Tory Adkisson (Ohio State University, 2012)

Hello there friends! Reading all of these splendid introductions causes me to take pause and consider the amazing community I, as an MFA candidate, have now become a part of. If anything, reading about the people blogging on this site has only intensified my desire to fast forward through summer and start getting down to business—luckily, I only have three weeks left.

My name is Tory Adkisson, and I am delighted to report that I will be an MFA candidate in poetry this fall at Ohio State University. Like many of my colleagues here on The MFA Chronicles, I am a tart cocktail of excitement and anxiety, with just a touch of salt along the rim of the glass for good measure.

So, here's a little bit about me: I am twenty-two years old (in November) and a native of Southern California. (Note that I am not, nor ever have been, a cast member of The Hills.) I was born and raised in the small desert towns that dot the freeways leading to Las Vegas, tiny settlements that serve as little more than glorified rest stops for weekend tourists. I am the oldest of three boys, raised by a single Mom, and am of mixed ethnicity—I am 1/4 Mexican and 3/4 Eastern European (Russian/Polish mostly), as well as an Ashkenazi Jew on my Mother’s side. I was raised in a pretty secular environment though. I am also gay, and have been living openly since I first started college four years ago. I just graduated from UCLA last spring with a BA in English and a concentration in creative writing, and have worked a variety of temp jobs during that time, most recently as an office assistant (a job I hated) and composition tutor for college students that come from historically underrepresented backgrounds (a job I loved). I am a night owl who enjoys cats, baking, quoting TV shows, irony, scarves, kvetching about nearly everything, and tripping over my own feet.

I chose Ohio State University for a few very important reasons: their excellent faculty, their excellent funding, and (most importantly) the strong sense of community that exists between the students in the program. I also really like that it is a three year program, reasonably small, and will give me plenty of teaching experience. I am excited to be teaching one composition class a quarter, though worried about how I am going to get my students to see me as someone of authority rather than someone who is only marginally older than they are and still looks like a fifteen year old. Nonetheless, I am excited to move to Columbus because I will get to have a white winter (something I see as romantic despite the warnings others have given me about the cold), and because rents are exponentially cheaper than what I am currently paying in LA. It doesn’t hurt that Columbus is a gay friendly city too, ensuring that, at the very least, I have no excuse for living a celibate life for the next three years. Important, since male sexual desire features heavily in my poetry.

Okay, enough about me. If you are interested to know more, please feel free to check out my blog, Neurotica Exotica, where I blog about everything from my MFA application experience to my self-destructive sex life—always, of course, in an amusing light. I am very happy to be a part of The MFA Chronicles family and look forward to reading about everyone’s struggles and successes. Until then, ciao babies.