First Impressions

by Christopher Cocca


Hello fellow MFAers and MFA hopefuls!

My name is Christopher Cocca and I'm starting my MFA in fiction at The New School as of today. This evening was our orientation sessions, and I wanted to share my first impressions as I get ready to hop a bus back home:

Waiting for the session start and sitting with 70 or so other first-year students, I thought:

I wonder who else is scared.

I wonder who else assumes everyone else in the room has their shit more together.

I wonder who these new peers are, and which of them will be friends. I wonder where the ones I know from blogging and facebook are sitting.

I wonder who else is a spouse or parent.

I wonder what we'll do here.

A few minutes later, Bob Kerry greeted us with what I thought was a frank (in a good way) and encouraging welcome. Among other things, he talked about his life as a reader and congratulated us on taking this step.

Linda Dunn spoke next and welcomed us as part of The New School's long tradition of believing in the power of literature, words and education. She talked about the kinds of things the program looks for in applicants, and stressed the importance of taking a broad view of literature and in finding writers who reflect that value in diverse ways.

Robert Polito shared a poem from Jason Shinder's "Stupid Hope" and, later, "Lament For the Makers" by Frank Bidart:

Not bird not badger not beaver not bee

Many creatures must
make, but only one must seek

within itself what to make

My father's ring was a B with a dart
through it, in diamonds against polished black stone.

I have it. What parents leave you
is their lives.

Until my mother died she struggled to make
a house that she did not loathe; paintings; poems; me.

Many creatures must

make, but only one must seek
within itself what to make

Not bird not badger not beaver not bee

*

Teach me, masters who by making were
remade, your art.

Fitting, and for me as a parent making sense of taking time for art (even making art in the first place), a bit of serendipity. Writing well and making something worth having spent this time on is, in fact, a way of loving my son in a way that no one else can.

Robert stressed our program as community, and finished by thanking us, welcoming us, and telling us to enjoy. As my first night in the city ends, I feel thankful for this opportunity and excited about what we will do here.

Week 1 Update

by Emily May Anderson

So, I made it through my first week. It went a little something like this:

Monday, English 501: Intro to Graduate Study at 9:05am. Intimidating as heck, but encouraging too. That sounds weird, but that’s the only way I can describe it. I don’t feel at all prepared for this class, but I think that’s the point; by the time we’re done with the class, we will be prepared for the rest of our graduate study. We’re getting a crash course in theory, research methods, and how to write seminar papers. I’ve heard a nasty rumor that one of the professors (it’s co-taught by the MFA director and an older, very smart, very professorial medievalist) kind of has an issue with the MFAs in the class, like he doesn’t think we belong there or are “worthy” to be in his class with the MAs. Now I know I am as smart as anyone there so I’m taking it as a personal challenge to do really well in the class and prove him wrong. So, anyway, that was Monday morning. We got out a little bit early, so I got lunch with a couple people, then stayed on campus, did a lot of reading, then taught my first class at 4:40. It went okay; I felt nervous and I think I talked too fast, but it went fine, and I let them out about ten minutes early.

Tuesday, went to campus at 10:30, since I supposedly had Office Hours 10:30-11:30. I read the writing that my freshman had done in class the day before and was really impressed, then heated up my lunch, then went to The Writer in the Community. I didn’t know really what to expect with this class, but I am now really excited about it. We’d had an assignment before the first class to type up a page or so about our ideas of community and teaching writing in non-academic communities, so after the instructor introduced the class and went over the syllabus, each of us read and/or explained what we’d written, and we talked about them, then we decided what kind of projects we wanted to work on this semester and broke up into little groups and started talking about that. I wrote a bit more about the class on my blog earlier this week. That was my only class, so I went back home afterward, went for a nice 4 mile run, and then did some course planning for Wednesday and Friday.

