“I was alone in space, which was awesome, play some music. It’s also something I was not formally taught to do. I’m self taught, so I really find it satisfying to like come upon a problem and solve it.”
Evrey day about 65 students come through the SRC. They know the person who runs the show, but do they know the story behind the table they sit at? Ms. O’Flanagan is the mastermind behind SCH’s Student Resource Center, but helping students succeed isn’t her only passion.
In high school and college, Ms. O found a passion for building while working crew for a theater. About a decade ago that passion was brought back to life when she found a website for Ana White who is a woodworker in Alaska. “she had posted all of these really simple plans for how to build furniture,” explained Ms. O.
Ms. O continued talking about how she began her journey building furniture, “So I spent about a year kind of looking at the plans when I was bored, and I said to someone, I would love to build some furniture, but I don’t, you know, I don’t have the tools, and I’m not going to spend tons of money to buy like a table saw and a band saw and all of that kind of stuff.”
At the time Ms. O was still working on the Cherokee Campus and she was made aware that SCH had a woodshop. That spring break Ms. O worked in the shop to build the table that currently sits in the SRC.
Josh Mattingly, a history teacher at SCH has been woodworking for nearly two decades. They have worked with Ms. O on many projects. “It’s funny because you get the same person that you get in the classroom is the same person you get in the workshop, which is the same person that she is all the time, you know?” Mattingly continued to speak on Ms. O’s character in the woodshop saying, “She’s a genuine person. And so she brings the same kind of, you know, kind of curiosity and tenacity, … she’s the same fun person to joke around with and laugh with and, but also, you know, just there to get the job done too.”
Ms. O shared a story from when she was working on the table that would eventually become a staple in the SRC. “When I first started building the table, it was very adorable that the maintenance guys knew that I was doing it. And I swear they set up a little schedule to check on me every half an hour to make sure I had not chopped off my own arm. They would just casually drop in because they were like, Who is this woman, and why is she, you know, building a table in the space. And it was very sweet, because at the end, one of the maintenance guys, Frank, like, shook my hand really intensely, and was like, I am proud of you that you did this. So it was very, very sweet.”
When asked how often she builds furniture, Ms. O said, “I haven’t done it in a while. Part of the reason I’m talking to you about it is because I want to put out into the world that I want to start doing it more frequently. Again, the pandemic kind of put pause on it for me. … that table is looking worse for wear, and so I either want to rehab it or I want to build a new one. At some point, this spring.”
“I like building furniture, and I like walking as ways to like process and have time to think and just be with my own head. So it’s very, very relaxing and helps me to process things,” said Ms. O. Whether she is helping students or building a table you can always find Ms. O leaving a positive impact on the space she is in.
