raybear | Your lonely voice cries across the starlit coast

clockwatcher -- so predictable!!

gloeden -- i take personal offense to your banning of all songs whitney-created. "i have nothing" is one of my personal karaoke favourites!

but my predictableness comforts you, i am sure.

ya know... it kind of does!

Well I hope you're good at that song or you'll have nothing but trouble from me!
;)
and it's not whitney i have a problem with. it's others trying to achieve her whitney-ness after cocktails and no vocal training.

You know the one I mean, right?

Also, I love it when people do rap in karaoke.

aww, thanks. it's called "don't pull your love".

and i agree, rap in karaoke can work if done properly. much like ballads.

I am an awesome karaoke rapper.

I want to see "I Sing the Body Electric" from Fame w/backup dancers.

you're on. irene cara may make me like karaoke yet.

does this mean I get to see you sing it soon?

only if i can find the backup dancers

i'm in.

you need to stop drinking the haterade.

i'm just bitter she left the sugarcubes. i still haven't gotten over it.

Though I just realized I really want to do "Marcia Baila" by Les Rita Mitsouko.
and I REALLY want to sing "Thirty Days in the Hole" by Humble Pie.
I love that fucking song...

hey. found your lj through chicago bloggers. if you're still in the mfa program, get. out. now.

it's the biggest waste of time and money, especially if you aren't funded.

besides, you don't need a degree to publish--look at fitzgerald, hemingway, faulkner. they didn't have mfa's.

on the other hand, if you want to teach, you'll get good experience. that is, of course, if you're at a program that offers assistantships.

unfortunately, there aren't any jobs out there, unless you want to teach 5 courses of english 101 at say, 5 different community colleges a semester. that would earn you about $7,500 for 16 weeks of work. i was only able to do it bc my husband has a good job.

if i knew any of this before i went, i wouldn't have gone. but, i wouldn't have known this if i hadn't gone. six of one, half a dozen of the other.

bloggo chicago (http://bloggochicago.blogs.com/)

heh. there are a bunch of quizzes and memes up there, mainly bc i have nothing but time to kill.

good luck.

hello again, raybear.

i was unable to respond to your comment on bloggo chicago. i registered my domain just a few days ago, and i'm still learning to navigate through it. if you type in your e-mail addy, i'll be able to respond, i think. also, the actual address will not show up in the comments section. how's that for an introduction? :p

first, i apologize if i sounded very harsh and bitter. well, i guess i'm a little bitter, but that has more to do with the program i was in. at the same time, i've enjoyed being a student advocate the moment i started teaching. i guess that's why i wrote what i did.

at any rate, i'm relieved to know that you went into this with eyes wide open. i only wish that mine were just as wide when i started. but like i said, if i hadn't gone, i'd spend the rest of my life wondering what if?

my concentration was in poetry, and i've looked at my thesis maybe twice since i defended it in may '02. i've grown to hate--ok, very much dislike--poetry and haven't written a poem since.

in the meantime, i wrote some creative non-fiction, which i'm comfortable with. have i finished anything? heh. right. part of the reason is because i didn't have time to write while adjuncting.

now that i have time again, i'm experimenting with fiction writing. i've never been able to come up with a decent conflict, so i never had a direction in which to take my stories.

after graduation, as a "fuck you" to mfa students, grads, and professors; and to awp and mfa programs altogether, specifically the one i went to, i defied the elitist attitudes and predominantly white bread environment (i'm sorry if i offend) by reading star wars novels and comics, and developing a love for hip-hop and old school gangsta rap. besides, by the time i returned to chicago, wxrt had deteriorated considerably.

i also grew to hate reading (reading!) while in grad school. after finishing up, i just wanted to read for pleasure and not to demonstrate some obscure theory through the text, instead of using the text to demonstrate the theory.

that being said, and i'm still trying to get past the shame and embarrassment of this, i began working on a *gasp* fanfic. a star wars fanfic at that. i've tried to justify this by looking at it as a writing exercise, a way for me to practice employing literary elements in fiction.

i have a secret dream of publishing a star wars novel. at first i thought about using a pen name, to avoid the horror i'm sure i'd be met with by the mfa community. then i decided that it would be better to use my real name, and include the name of the mfa program i attended in "about the author."

perhaps this is petty and immature. but what the hell? it makes me feel better. ;)

anyway, after not having written a word other than comments on students' papers, i think this little fanfic is some of the best writing i've done. the poetics i honed in grad school has really informed my prose. for example, i always had trouble writing descriptively, but i've improved.

although i'm having fun with it, there's a part of me that feels like i'm wasting my time.

anyway, i do have an lj account, so if you want to friend me, i'll friend you back. but be warned--my lj posts are about my depressing private life, whereas bloggo chicago is more of a public (though not phony) persona. also, a lot of the earlier entries are quizzes, quizzes, and more quizzes. i have, however, moved even more of these off bloggo chicago and into its own blog.

if you like, i'll add you to my bloggo roll.

cheers. and thanks for reading. :)

oops. forgot to use an lj-cut.

