Date: 16th Jan 2020
Recently I found out some really troubling and upsetting news. Students on the CPP (Contemporary Performance Practice) courses (of which there are Drama Applied Theatre and Education (DATE, my course!), Performance Arts (PA) and Writing For Performance (Writers/WfP) created an Instagram account to take the piss out of the amazing tutors here at Central. Having been the butt of many jokes while at college, it makes me so sad that people seem unable or maybe unwilling, to realise these lecturers have feelings and are human just like the rest of us. Yes they may be older and have more experience than their students but being older doesn't mean you feel any less attacked when a joke is taken too far.
Now you may be wondering what this Meme filled Instagram account has anything to do with me. And in short, it doesn't. I never even knew it existed until an email was sent around the uni to our courses saying this account had been found and was having an impact on the lecturers. But reading the phrase "having an impact on your lecturers" bought me straight back to all the times at college where someones words or jokes, impacted on me. Merely knowing that these students, these immature, irresponsible students have hurt the people I deeply admire and adore, makes me want to tear my hair out and scream at the unfairness of it all. How can these students not see that their words have an impact, that words HURT? Words can make you cry, words can turn an amazing day into one of the worst days within a heartbeat. Words did that for me a year ago, one day I was simply me, the next my entire world was turned upside down from one short, simple sentence. Words can cause someone to become suicidal. Thoughtless words made me want to die and I swore from the day I stopped hurting myself, that I would never let anyone else feel the same way I did at the hands of something I said.
But I cannot stop people being hurt at the hands of other people. I cannot stop these students hurting the lecturers I want to be like when I leave here. I am a bystander in a situation I have experienced myself and I can't help. I can't be the person who takes away the hurt they are probably feeling. So how on earth do I deal with the fact I can't help? How do I deal with the fact I feel powerless? Make cupcakes? Send emails reassuring them they're amazing - preferably without sounding creepy! - and say I'm always here? I can literally do nothing because I am not one of them. I am not a lecturer, I am a student, I am the one supposed to go to my lecturers for support, not the other way around. I cannot make it better and help and I hate feeling useless more than words can say.
Words are a gift to me, I make a choice every single day to use them to make someone happy. To use my ability to speak to build people up, not tear them down. So maybe this in itself is enough, to know that I will never say an unkind word against someone - unless they are so beyond all kindness in my eyes, that there is no "good" word low enough to describe the horror within them, in which case, negative words are used. But I make an effort to be the person I needed at college, to stand up for someone, for myself. And I will stand up for the tutors to my year group, because without the tutors, there would be no course. There would be no Central, no lectures, no trips out to theatres to see shows, no shows put on. Nothing.
And I don't want to be left with nothing other than emptiness and numb, tear filled pain again, so I will fight and keep on fighting until people finally see just how powerful their words are. I will be the change I want to see in our society, I will be the better person and not stoop to levels low and cruel - hard as it might be with certain people from my ex college... I will be positive and use words to heal, build and create safety and love because that is all I can do when a situation arises that I cannot control. I can control my reaction towards it and lessen the impact other peoples senseless words have had on the lecturers I see every day. And maybe, just maybe, that will be enough to make them feel a little less hurt...
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