Hayes' Metzger seeks literary career

Hayes High School’s Audrey Metzger

Story and photo by

LIZ ROBERTSON

For Hayes High School senior Audrey Met­zger, leav­ing high school will be bittersweet.

“It will be nice to be able to leave to go on to spe­cific things. I got a lot from high school, but it will be nice to go to a dif­fer­ent place and do a lot more, see a lot more,” she said.

That includes see­ing a lot more of Eugene Lang Col­lege, a divi­sion of The New School in Green­wich Vil­lage in New York City. Audrey sub­mit­ted her appli­ca­tion to the col­lege over the week­end. She’s inter­ested in the school’s lit­er­ary stud­ies program.

Audrey plans to take the writ­ing course track to pur­sue her goal to be a poet. She real­izes that her choice may not bring her finan­cial rewards but said, “My future has a lot more to do with hap­pi­ness than money.”

She looks for­ward to the small school in the midst of a Bohemian com­mu­nity and the New York expe­ri­ence. She would take the sub­way wher­ever she needed to go and have a lot more peo­ple to inter­act with there, she said.

She is also con­sid­er­ing Colum­bia, New York and Deni­son uni­ver­si­ties for her under­grad­u­ate work.

“I believe I was born to be a poet,” Audrey said. “I always enjoyed sto­ries. I loved to read. I began writ­ing sto­ries at Willis.”

Audrey said she is in a dif­fer­ent world when she writes.

“You are hard-wired a dif­fer­ent way to view things. It can be a bless­ing and a curse,” she said.

Audrey hopes to work for a lit­er­ary mag­a­zine in the poetry indus­try. She loves what lit­er­ary mag­a­zines do for the artis­tic community.

“It’s very pow­er­ful, very cre­ative within the writ­ing com­mu­nity. It con­nects us all,” she said.

Audrey believes that while poetry is not a large part of cur­ricu­lum in pub­lic schools, it should be. She has been try­ing to estab­lish a sep­a­rate class with ele­men­tary but it has not taken off yet.

“Poetry is so essen­tial to every­thing. It’s so con­tem­po­rary,” she said. “I’d like to bring it into school. Poetry is more rel­e­vant to everyone’s lives; you just have to find the poem that speaks to you.”

While her mother is a bit ner­vous about Audrey poten­tially going off to New York City, her par­ents sup­port her deci­sion, Aubrey said.

Sarah Ressler is Audrey’s Eng­lish teacher.

“Audrey is a gifted writer; her poetry is truly remark­able and her lyri­cal depic­tion of every­day life has grown increas­ingly more com­plex over her four years at Hayes. She has won numer­ous poetry awards and con­tin­ues to impress me with her ded­i­ca­tion to lan­guage. Audrey is also an out­stand­ing ana­lyt­i­cal writer; as a sopho­more she earned a 5 on the AP United States his­tory exam and again as a junior earned a 5 on the AP Lan­guage and Com­po­si­tion exam. Cur­rently Audrey remains a stel­lar stu­dent in my AP Lit­er­a­ture class this year,” Ressler said.

Eng­lish teacher Ryan Schey agrees with Ressler. He describes Audrey as “a phe­nom­e­nal young film­maker” who has pro­duced work to help with com­mu­nity orga­ni­za­tions (she co-produced promotional/informational videos used for the Delaware City Schools levy cam­paign and for the United Way of Delaware County).

“In addi­tion, she co-produced a short film that was fea­tured last spring at the Wexner Cen­ter for the Arts in their ‘Ohio Shorts’ film fes­ti­val (for the youth divi­sion). Beyond these accom­plish­ments, Audrey has been involved as a vol­un­teer, teach­ing video pro­duc­tion to ele­men­tary school stu­dents dur­ing the past two sum­mers and also teach­ing a poetry/creative writ­ing class to ele­men­tary and mid­dle school stu­dents for her senior project this year.”

Schey added that he “can’t wait to see where her cre­ativ­ity, intel­li­gence and ded­i­ca­tion take her in the future.”

Audrey’s poetry ranges from pro­gres­sive to story-oriented, and she has even writ­ten some abstract. But she said most of her work is story-oriented now.

“I enjoy writ­ing sto­ries. Every­thing is a story,” she said.

Audrey said her favorite poets are the Beats, specif­i­cally Allen Ginsberg.

“He kind of invented an art form. He’s a weird idol to have,” she said, adding that she also likes Pablo Neruda, who writes on war and love.

Audrey has been pub­lished in Teen Ink six times. She also recently won an award in the local Red Cross writ­ing contest.

This year, Audrey is tak­ing advanced place­ment gov­ern­ment, advanced place­ment lit­er­a­ture, physics, sym­phonic choir, Russ­ian online and video pro­duc­tion. She also has the first study hall of her high school career.

She explained why she is tak­ing Russian.

“Because it is such a mys­tery; it’s so old. There is so much his­tory. The sto­ries are rich, the cul­ture is dif­fer­ent and they are very happy peo­ple. They sing all the time.”

The past two sum­mers Audrey has vol­un­teered in the city schools sum­mer enrich­ment acad­emy work­ing with youth on video projects.

“Video is my sec­ond favorite thing to do. It’s fun to see their (the youth’s) ideas,” she said.

She also vol­un­teers through the National Honor Soci­ety, coor­di­nat­ing a PIN food drive and work­ing on bake sales for plays.

As a mem­ber of the Tri-M Honor Soci­ety, Audrey helps with recy­cling around the school and with a ben­e­fit con­cert the hon­orary music soci­ety puts on.

On being a senior, Audrey said she is look­ing for­ward to being done with the year.

“It’s nice, but I’m not able to slack off, so I’m just wait­ing for it to be over, enjoy the sum­mer and get on with the rest of my life,” she said.

For the upcom­ing sum­mer, she hopes to work as a bev­er­age lady dri­ving the golf cart on a golf course.

She offers the fol­low­ing advice to underclassmen.

“Don’t take it so seri­ously, because I did. Have fun. High school can be fun, I promise. Take hard classes but don’t freak out about it, I did. Take it easy. Don’t slack, bal­ance is the key. High school is a good place to find it.

Audrey is the daugh­ter of Mary and Chad Met­zger of Delaware.

Posted by Liz Robertson on Nov 17 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.