starting in second gear

So, it's been ages since I've blogged. In fact, I'll be entirely surprised if anyone is still reading this thing. I'm just feeling sort of introspective lately, I guess. Sure, things have been happening, things I could talk about. The Jeep is back, fixed after the Deer Incident of 2006. It now sports a white and chrome grille, as I did not rank painting to match as a priority, that says "eep" Sweet, eh? Somehow, it seems perfect (besides the fact that my initials are "ep," and so it seems to hold special significance for me). When I drove by J's work to show him our mechanic's handiwork, he walked out saw it, laughed, and then said, "eep. Perfect." I felt just the same way.

Other than that, let's see. I'm back at school and have started the headlong push for my master's. Did a little backwards counting and realized I have about 10 weeks to finish my thesis (that would be a minimum of three more stories that I haven't even written yet, yep). I started working on one of my comps yesterday, and actually think I'm going to try to do it this weekend. It would be lovely to check something off my list.

Read Persuasion this past weekend for my European Novels class. Jane Austen is one of my favorites, and I think this may be, in some ways, my favorite of her books. I've read it before, but for some reason it struck my particularly this time. I've noticed that happening with all my old favorites since I started writing. When I read them, they are like completely different books. I think because I'm so aware of style, structure, and all the little tricky tricks that the great writers can pull off. Now I see something like that and I can truly appreciate it, because I know there's no way I could do it. Anyway, Persuasion was good. I love reading Jane Austen out loud. So proper and yet so wickedly witty.

Next is Jane Eyre - another of my favorites. I can't wait to devote a few days to curling up in this horribly bitter weather and read and watch the frost creep across the windows.

Labels: books, school, writing

So now that my MFA applications are all mailed off, and have all been received, it's all about the waiting. It'll be at least six weeks until I begin to hear from them. It's already driving me crazy. I've been receiving a steady trickle of letters from my prospective schools, all of which say, in one variation or another:

"We've got all your stuff, don't fret. And please leave us along until such time as we will contact you. DO NOT contact us."

I do understand their sentiment, especially after a few weeks of waiting. I'm sure that, no matter how hard they resist, each year there are swarms of phone calls and e-mails from applicants wondering how the decisions are coming along. I'd hate to become one of their number, but I can understand how one might bow under the pressure of the fretting, and just have to call. HAVE TO.

And to top it off, now that I’m not dealing actively with the applications, I have this huge chuck of time and brain space that, until recently, was dedicated to this stuff. Now there are gaping holes waiting to be filled. I’m trying to fill them with my thesis, but it’s slow going. It’s like trying to switch a train going full-speed.

Oh, God. How am I going to make it until March? It’s like waiting for Christmas when you were a kid – but in this case for Christmas Santa is giving me my WHOLE FUTURE.

Labels: school, writing

I knew it, I just knew that Lucifer had a hand in all this. Just did a little math, folks, and here are the startling totals for my MFA application:

13 Applications, costing a total of

$666 in Application Fees

This does not bode well.

Labels: school

I'm with Amber - No More!

I have written:

6 Personal Statements
5 Teaching Statements
4 Statements of Purpose
2 Personal Goals Essays
1 Personal Statement of Purpose (my favorite)

I keep trying to remind myself that really, these are only the warm-up laps to the marathon that will be graduate school. It puts things in perspective, but it doesn't really make me feel better.

And it is damn hard to come up with this shit! I do cut-and-paste a bit, but all the requirements are just different enough to make me have to basically rework and write the whole thing every time - if I was conspiracy-minded, I'd think there was a plan afoot to slowly drive those seeking higher education slowly insane.

Labels: school

So, yesterday on the way home from Bemidji, I'm listening to the radio, they're giving the weather, and the man says, "And right now, it's one degree."

One degree.

Somehow that seemed even worse than a negative number (Well, okay, not as bad as negative 42, which we hopefully won't see until January). But, one is the loneliest number, after all. That one sad, little, lonely degree made the night seem impossibly colder.

