Wayward Child: End of Semester Recap

Hey guys! First, sorry it's been eight years since I've posted. I apologize for not keeping posted all through the semester. I'm not sure I've written a blog post in the last year where I haven't apologized for my absence at the beginning, so this is kind of par for the course from me.

To recap: Hi, I'm Katie. I'm a fiction writer at Southern Illinois in Carbondale. And an hour from now, I'm going to walk into my afternoon class and finish teaching my first semester of grad school. It's insane. While I was congratulating and praising my first class for their awesomeness this morning, I kind of unexpectedly choked up a little, and got the slow-clap thing from them-- it was nice. I've really enjoyed teaching. This semester, I taught composition, which presented a lot of challenges; however, it was on a department wide syllabus, which is a wonderful thing SIU does that helps.

But I got my teaching assignment yesterday: I'm moving up to 102, which is still Composition, but I'll be writing my own syllabus and making my own assignments. I'm excited, I'm scared, but more than anything, after this semester, I'm ready.

My workshop-- my first fiction workshop of all time-- wrapped on Monday, and was great. I'd say all three of the stories I turned in had major failings in them, but I can see each time some improvement. I'm starting to publish-- poetry at a journal called "Big Lucks" and fiction at a journal called "The Meadowland Review"-- and next semester, because I'm a glutton for punishment, I'm signing up for a poetry workshop and a fiction workshop. Yikes! So again: I'm excited, I'm scared, I'm ready.

This semester has been exciting in other ways, too, though: I've continued writing for the Evansville Courier and Press, even though I moved away, and that granted me the ability to do some really cool music interviews. This semester, I interviewed everyone from Uncle Kracker to Loretta Lynn-- in fact, a few minutes ago, I got off the phone with the singer from the Oak Ridge Boys (they sing "Elvira"). Just a huge, huge semester for me.

But what blows my mind is that it's almost over. Sure, I've got some grading to do, but not much else. So my question to you guys is this: Now that it's winding down, what are you doing over break to prepare? I'm going to try and get a working syllabus for 102, write a few stories for workshop in the fall (Pinckney Benedict!) and some poems ready for my poetry workshop (ALLISON JOSEPH). Also, I'm having my family up from Texas to celebrate Christmas in Illinois and Indiana with my boyfriend and me this year-- so I've got to go Christmas shopping on a grad student salary! Double yikes. (Suggestions for gifting are also welcome. :) )

I basically just wanted to check in, promise I'll do better at updating next semester, and say that I've genuinely enjoyed reading everyone's updates and getting to know them this year. You guys have really helped me feel like I've got a community. Thanks to Jonterri for setting this up and letting me participate.

Introduction: Katie Darby, SIUC class of 2011

Hello! My name is Katie Darby, I'm 23, and I'm going to be a Fiction MFA candidate at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale (home of the Crab Orchard Review, for those of you submitting to and reading journals). I got my undergraduate degree from the University of Evansville a couple of years ago, and since then, I've worked as a long-term permanent substitute in a writing classroom, an editorial intern at Writer's Digest Books, a bookseller at Borders, an English tutor, a housesitter (the sweetest gig of all-- thanks Rob and Tiffany!), and more recently, a temp at an energy company. I also write live music reviews for the Evansville Courier and Press and have gotten some pretty cool opportunities through that: last week, I got to interview Pat Simmons of the Doobie Brothers.

I also run a music recommendation blog (http://katiedarbyrecommends.blogspot.com), and I love pretty much anything to do with music. I started teaching myself guitar in January, and now I spend more time writing songs than fiction (...something I need to remedy ASAP, haha.) I've got a really wonderful opportunity through SIUC to teach-- I'll be teaching two sections of composition this fall, and couldn't be more excited about that.

I'm excited about SIUC for about a billion reasons, but one of them is that it's still relatively close to Evansville, where I've lived for the past several years. My boyfriend is only two hours away-- so is my favorite pizza. You can't argue with that. I'm also excited because I'll be taking some cross-genre classes-- which is mostly good because I actually applied to about 9/10ths of my schools last year in poetry, haha, even though I always wanted to write fiction. So, I get my wish! Both of them!

I'm really excited about what's coming up, but I'm getting anxious for it to get here! The pre-semester workshop-- which will teach me how to teach-- starts August 12th. Hopefully I'll have some good stories from that.