Wednesday my class was Poetry Workshop with Robin Becker. Robin is scary but really great. There are 8 of us in the workshop, including two people I hadn’t met before. We talked extensively about the syllabus, then talked about our respective backgrounds and writing interests, got our assignments and then let out early. Sarah, the other first year poetry MFA, and I went and had lunch, then I putzed around my office for awhile before teaching again at 4:40. It went well, and I was much less nervous than I had been on Monday. The lecturing/writing on the chalkboard thing went well, and a few of the students seemed genuinely excited and interested when I told them that Elizabeth Alexander is going to be reading here in September. The Poetry Workshop has a chapbook focus; we’ll be reading a lot of chapbooks and we’ll be putting our own together in the second half of the semester. Each week in the first half we’ll read and respond to a chapbook, or chapbooks, in two ways: we’ll write a prose response/review and we’ll write a poem in some way inspired by a piece in the chapbook, either formally or in terms of subject or etc. Each person theoretically should get to workshop each week. I read the first chapbook and started my prose response that night.

Thursday I packed my lunch and met my neighbor Nicolette and an MA named Grace for lunch around noon, then we went to our Teaching Seminar. Talked about how the first two days had gone, got a few ideas for Friday and the first major assignment, then Grace and I walked over to check out the rec center. It’s not included in our student fees, but it’s super cheap to join as a student: $99 for the whole year and that covers multiple locations on campus, all the classes, pools, etc so I want to do it. But oh yeah, I had no money (this had been a theme of the week – I was still waiting on my student loan money so that I could buy books and groceries and pay bills and pretty much have a life). I was supposed to come home and go running again, but it was chilly and damp and I was feeling exhausted and disgruntled, so I didn’t. I think I drank some more coffee and tried to write.

Friday I spent the day carefully reading and taking notes on all the articles for 501 that were online (there were a lot of them – they made me feel stupid – I did not like them, but then again, I was grouchy anyway). I went to campus, in the pouring rain, just to teach class, but it went very well; the students were talking and interacting, and the time went super fast. That night Enru (my roommate), Nicolette, and I went up to Grace’s apartment and just chilled and watched a movie.

Today, I borrowed the books for our intro class from Enru and did that reading (not as bad as the articles, thankfully!), then we ended up having four of the girls over for dinner, so I frantically cleaned and cooked and showered. We had a nice time though, and one of the girls mentioned that she’d already gotten her paycheck direct deposited (we officially get paid the last day of the month) so I checked my bank account after they left and saw that not only had I received my paycheck but I’d also received the loan money. So, I paid a bunch of bills, and I get to buy books tomorrow!

Oh, and I also wrote the poem for Wednesday :) I’d tried to do it before and come up with something finished but very bad, so I started over tonight and it just worked.

So, in summary: it was a busy week. I’m only IN class for 12 hours a week, but there is a very definite balancing act I’m going to have to master of prepping to teach, reading/writing for my academic classes, reading/writing for workshop, AND still managing to run and have some sort of social life. I feel good about it though; I feel like I can do it, and I feel (after only a week) that I definitely belong here, I don’t doubt that for an instant, not even when I’m waiting for a bus in the pouring rain or sitting at my table glaring at an article about the Affective Fallacy.

Orientation!

By Casey Tolfree

Orientation was yesterday. I went down early to pick up my books and I.D. and all that fun stuff. I bought an Adelphi sweatshirt and decal for my car. I may be a graduate student but I'm all about school pride. If I'm going to spend the next two years commuting an hour to a school and pouring all my money into it then I'm going to be attached to it.

I got to campus way too early though. I was afraid there would be lines - there was one small one when I picked up my books but otherwise everything was smooth sailing. It didn't help that it was down pouring outside. I didn't bring in my umbrella because I thought that the rain would stop but it only got worse and worse. After sitting in the lounge surrounded by freshmen parents (it was apparently freshmen orientation too) for about 30 minutes, I finally decided to buy an umbrella. I wasn't going to get my newly purchased books soaked.

So, 15 dollars later I have my umbrella, start my walk to the car and drive over to Something Greek. A great little Greek life store my sorority uses for most of our purchases, paddles, jackets, etc. I picked up a new decal for my car. Zoey (my car) is going to be decked out.

Anyways, I finally get to the store four minutes later and it's stopped raining. Great.