Of course, it feels like it's colder than that now, and if my computer weren't an antique I would have the space to download weather bug so that I could confirm that for you. It's probably just the fact that I live in a tiny house built in the 1920's with single pane windows and an excuse for insulation. But I know that it's cold enough that I'm going to abandon my office (in a corner of the house) for the much warmer and, at this hour, sunny living room to write my Statement of Purpose.

On a different note, yesterday I sent off my writing sample to Cornell. It was my first writing sample I've sent out for the MFA Apps. I felt like I was sending my babies off to war - be safe and stay warm. And don't let them tell you you're not good enough!

I'm going to go wrap myself in fleece. Welcome to northern Minnesota.

Labels: school, toad lake life

Yesterday I discovered that my thesis proposal has to be done, well, pretty much by Tuesday, so that it can be signed by everyone in the English department, several deans and grad school officials, and possibly some other folks that I know nothing about. This is so that I can hand the proposal in on time so that it can be processed so that I can be issued another form to be filled out and signed by everyone on the planet and handed in within the first week of next semester.

I think I'm going to write a song about this experience. I will call it: Paper Chains Ain't Just For Christmas Trees (I don't know if that makes sense to anyone but me, but I like it anyway).

It's not really a big deal. It's a creative thesis, which helps because I don't have to have tons of documentation, and my bibliography doesn't have to be nearly as extensive. Thank gopdness for that. I was given a few examples of thesis proposals to mull over (and I think, in order to banish that look of panicked expectation that cried help me! help me! from my face when I appeared in my chair's office yesterday). One of them was Amber's, and it was, as everything that Amber produces, thoughtful, elegant, well-researched and constructed, lucid... well, you get the picture. It pretty much kicked ass, and my heart fell to a much lower position as I skimmed over the pages. Her proposal was for a combination research/creative thesis, and mine's just creative, so that made me feel better.

I know I sound doomsday. I don't really feel that way. This is just part of the process I go through before I dig in and pound out something like this. I work myself into a panic, doubt in my abilities, compare myself (unfavorably) to others, make a bunch of to-do lists (on which I put several things that I've already done just so I can have the pleasure of crossing them off), throw them all away, spend an hour or so reconstructing those lists on color coded spreadsheets with checkboxes, file those away appropriately and never use them again, pace around my house, make tea, put some laundry in, do some blogging (this is where I am right now), make some more tea, look into Zoe's (my dog) eyes and plead for reassurance while fondling her incredibly soft ears, receive assurance in the form of several licks on the chin, fold some warm laundry (never fails to soothe me), then get down to work. Once I actually get down to it, things always go quickly. I wish I could skip all the pre-activity, but it seems to be integral to the process.

I'm off to make some tea...

Labels: school, writing

So, yesterday I ran into a friend who had just finished defending his thesis for his Masters in English. He was getting ready to celebrate, and of course I tagged along to the pub. He was really excited, I think, and rightfully so. It is a big deal.

That was when I realized: this is a big deal. Is this something to be just done willy-nilly, as I seem to be approaching it? I guess the whole MA process was just overshadowed in my mind by the mind-boggling MFA application process I've created for myself. And now I'm having a bit of a panic. I have one semester in which to do all this stuff. I have to write a thesis. A creative thesis. This is, for me, short stories. Quite a few of them. And I am a slow writer. Ponderously slow.

I think I have a concept for my thesis proposal. But I haven't written it yet.

*(A side note for those of you that have been following this saga: I found out that I did, indeed apply to BSU and was accepted so, whew! That's a load off my mind)

But the ink isn't even dry on my application for candidacy, and I need to find committee members, and, and, and... bit of a panic, really.

I have chosen my committee chair. She is amazing, and the great thing about her is that, when she tells me something, I get it. You know how, with the rare teacher here and there, you can actually understand what they're saying? She operates on my wavelength. I hear her loud and clear. This is good, because she is a fiction teacher, my favorite. She is blunt, yet not hurtful. She gives me what I want for my stories, a reader who is intelligent and careful and critical. She gives me criticism I can use, which is something I am finding difficult to come by. Anyway, she is great, and the fact that she has agreed to chair my committee makes me feel good, and better yet, that maybe I can pull this off.

