Last Tuesday, the 29th of April, I spent the day visiting the campus at Hamline University in St. Paul, and the surrounding neighborhood. I think I got a decent feel for the area, as I drove several dozen laps around the streets, and poked my head into some of the buildings on campus. On Wednesday, I had a chance to stop by the Creative Writing Program house, and met with my advisor there. Take a look…
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I’m in the greater Twin Cities area this for a few days this week to check out my new campus and try to find a place to live come fall. The weather up here (and across the Dakotas, MN, and WI, really) is awful this week, but I brought a rain coat and waterproof shoes.
Tomorrow morning, I have a meeting set up with my faculty advisor at Hamline. It will be nice to meet some people who I’ll be working with and take in the campus before fall.
I think this whole business of moving and starting this new program is going to work out. I haven’t had occasion to write about every single minor epiphany that’s hit me in the last few weeks, but I have a strong feeling that I’ll enjoy living here well enough, and that I’m going to be successful in school. It feels like the right time to be here, and I feel like I’m in the right state of mind for it as well.
Hope to have some other thoughts/commentary later in the week. You can also keep an eye on my mobile musings via my about.me page if you need up-to-the-minute updates.
So, this is good news.
A couple months back I was talking about getting the first of a trio of grad school apps out, and in the intervening weeks, I’ve gotten rejected by one, accepted by another, and I’m still waiting on the last one. ((Sorry that most everyone who would read this blog already knows all about this crap from Bookface. It happens.))
When I got the message from Hamline that I’d been accepted it was a surreal experience. It’s been a long time since really fantastically awesome stuff happened to me, so I usually approach anything with low expectations. I didn’t jump up and down, but I did start shaking nervously, got a little light-headed, and had to go talk a walk. It was a good feeling.
More than anything, it gave me back the feeling that all the work I had done in previous programs was worth something — that someone other than me and the people closest to me felt like it mattered. One of the toughest things about the almost-nine-year career that I’ve had in financial aid administration has to do with identity — I always pushed back against the reality that I was an administrator, a bureaucrat; someone who processed data for a living. I’ve always wanted to give myself a creative title and label, but while I’ve been working here in fin aid, it seemed silly and even presumptuous to do so. That always made me feel guilty on one hand (for not pursuing what I really wanted with more fervor), and inferior to my peers on the other (because by rejecting the labels associated with my actual career, and not having license to take the label that I wanted, I felt like I was just treading water and skimming by while others made progress and did things).
That stuff is behind me now. I can begin to plan and look forward to a future that I truly want. I’ve been happier in the last few weeks than I’ve been since I finished my thesis. I have a long list of things that I need to start taking care of now (resigning from my job, finding a new place to live, moving, figuring out finances, getting my mind reconditioned for an academic living), but these are all things that I’m excited to do.
Summer will fly by like summer always does, and for the first time in a decade, I can’t wait for the fall.
It must be true that exposure some Great Literature (i.e., “important” works) is needed in order to become a successful critical reader. A person must be cognizant of the themes found in fiction, the character tropes, the places and settings where important stories happen, etc. But on the other hand, doesn’t relatively “bad” fiction (or, what literature scholars might call “contemporary pop fiction”) have the same features as Great Literature? Don’t we fashion stories across the board in roughly the same way? Comparing the Modern Library 100 Best Novels lists as compiled by the board, versus the one voted on by readers does a fantastic job of exposing the line between important and good.
I overcame a big hurdle earlier this week when I finished up one of the three applications I’ll be sending out to grad schools for that MFA deal this month. I had been beating myself up over it for about a month, for no good reason in particular, and as soon as I made a phone call to Rindo, I immediately felt a lot better. I also had to put a lot of pressure on my friend and MA classmate from Oshkosh, Kevin, but hopefully he won’t hold that against me for too long.
Why do I put off doing things that are so easy, relatively speaking? That’s one of the things I’ve always asked myself in this forum, as well on the couches of various mental health professionals over the years. I still don’t have a good answer, but people are trying to help me with strategies for not hating myself as much for it. Sometimes it works. It’s consistently amazing to me that I keep sentencing myself to long stretches in that emotional purgatory when the relief I feel upon completing things is so immediate and satisfying. It’s just as confusing (and light years more frustrating) to me, trust me.