But anyway, orientation. It was nice. I got to meet the teachers in the program. They each read some of their work and then spoke very briefly about the ways to succeed in the program. Reading life, community, etc. I loved meeting my new classmates though, my future community. I felt like I haven't had that community for a long time and the people I met seem nice enough, funny enough, interesting enough.

Tuesday's the first day of classes. Genre Development and Playwriting. I'm both nervous and exciting for this new experience. I'll update you then.

:)

Has It Really Only Been A Week?

by Keely Hyslop

My first week of classes is over and done with. Over all I'm feeling pretty excited and energized about being an MFAer. There's still some free-floating nervousness, but mostly there's just intense joy at being back on a college campus and back in workshop. Just the hustle and bustle of students coming in and out of their classes, jostling for books, and struggling to cram down lunch before the next class fills me with glee. If I needed proof I was a nerd I think I have it.

But let me start from the beginning. Monday was orientation, a fairly informal meet and greet/ panic over the fact that you don't have any classes because the recent brutal CSU budget cuts has decimated the class schedule. I was lucky in that I signed up for my classes the same hour I was allowed to register so I had a full schedule, but many people who had delayed in registering had no classes at all. Maxine Chernoff, the department head, was kind enough to put together a list of all classes in the creative writing and English departments that still had spaced and other professors chimed in about projects they needed assistance with that would give a grad student credit.

In every class the budget cuts have been a looming shadow. Mandatory staff furloughs are a required topic of conversation for the first class, so it's impossible for students to bury their heads in the sand about the issue even if we wanted to. It's interesting and strange observing the different ways that different professors handle the topic. Some professors stick to the book and simply tell us what days the class will be unable to meet because the professors aren't allowed to teach. Other professors seem to be hinting at the need for direct student action. One professor even went so far as to admit surprise that more students weren't rioting. Sometimes I get the impression that the campus is a powder keg ready to explode with frustration. The academic and the activist in me are of two different minds on the topic. The academic of course wants to just keep her head down and get as much out of her education as possible, but the activist in me reminds me that these budget cuts are unjust, particularly to the professors and the undergrads, and that it is everyone's duty, even busy grad students to rise and meet injustice whenever one encounters it. Reconciling the academic and the activist has been a major tension in my writing in the last couple of years, why shouldn't it be a major tension in my life?

Here's a link to a student made documentary on the CSU budget crisis if you'd like to know more: http://www.speakout4edu.com/home.html

Even though I felt sheepish doing it since there were some students who had no classes or in complete schedules, I still did a bit of shopping to make sure I was taking the classes I wanted to be taking. I made one change. I decided to take the Fourteen Hills class where you get to work on the staff of a literary magazine instead of taking the Writers on Writing lecture, which was a series of author readings, which quite frankly I can already get just from bumming around the city's used bookstores. I also decided to drop the intro to composition class in favor of taking a graduate instructional assistant position.

So this quarter I'll be taking 12 units: Fourteen Hills, an MFA Poetry Workshop, a process course on the persona poem, and a graduate instructional assistant course (leading an undergrad group in workshopping for a course called American Poetics). I'm also debating applying for a part time tutoring job, though I think I'm going to think it over for a few days. I'm doing ok financially for a few months at least, and I don't want to bite off more than I can chew, plus my writing schedule is still erratic. I really want to carve out a designated time for working on my poetry, rather than how I've been doing it: squeezing it in whenever I have an empty space in my schedule. I can already tell that if I keep shrinking my free time, but consider my free time and my poetry writing time to be synonymous, I'm going to have a problem.

