For Your Consideration ...

Hello. My name is Rebecca Bauman and I’d like to introduce myself by way of a popular Internet meme.

REBECCA BAUMAN:

15 POINTS OF PERSONAL INTEREST

1. I’m a first-year MFA student at the University of Florida and carry an emphasis in poetry-writing.

2. I recently graduated from Pittsburg State University (Kansas) with a B.A. in English and a minor certificate in Women's Studies (the latter being the product of an absolutely rewarding and, in turn, ultimately frustrating academic and sociological experience).

3a. I was born in Texas, but my parents' divorce and respective occupations (she was a social worker, he a journalist) kept me moving around the country during childhood and adolescence.

3b. I've lived most of my life in St. Louis (MO), St. Augustine (FL) and Tallahassee (FL). After high school I spent the bulk of my time drifting between flophouses and hostels in New York City and hanging out in the backs of comedy clubs. I could also often be found at the walrus exhibit at the New York Aquarium.

4. I ultimately wound up in Southeast Kansas at the age of 21 after falling in love with and following home an 18-year-old pot-dealer whom I believed to be a dead-ringer for a young Nicolas Cage.

5a. While attending school in Kansas, I worked as an animal caretaker at a wildlife education and outreach facility, specializing in the care of the program's mammals (prairie dogs, hedgehogs, opossums, etc.) and large birds (hawks, owls, vultures and even a Catalina macaw).

5b. I also volunteered at the local Humane Society -- work which tainted my faith in humanity and left me sobbing in the bathtub at the end of most days.

5c. I now keep three dogs of varying sizes, all rescues from the pools of strays I encountered, fostered and (for the most part) re-homed while living in Kansas. (When leaving Pittsburg, I felt very much like I was rowing away from a sinking Titanic and had but those three berths in my lifeboat.)

5d. I carry a lot of white/American/middle class/Homo sapien guilt.

6. I held a number of creative content positions at PSU's campus newspaper -- work which eventually yielded an editorial fellowship with Esquire magazine in 2007.

7. Seeking my MFA (in poetry of all things) was a last minute decision -- one I didn’t and in all likelihood don’t consider the least bit practical. But, by the end of my undergraduate work, I had all these poems written and I was practically thinking in verse.

8. My background is rooted in journalism and non fiction, and I'd always assumed that if I were to pursue writing as a vocation, it would be along those lines.

9. In my mind, poetry is one of the most effective and affective forms of writing … and one of the most unwieldy (thus my insistence that I take further training). I see it very much like stand-up comedy: When poetry is good, it’s just Absolutely Amazing, Powerful-Powerful Stuff. And when it’s bad, it’s nothing less than painful -- pathetic, physically uncomfortable to experience. And so I’m terrified of producing terrible work.

10. I have never successfully maintained a blog. Lord knows I've tried ... but I'm extremely self-conscious and suffer an awful kind of impostor syndrome that leaves me ready and rarin' to bolt from public view (and, as I imagine, public critique) at the drop of a hat. It's a neurosis that certainly threatens my ability to meet the demands of a writer's existence.

11. Now that I’m in Florida, I visit the local freshwater springs and skin dive as often as I can. I also head back to St. Augustine for a look at the ocean and to wander the old streets whenever time allows.

12. DELETED

13. I regret having wasted so much of my youth without direction, though I'm told it's quite normal. I'll be 27 next month and have never travelled abroad (though I long to see the UK and Germany and France). I feel a sense of urgency, not only as a 20-something, but as a woman; I fear I'm losing time when it comes to "cashing in" on my best years.

14. DELETED, too

15a. I have a much cheerier disposition than it might seem here and now. The truth is, I could not be more grateful to have this opportunity at this program at this time. I can only hope that the overly-anxious shades of my character can scuff away in this warm, green climate … and I can come out on the other end of my time here in Florida as a generally satisfied, well-rounded, globe-trotting woman with a phenomenal butt.

15b. I am not copy-editing this post for fear I'll never bring myself to publish it.

BONUS FACTS

• The scent of spearmint chewing gum makes me sick.
• I'm obsessed with solid, well-written true crime.
• Every year, I am more and more incensed by politically conservative and spiritually fundamentalist thinking. I fear becoming abrasive, overconfident and obnoxious.
• My face looks straight in the mirror, crooked in photos.
• I don't care what you say: I saw Hugh Laurie first, damnit.