I have to try to ride this wave of relief and positive emotion now, as best I can. I’ve started working with some of my backpacking friends on plans for a 2014 trip, which is sure to involve higher elevations than last year. With that in mind, I should get back to exercising with regularity. I fell off the wagon last summer, and it’s been pretty poor going since then. I made a bit of an effort in early fall–with Kevin’s help, actually–to start in on Insanity. In my case, with the condition I was in, that’s exactly what it was. I got about nine-and-a-half minutes into the first session, and felt like I was going to die. It seriously took me another 35 minutes of laying down on the floor to catch my breath, lose the head rush, and regain the use of my legs. That whole event has scared me away from intense physical activity ever since.
Finally, I spent about an hour today thinking about how none of the schools I’m applying to have guarantees of financial aid, which is something I’ve been saying I really need in order to go back again. This is pretty typical behavior, too: getting wound up about things that aren’t even relevant, because I haven’t been accepted to any of them yet, anyway. In relation to thinking about financial aid, I went through how I would pay for my car, my credit cards, an apartment, and health insurance. It’s way too early to sweat any of that, but there it is.
THINGS TO DO NOW THAT I KNOW I WON’T BE STARTING AN MFA IN THE FALL
A few folks have asked if they could read a copy of my thesis (i.e., novella) after it was done.
I have joked that one of the things that everyone who has written a thesis says to every one of their friends and/or colleagues that wrote a thesis is, “I would love to read your thesis,” and none of those theses actually get read.
That being the case, you will not offend me in the least by never reading this. However, in case you do care to venture down that path, this is the exact copy that I turned in today. Have a good time, and thanks.
Ok, so I thought I’d pop in to say that the first paper and subsequent presentation was just swell. I don’t have to turn that mother in until I leave on Monday, so still ample time to revise and whatnot. The second paper has actually note begun to be written yet, but a list of “things I’m going to say” has been formed and is currently being ruminated upon. Its rough-drafting will occur this afternoon/evening/tomorrow, with its less-substantial-than-the-other-paper-just-by-its-nature revisions to occur in the ensuing three days.
So I was “browsing” a bit this morning, and I happened to visit a very nice site that I used to visit more often, but now I only stop by with the randomness of a pair of axe-wielding breasts in a comic strip. I was looking for the copy from a sketch Steve Martin did on Saturday Night Live once, and foolish me, I shoulda known Colin would have it. Mucho gracias.
If I had one wish that I could wish this holiday season, it would be that all the children to join hands and sing together in the spirit of harmony and peace. If I had two wishes I could make this holiday season, the first would be for all the children of the world to join hands and sing in the spirit of harmony and peace. And the second would be for 30 million dollars a month to be given to me, tax-free in a Swiss bank account. You know, if I had three wishes I could make this holiday season, the first, of course, would be for all the children of the world to get together and sing, the second would be for the 30 million dollars every month to me, and the third would be for encompassing power over every living being in the entire universe. And if I had four wishes that I could make this holiday season, the first would be the crap about the kids definitely, the second would be for the 30 million, the third would be for all the power, and the fourth would be to set aside one month each year to have an extended 31-day orgasm, to be brought out slowly by Rosanna Arquette and that model Paulina-somebody, I can’t think of her name. Of course my lovely wife can come too and she’s behind me one hundred percent here, I guarantee it. Wait a minute, maybe the sex thing should be the first wish, so if I made that the first wish, because it could all go boom tomorrow, then what do you got, y’know? No, no, the kids, the kids singing would be great, that would be nice. But wait a minute, who am I kidding? They’re not going to be able to get all those kids together. I mean, the logistics of the thing is impossible, more trouble than it’s worth! So — we reorganize! Here we go. First, the sex thing. We go with that. Second, the money. No, we got with the power second, then the money. And then the kids. Oh wait, oh jeez, I forgot about revenge against my enemies! Okay, I need revenge against all my enemies, they should die like pigs in hell! That would be my fourth wish. And, of course, my fifth wish would be for all the children of the world to join hands and sing together in the spirit of harmony and peace. Thank you everybody and Merry Christmas.
Well, this will be it for a while. I’ve got a lot of work to get done over the next two weeks or so, so I will bid farewell until about December 18. May all your holiday preparations proceed without incident. Since all my decorating is already done, mine will include: watching White Christmas. That’s it. Take care, hope to see you all soon, but if I don’t before the 25th, have a Merry Christmas.
