First Week: Complete

Well, I did it. I made it through my first week of classes at UNH. Of course, my first week consisted of MTW classes, but I'm really happy with myself, with the classes I've chosen to take, and also with my classmates.

My first workshop class was on Tuesday, and I'm really excited about it. Our first assignment was to write a three-page, mostly complete short, that had to somehow involve death and two geographical locations. I have started this assignment five times now, but I can't seem to find anything with which I am satisfied. Some pieces I don't like because I don't think they fit appropriately with the assignment, some I don't like because I'm having a hard time truly seeing the characters, and one I don't like because it's boring and I don't want to keep working on it. So that's how my workshop class is going so far.

Yesterday, I had my first "Writing the Novel," class, which I'm really looking forward to. Every two weeks, we have to produce an outline of the major events of the novel. After that, we have to take that outline and plug our own events into the outline, and outline our own ideas for a similar novel. Then, we write the first few pages of our own novel that we just outlined. It is supposed to get us used to thinking about causality in the novel, like, "this event on page 3 caused this event on page 6," and it is going to really help me get focused as a writer.

But enough about classes. I am living in Somersworth, NH--about 15 minutes away from the UNH campus in Durham. I quickly found a full-time job as a Starbucks Barista in a town 30 minutes away from Somersworth, but 10 minutes away from the beach in Hampton, NH. I'm surprised at how much I enjoy shlepping expensive coffee to rich New Englanders. My husband started work just yesterday, much to my dismay and chagrin, and we're really, really poor. I am getting used to eating Ramen again.

So that's been my MFA experience so far. I am looking forward to the rest of the semester, I am happy to finally be studying what I want, and I finally feel like I belong somewhere. Yay yay for the MFA!