Art under siege: my high school struggle for creativity.

A Personal Piece By: Ofentse Tladi.

From grade 10 onwards, the subject Drama was discontinued at CBC Mount Edmund, and this quite literally crushed my soul.

Although I didn't aspire to be an actor, I knew that I was a young creative with a deep passion for compelling storytelling. While I also didn't have the courage to perform monologues and dialogues in front of a huge crowd, I was confident in my ability to distinguish a compelling story from a mediocre one.

I longed to write and not just to read. I longed to see my stories breathe and bleed through the school halls, onto the school grounds.

Why did it have to be an extracurricular? Why couldn't it be integrated with the curriculum? Why couldn't it be evaluated, critiqued, and reflected in a report card along with other subjects?

Why was it only when my maths mark dropped that they sought the school counsellor, while my silenced creativity just went unnoticed? What was it about the creativity that made them dismissive towards it?

Despite this reality, I still wrote stories. In classrooms and after school, I'd lose myself in my stories - so focused that the world around me faded away, conversations melting into a distant hum.

My desk would be buried under a mountain of papers, my handwriting sprawled across them, and my hand aching from the hours of relentless writing.

Friends and classmates often wondered what had gotten into me - why, instead of listening to music, scrolling through my phone, or focusing on schoolwork, I was engrossed in writing 20 paged narratives. That, to me, that was my idea of fun.

Looking back, I often wonder how different things could've been.

If I had been given the chance, the opportunity, perhaps my high school experience would have been much better.