JP Avila

Assistant professor of art
Hometown: Banning, Calif.

I would say the thing I believe is most true is that you can cure anything with happiness. My father and mother are big jokesters, and so they’re always using laughter and I think I've somewhat picked up on that. My grandmother, whom I also spent a lot of time with growing up, is also very much an optimist. She’s a quiet lady, but she’s very spunky and she loves a good laugh.

In my classroom, I don’t try to be funny but it is part of my personality and I think I use that to diffuse a lot of the stress I put my students through. I’m a demanding teacher, and that can become very frustrating because I’m never happy with the end result. Even the final critique involves asking students “What more could you have done with it?” There’s got to be some release from that, so I try humor. That's my thing. I don’t know if it works, but I feel that the students feel a bit more at ease.

I include it in my life as well. When my wife and I wrote our wedding vows, one of the things I wrote was “I promise you laughter amongst all things.” It’s something that is of great use regardless of culture, gender, or anything. You smile at me and I will smile back at you. It’s a contagious type of thing, and I don't need to know the language in order for us to be happy or to share a laugh. I think about the world we live in right now, and we have such hostility around us. Language is such a hot commodity and a hot topic: we have to be politically correct, we have to be sensitive to different cultures, we have to be sensitive to different ethnicities, genders and ages. But it all can be diffused, and we can all find a common ground with laughter and with a smile.