Wow. You're like super bitter. I'm in a Program and I'm like all about it. I waited until I was 28 to go back to school so I had fair amount of real life experience in which to write about and I could easily navivate college. I guess I'm curious what you thought an MFA would do? I mean it means nothing. It just means that you're fortunate enough to have a nice long self indulgent break before you truly suffer and pay your dues as an artist.

yeah, definitely bitter. i was a returning student and was 30 when i finished college. heh. in actuality i had paid plenty of dues already! :)

from there i went straight to the mfa program at ohio state. they weren't my first choice, but an mfa friend told me that since i was their first choice i should go for it. it was hard to turn down 1 year of fellowship money plus guaranteed funding for 2 years after that.

i knew that an mfa only meant/means that you're qualified to teach at the college level. an ma does as well, but not likely to get you a tenure-track job at a 4-year school. at the time i started ('99), i, perhaps foolishly, believed that the glut in the market would decrease by the time i graduated. and in my defense, my undergrad profs encouraged me, and were confident that i'd find something because i'm a woman and a minority. um...ok? i have mixed feelings about this.

so anyway, i knew that you can't make a living being a poet, and i wanted to have some practical experience directly connected to my art. i also knew that it doesn't mean you'll ever be published, and anyway, i had published a bit before i finished undergrad.

i was also looking for a community of writers that were more serious than bored housewives. is that harsh? oh, well. it doesn't do any good to get the kind of feedback such as, "i really liked it. i don't know why, but it's great!" more bitterness on my part, perhaps.

unfortunately, the community in my program, at least during the time i was there, was composed of a bunch of potheads. and these weren't traditional-age students fresh from college--they were in their late 20s and 30s! i don't condemn them for smoking pot. i went through that stage myself--up until my early 20s. but that's what they were about. i stopped going to the parties when they made it a tradition to play truth or dare. truth or dare! gah!

because i had great mentors in undergrad, i believed i would find the same in an mfa program, a poet or poets from whom to learn and study. pssh. they were selfish with their time. can you believe that i only got 2 comments from my thesis director and 1 from my second reader while working on my thesis? wtf?

granted, i moved back to chicago to finish my thesis going into my 3rd year, since i was done with my course requirements. i e-mailed them my work frequently, called and left messages. at one point i forgot all about them and gathered up the discipline to work on my own, probably a goal most writers should have, but even professionals have editors.

the english department was extremely divisive, mostly in terms of phd's vs. mfa's. the phd's thought the mfa's were too dumb to understand theory. the mfa's felt that the phd's were just jealous.

on the bright side, yes, there is a bright side, none of which is directly related to the mfa program. :) i met the man who's now my husband, and made a tight circle of friends (all ma's) with whom we still keep in contact even though we don't all live in ohio anymore. i got a chance to play hockey again bc osu had (though it may have been disbanded since then) a women's hockey club, where i met women outside the english department. it was also a nice break to be able to take roadtrips on some weekends for away games.

and...i deliberately did not apply to big 10 schools for undergrad, where it's common to have 500+ students in class. but as a grad student, the program was much smaller, so it was less overwhelming. i was glad to have experienced being at a huge school and have become one of those people i used to think were weird: a big 10 football fan. :p

so, the time i spent in the mfa program included some very positive experiences, though none of them had anything to do with the program itself. i did find a sense of community and bonding with the women i played hockey with as well as the larger ohio state (discourse!) community by becoming a huge buckeye fan--believe me, i resisted at first. these ties remain strong today bc there are alumni associations in nearly every city, and even if you don't know the people next to you at the bar on game days, you'll definitely have something in common, and it's good for networking.

it never occured to me that i'd make connections w/ people outside the program, and i'm happy that i did, so it wasn't a complete waste.

sorry this is so long. if yo get this far, thanks for reading. :)

Sounds like it maybe wasn't the master's degree itself, but the particular program you were in (as well as the expectations we already talked about).

grocerygetter and I are in low-residency MFA program, but different ones. Hers is in Vermont, mine's in L.A. I chose my program because even though no money came my way (except for the federal kind I have to pay back, but hey, it's low interest), it was less expensive than the tuition elsewhere, and the nature of the program meant it would be easier to work while attending school. I like that my program has no phd students, not even any undergrads connected to the program directly, so we mfa-ers get all the attention. The program is also nearly 100% writers, not academics, who are publishing and trying to publish and helping us students get published. I like the emphasis on being working writers, not just ivory tower writers.

It's sad to think you've spent so much energy on poetry and now it leaves a bad taste in your mouth. But it you're writing other stuff, you're still writing -- even if it's fanfic! Hell, my friend's mfa thesis was a fanfic novel. it's all about choosing the right hippie school.

thanks, raybear. i was definitely at the wrong hippie school. ^_^

my friends and i often wondered if our experiences were common across the board for English grad programs, what our experiences would have been had we chosen different schools. most of them had planned to go on for the phd, which i'd also considered myself, but were fed up w/ the hoops we were expected to jump through:

**here, little grad student...come on, that's a good grad student...now, tell me--who was the first writer?...oh, i know you know the answer, little grad student. don't you want a good grade? who wants a good grade?**

i shit you not. we were asked that question. the prof's answer? Moses. i still don't get it. he wrote down the Ten Commandments, but who taught him to read and write? oh, well. guess i'm just a dumb MFA. :p

none of it matters now, i guess. at least we're still friends. that's more important than a piece of paper.

i considered the different MFA options when i was applying. a low-res would have been nice, esp. bc i didn't want to leave Chicago, but it wouldn't have worked bc of the money and bc i wouldn't get to teach.

thanks again, for the encouragement. and don't be a stranger to bloggo chicago (http://bloggochicago.blogs.com/). it's where most of my writing occurs these days.

so i'll leave you with this--stay away from Jewel's ground beef--they found a batch w/ E. coli.

cheers.

Your lonely voice cries across the starlit coast

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