As an example of this woman's sage qualities: The day after my little panic attack in my office, I told her I was freaking out. She told me that, throughout the process of both her Masters and her PhD, she would wake up in the middle of the night in a sheer panic. So I said, "So this happens to everyone? Everyone is hiding in their offices, hyperventilating with the door closed?"

And she said, "Yep. And it's only going to get worse."

This may seem cruel to you. I laughed my ass off and felt infinitely better. Maybe we are just twisted in the same way. But that is rare and good.

Labels: school, writing

I just finished my portfolio for my creative non-fiction class. Well, not really finished - I still have the folder to acquire and stylize, but the content is done, and prettified.

Usually when I have to put together a portfolio for a class, I am dull in the extreme. I print out all my work in Times New Roman 12 with one inch margins, staple things together, and put them in any folder I can scrounge up in my house, and am done with it in short order.


This time, for what reason I'm not sure, I've gone a little further. Maybe it's because I'm drowning in MFA applications, and the last thing I want to do is look at something in Times New Roman, or make it look like a business plan.

I didn't go crazy with it, because I know that if I was a teacher, I would appreciate a certain amount of creativity, but only if combined with readability. In my view, a portfolio should not be a challenge to the professor that has a towering stack of them on his desk. That's just asking for it (and not very thoughtful, besides). But I am planning a trip to Ben Franklin today, to their astoundingly huge paper selection, to garner inspiration for a cool-type envelope, file, what-have-you.

My favorite thing about the portfolio? The font. I likes it. I've scanned the first page, my artist statement, so that you can all share in the joys of Bodoni MT Bold with me. How is it I never saw this font before?

Labels: school, writing

If you need to blame someone, blame Jessie. She told me it was okay to keep talking about this stuff.

In a spectacular show of masochism, I have decided to get my MA before I leave Bemidji State. It has almost just fallen into my lap, and I don't see how I can not do it. So after applications I have that to look forward to, ensuring that, as a newly christened drama queen, I will have plenty of drama to freak out about.

But here's the thing I just realized today. I'm not at all sure that I ever applied for graduate school here. When I started here, I was just taking one class, with no intention of continuing, and so got "special status." Then I got the assistantship, and just started right in (still with no intention of completing a degree).

Today as I started reading over what I needed to do to graduate, it struck me. Hey, did I ever even apply? I don't remember doing the transcript/ recommendation/ application form dance. Hmmm. I guess I can't exactly apply for graduation when I never even applied for admission.

This is a quandry, and it may not be all my fault. How did this slip by everyone? I'm a graduate assistant, for chrissakes. It is a question I will pose to my advisor on the morrow, that's for sure.

And I can't help but laugh. This is the most humor I've gotten in a while. I love irony

Labels: school

So. The GRE is done. I got my tentative scores when I finished, consulted a few professors, and found out I probably won't have to take it again, unless I really messed something up in the essays (those scores are sent later). Thank my heavenly stars, is all I have to say.

It wasn't as horrific as I had made it out to be the night before, when it had loomed over my pillow like a skyscraper. Once I sat down at the computer terminal and began to calm down, it occured to me: oh, yeah. So this is really just another test after all. Same old shit. Well, slightly different for reasons I will describe briefly below. But basically, same old thing.

There are three parts to the GRE: the essay section, the quantitative (math) section, and the verbal section. This is the order they are taken in. It worked well for me because of my strengths and weaknesses. The essay section is 75 minutes long, and is comprised of two essays: persuasive (45 min.) and argument (30 min.). The time was adequate for both, although I had to act pretty fast for the argument essay, and didn't have much time to proofread. But basically they are looking for the good old five paragraph essay.

