.  We just had to be patient with you.

You taught me the importance of making people accountable.  I still don’t think your class entirely understands the concept of a deadline.  Just in case, for college, here’s the definition: the latest time or date by which something should be completed.  Synonyms include “time limit,” “finishing date,” target date,” and “cutoff point.”  From the historical: a line drawn around a prison beyond which prisoners were liable to be shot.  Hence, dead line.  Anyway, I realized when I had to be strict with you because you had to commit to something and I realized when I needed to back off so that you could learn the consequences of not following through.  To do that, I had to hold myself accountable to you, which isn’t always easy to do.

I learned that it’s okay to take risks (although that touching the Miss Angell Portrait thing was probably a bad idea since, apparently, the lore is true and it’s now raining on your graduation day…)  You have taken a lot of risks during your years at SEM.  Some of them have paid off – like confronting little injustices that you see happening in your everyday lives.  Some haven’t entirely – going to visit Washington, D.C. during the government shutdown comes to mind, although, judging by your slide show yesterday, you still had a lot of fun.  But you didn’t let the risk of failure scare you.  I’m taking a big risk by moving on from SEM, but, at the moment, it is a move I have to make for my family.  It would be a bigger risk for me if I didn’t try, though.  And you taught me that just because you’re afraid to do something doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it.  In fact, you always seem to do things in spite of the fear, so maybe I should take that lesson to heart as well. 

I discovered that it’s okay to have fun and to make fun of yourself.  Whether you’re lamenting how your class always seems to get the short end of the stick, particularly on class trips or you’re turning the study hall into a night club complete with glow sticks and bouncers, or if you’re like me, and you try to convince your co-workers to lip sync the final song in Pitch Perfect in the name school spirit, complete with, perhaps unwisely chosen split, fun is key.  You guys are always enjoying yourselves, even if part of that is reveling in a bit of complaining – I won’t miss your loud, whiny sessions in the gallery, to be honest – you manage to do it with a smile and a laugh and you always end up finding the humor in the situation, even if it’s at your own expense.  You will help me remember to keep things fun, somehow.

I could go on and on, but, because I’ve been speaking too long already, I’ll get to the last lesson you taught me.  I learned from you to always be genuine.  You, as a class, do not value beating around the bush.  You call people out on their insincerity.  You like straight talk and straightforwardness.  In the beginning, this meant a lot of missteps and, let’s face it, inappropriateness in your interactions.  Over time, though, you have refined your approach and are generally able to walk the fine line between bold and brazen.  You kept us on our toes.  But you also recognized when we were being reasonable and candid with you and when you were being unreasonable.  No matter what, you always stayed true to yourselves, without compromise.  When I was having trouble writing this, my husband kept reminding me to “be genuine” and true to who I am.  I knew that you would be able to tell if I was trying to be something I’m not and I will remember the importance of that thanks to the example you have set for us.

So, whenever things start to get difficult, remember the lessons that you have learned at SEM and the ones that you have taught each other.  I know I will rely on these experiences when life starts to seem a little too overwhelming.  In a way, we’re both graduating - I’m just on the 12-year plan and doing it for a second time.  On top of all of the academic and communication skills, we have taught each other patience and honesty and bravery and we will be able to use these lessons as foundations for our ever-changing lives.  And even though this is goodbye, it isn’t really.  We may be leaving, but we’ll always be connected because once you’re a SEM girl, you’re always a SEM girl.

Thank you.