When asked what her day to day workload looked like at Port Townsend High School, Lisa Anderson turned her eyes upward and repeated the thought back to herself, “What do I do? I don’t know, it just keeps coming at me, I do everything and nothing.”

However, completely un-arming the word “nothing,” she took five minutes and barely scratched the surface of what she does. “I get ready for all of the subs that come in, I work on the website, I do the bulletin, I do the T.V in the morning….” 

“Ask Lisa” is a statement that you can hear a lot wandering through the halls of the school. “I have to sort of stay on top of things, in case a student needs to know something,” she said.

Anderson has been working at the High School for over 10 years, and has recently had a placement change. Her official position at the high school is the Principal’s Assistant, but  some might say it’s too singular a title for all of the ways she goes above and beyond.

If you make your way to her desk with a question, Anderon has a quick answer. And if, on the off chance she responds that she doesn’t know, the confession is followed by “I’ll find out for you.”

Anderson goes out of her way to make sure a student in need is seen. 

“I had a student last year and everyday I asked him, ‘hey, did you get this thing done?’ It even got to the point where I would text him to remind him about assignments.” The student was friend of Anderson’s son, Mark. “He finally got everything done the day before graduation. It was a big deal. It’s really cool when you see kids who come in trouble in ninth grade and by the time they are senior they really get it together. There are a lot of those kinds of students,” she said. “The mother in me kind of gravitates towards them.”

Despite the length of the time Lisa has spent as the welcoming face of PTHS, she claims to still “really really genuinely enjoy” her job.

She highlighted one of the memories that made the hardships worth it. “One of my fondest memories at school was when I worked with Jan Boutilier and it was Homecoming week. She and I had a lot of school spirit. She loved to get dressed up and dress me up! We used to be twin sisters, ‘Flo and Glo.’” Anderson said they repeated it for several years.

“We made movies and public service announcements that would play on the TV’s. I loved it because she was the extremely outgoing twin and I was the quiet one who didn’t talk at all. She always brought some outlandish outfit for me to wear and it always came with a wig. She loved to perform and the goofiness of it all.”

She said she missed having Boutilier around the school. “When Mark Harris (the Dean of Students) and Sean Moss (the new principle) came onboard, that school spirit came with them. We’ve had a lot of strange adventures in the office again!”

Anderson was a gracious person to interview. As I made my way out of the small connector room that I had just finished interviewing her she told me to “change anything you want” but there is no need to change any of the quotes.

In life you meet people who often are too loud about their accomplishments. Anderson is not one of those people. She is subtle about the ways she expresses what she does. However,  the effects of her actions are painted boldly all over the campus of PTHS. That is true from the first day of freshman year when she hands you your schedule, to the final months of your senior year, when she helps you order your cap and gown.

Adeline McMillen is a senior at Port Townsend High School. A version of this essay was published in the school newspaper, Redhawk Review.