I thought taking this part first was going to be terrible - writing the essays cold, without a warm-up, so to speak. But the essays actually functioned as a rather good warm up in themselves. By the time I was done with them, I was comfortable with the environment, the icky orange headphones I was wearing to cut sound (similar to what baggage handlers wear at the airport- so trendy!), the computer, and all that jazz. I even managed to work Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle into one of the essays (something I've been reading up on a little lately) - so I felt very clever by the time it was done. And this was a good thing, a confidence booster. I needed it, because the math section was next, and that was the part I was really worried about.

You know it's bad when the first question appears on the screen and the only thing that runs across your mind, like a screensaver, is - shit, shit, shit... etc. I stumbled through the best I could though, and evidently did much better than it seemed I was doing. This made sense in light of a little tip I read in my Kaplan's book. Here's the theory:

The GRE is an adaptive test. This means that each question you receive is chosen in light of the way you've answered previous questions. So, if you get a question right, the next question you get will be harder. If you get it wrong, the next question will be the same, or easier. The hard questions are worth more points. You get the picture. Well, I was reading the pep talk "night before" section of my book, and they presented an interesting idea:

If you get a question that is hard, it must be because you're doing well. So, I figured, if you look at a question and your mouth dries up and you get the urge to vomit, it probably means you're doing really, really well!

Okay, so it's a serious rationalization with the slightest kernel of truth to it (if you angle everything the right way). But during the quantitative section I clung to this little bit of twisted logic. Every time I got a question where the first thing through my head was WTF?! I would soothe myself by thinking about how well I must be doing to get such a mind-boggling question.

I know, I know. But it did keep me calm. And desperate times, as they say...

The verbal section was difficult, but at least it wasn't in a foreign language like the math section. I muddled through fairly well, although it was sincerely depressing how many words appeared that I had no flippin' clue as to their meaning. Definitely should have spend more time studying word roots.

The perfectionist part of me wants to take it again anyway, even though I don't think it is necessary. I know I can do better, having been through it once now, and it's sort of an intrinsic part of my nature to want to seriously kick ass on standardized tests. I don't know why, what I'm trying to prove, or to whom. But, at a $130 bucks a pop, I think I'll try to restrain myself, and simply take pleasure in crossing the GRE off my list of MFA Things To Do.

Yay!

Labels: school

I feel sick. The GRE is today, this morning, at 9:30. I've never had test anxiety before, so this is new, and I don't like it. For all you out there who have always felt this way - bummer. it sucks.

I got to school too early, because of reports of impending snow and my own miscalculations (due, I think, to confusion caused by Daylight Savings Time, which always messes me up for about a week). So I've got over an hour to kill before I have to head over the the testing center (a laughable name, as it is a closet filled with boxes and a desk with a computer). So I'm trying to de-blog my anxiety.

I'm not sure what exactly I'm nervous about. This is, in fact, a trial run - an extra test I scheduled so that if I really screwed up I could just take it again in November. So what's the deal?

I guess it's just been so long since I've been put under standardized testing conditions. Last time I took the GRE was so long ago that it was still a paper test. Maybe that's part of the problem. The computer thing. What about the computer sheets with the bubbles? I liked the bubbles - we understood each other. This sliding scale test that adjusts itself to be harder if you get questions right just seems a little scary.

Plus it's a four hour monstrosity that I get to begin with 75 minutes to write two essays. Then the verbal and math, and an extra section that they stick in to try out new questions - they don't tell you which one it is. Somehow that doesn't seem fair.

I have to say, I feel much better about all this after venting on the blog. I am, after all, very good at talking myself in and out of things. So, now, all that remains is to banish this sick feeling in my stomach, and get on with it. I'm listening to Bill Evans right now, which usually does wonders to calm me, so Bill, work your magic!

Tallyho!

