Why is my bed in my living room?

This month, on top of beginning a Master’s in Cultural Sustainability and a new job in the Office of Community Living at Goucher, I also moved into an on campus apartment. While on a trip home this past weekend, I had a conversation with my father about how to set up my very first apartment. His advice: put my bedroom furniture in my living room. This made perfect sense to the both of us since my bed is most likely the nicest piece of furniture I will own during my time of residency here, and my living room is also the biggest room in my apartment. His exact wording was, "With this apartment, throw convention out the window." While this all made clear sense to the two of us, somehow every time I tell someone else what I have done I am at first met with a puzzled look. Luckily, this does not faze me, as it is a look I have now grown accustomed to. My job, education, and living arrangements for the next three years are all fairly puzzling at first glance. For instance, why would I study cultural sustainability as a means to develop a peer listening program for college students who have experienced sexual violence?


During my residency for the introductory course to the grad program, I realized very quickly that the project that seemed so straightforward to me only confused my classmates. From the perspective of a graduate student who would be dealing with more conventional interpretations of the word culture, such as indigenous languages or Native American communities, I was the oddball.



It is a privilege to be allowed the opportunity to interpret the terms “culture” and “peer listening” in such unconventional ways. I am here to broaden my approach...to put my bed in my living room. If I wanted to create a peer counseling program using the exact blueprint of other colleges before me, then I could do so through a graduate program relevant to those goals, i.e. counseling or student development. But I have enrolled in a graduate program built around community, culture, folklore, expression—terminology not often used by directors of peer counseling networks. I have been granted the gift of unconventionality, and this, when handled with care, can become one of the most precious gifts to have received.
 I would like to approach this project from the perspective of positive sociology.


That is why I have named this blog “Positive Voices.” One of the ways to help a rape survivor heal is to return to them a voice. Many times this means allowing the survivor to speak of his or her own trauma. This is thought of as a valuable and positive part of the healing process.

The other piece of this idea of positive voice is the belief that those listening to the stories are benefiting as much from what they are hearing as the vocalists are from what they are speaking. That in training students to hold others’ stories of trauma, we are not only helping to heal those in our community who have been traumatized but we are also enriching the lives of those giving the “assistance.” We talk about substance abuse issues, about eating disorders, about intimacy issues. What we do not talk about as much, as it relates to sexual assault and other student struggles, is culture, folklore, discovery, connection, and the opportunity to teach through story. With this graduate program, with this peer listening program, and with my apartment, I am ready and willing to throw convention out the window in exchange for invention.