Labels: school

So I signed up for the GRE today. I’m taking it on Halloween, which seemed appropriate for some reason. But it is also the last day of October (which you may or may not be aware of). I actually strategically chose that day due to some fine print that I only discovered yesterday, stating that you can only take the test once per calendar month. That only gives me two tries: one in October, one in November. It was a bit of a panic when I discovered this, because it means that I have to really kick ass this month. But also something of a relief, because, after all the planning and the waiting for deadlines, at last something is zooming up. The process is beginning, and now I don’t have to drive myself crazy sitting around thinking and waiting anymore (since we all know about my thriving need for deadlines and resultant procrastination).

I also took the Diagnostic Test that came with the GRE book that I picked up at B&N on Sunday. I did poorly, but somehow it made me feel better. I missed a lot of math questions, which did not surprise me, and mostly showed me that my skills are rusty as hell. Usually the math problems can be solved using logic if you go about it right. Except the ones that involve 2 &pi r and &pi r2 and the eternal question: which one of these is circumference and which is area?

It’s strange, re-entering the world of standardized testing after a 10 year hiatus. It amazes me that my brain used to function so well in this environment. I had the system down, I was skilled at the bureaucracy surrounding the education system. I knew just what they wanted me to say, even when it was multiple choice, even when I didn’t know the answer.

Things are different now. My brain does not operate that way anymore. Or maybe I’m rusty. Or maybe I killed too many brain cells during college and the following four years in Aspen. But mostly now standardized tests just strike me as lame. What a lame way to decide if someone can get into your school. I realize they need a method, but standardized testing really says so little, especially when you’re talking about people entering graduate school, law school, etc. All it really shows is how well someone operates within the system. Maybe that’s their point. The cynical side of me says, yes, yes, all they really want is someone who they know will perpetuate their system and work smoothly and easily within it. Clearly, I will have to set these feelings aside and jump through the requisite hoops to get to where I want to be. Ah, well, compromise again.

Another thing today’s Diagnostic Test showed me: no matter how many times it pops up on standardized tests, I will never remember what abstemious means.

Labels: school, toad lake life

So I'm starting the application process to go to school to get my MFA in Creative Writing. Or rather, not really the application process. Let's say, the preapplication process. I'm sorting through schools, figuring out what I need to do, etc. There are a few really freaky parts to this:

1. I have to take the GRE. Okay, I've taken it before. Standardized tests have never freaked me out. In my past life as a student I excelled at them, not so much for my knowledge, but for a lucky intuition when it comes to multiple choice. But... the last time I took the GRE was ten years ago. Christ. When I took it, it was still a paper test for chrissakes. Back in the age before the computer GRE. And this is what freaks me out. Taking it on the computer will totally fuck my patented test-taking strategies. Not only that, but the analytical part is now essay, which sucks because I really kicked ass at that part. I'm really good at those - there are twelve people at a dinner party. Chris can't sit next to Angie - questions. So, the GRE thing is freaking me out.

2. And here's something else that is freaking me out in a more abstract way. How do I know what schools to apply to? By that I mean, which are within my range, which are hopefuls, and which are safeties? This is something that was pretty easy to determine when I was applying for undergrad. But I have no idea how my writing stacks up with the writing of other applicants. I'm just plunging blind into the applications, and all I can figure to do is pick a wide range, apply to a bunch, and see where I get in. But I don't like that. I don't like it at all. The sucky thing about writing is, you are accepted on the strength of your portfolio. The grad school may care about GREs and recommendations, etc. But the English departments don't really give a shit. All they want is to see your writing. And if they see that indefinable thing in it that makes it compelling to them, you're in. If not, you're not.

Arg! I want to be able to quantify my skill and talent somehow and place it alongside other skill and talent. What if I overestimate myself and don't get in anywhere? What if I underestimate and end up in some program that's not going to further my writing, but leave me treading water and in debt? And no teacher will give me the answers I want, because they're not going to tell me how good they think I am. They never do, and that's fine, it's not their job. But (whine) I wish they would. This is important and I want to do it right, but I feel horribly uninformed, no matter how many websites I read, or research I do.

Labels: school, toad lake life