This is kind of an abrupt transition, but I really wanted to talk about my first poetry MFA workshop. My first MFA workshop was quite simply divine - the highlight of my week. In a stunning display of dramatic tension building the professor, Paul Hoover, sent out an email the night before informing the class that we would be bringing 15 copies of one of our own poems, as well as a poem by a poet we admired to read to the class. This, from what I can tell, set off wide spread panic throughout the class, which gave us something to bond over in the halls before workshop started. We began the workshop by reading and discussing the poem by someone else we'd brought, which I think everyone really enjoyed. There's a certain intimacy that develops when you're discussing your favorite poem with other poets. (I brought Jack Gilbert's Failing and Flying, by the way. My favorite poem is technically The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Elliot, but this is my favorite poem that was written semi-recently.) It was a good beginning because it put us at ease before we began to workshop some of the poems that we, ourselves had written. Sharing a poem that was incredibly personal to me (one of the occupational hazards of writing from experience) with a room full of strangers was pretty intense, but they were gentle and fair with me. I think the poem was well-received, and even if they hated it, I have a good feeling about this group. I think we're going to be able to approach one another's shortcomings with compassion and a focus on tapping into unrealized potential.

And that's all for now. Sorry I've been a bit absent on this blog lately. I'll try to be more present in the discussions from here on in. I love this blog because it makes me feel like we're all in this together.

Happy writing everyone! Have a nice weekend!

George Mason Orientation

I had orientation last night!  It was a longish deal, with a reception for all of the GMU grad students, followed by remarks in a big auditorium, followed by an English Department orientation followed by an MFA orientation.

The reception was exactly the kind of thing I suck at --- standing around with a bunch of strangers making small talk.  The conversations all involved the same questions, mainly “Where are you living?” and “What classes are you taking?”  You notice I don’t mention asking about genre.  Know why?  Well, I’ll tell you why.  When we arrived they gave us those sticky name tags.  On them were both name and genre.  Name in big letters, genre in tiny letters.  Now I hate name tags.  Mainly because I have a huge chest and people always end up leaning over toward my boobs and I find that embarrassing.  But last night, even more embarrassing, was that I found myself doing it to other women, because of course I wanted to know everyone’s genre.  So there I was leaning over people and staring at their chests.  If only the genres had been in a font that was a little bigger, we wouldn’t have been all up on each other.  Oh well.  The good news is that everyone was really nice (although I confess to feeling old and wondering if at 38 I am the oldest), and my fear of meeting new people evaporated pretty quickly.  Even if it hadn’t, I would have been ok, because I already have a friend that I met through the MFA Blog before coming to school and she is hilarious.  We went around to all the little tables that groups had set up and took their loot.  We got balls from the athletic centers and luggage tags from the study abroad office.  

Next they packed all of us new grad students into an auditorium (which we had to walk to, up a huge-a$$ flight of stairs) where they had several people speak to us about the graduate school experience.  You are from many countries. . . GMU has top programs in. . . there are many resources here to help you. . . this is how I found balance in my work/school/family life. . . blah blah.  You know the drill.

Next, I went to yet another building for the English Department orientation, which consisted of about 4 people introducing themselves so that we would know who they are.  I don’t remember any of them, although their titles sounded important.

Finally, came the good part.  I went to yet another building for MFA orientation.  Here I counted 30 of us, including fiction, nonfiction and poets.  It was exciting to all sit in the same room together.  Our program director gave us handbooks and a ton of information about classes, thesis committees, building community, independent study, projects, etc. Here, better than the balls and luggage tags from the all-grad orientation, I got something awesome!  A grey t-shirt that says “Mason MFA Writer.”

So, as of last night, that is what I am.  A Mason MFA Writer.  I couldn’t be more excited.   

1st week at UNCG

by Whitney Gray



Well, I've finally gone through all of my classes, met with professors and learned about my job duties. It's been a long week, and I'm glad it's over. Now that I know what my days look like, I can start planning my time for homework, reading and writing.

I've written a post about my first week over at my blog, so I'll spare you the cross-posting. I hope everyone has had a great week so far! I feel like I have been waiting forever for school to start. I moved to Greensboro so early, I had moments where I had to remind myself why I moved up here. I almost forgot it was for school!

Introduction and Other Bits and Pieces

Hello all!

I thought I'd take a minute from reading and finally introduce myself! My name is Raina Fields.

I started my first year of Virginia Tech's MFA program in poetry this week. I graduated from Loyola College in Baltimore in 2008 with a B.A. in music and writing. I spent a year working for The Philadelphia Orchestra before I started graduate school.


I'll admit I did get tired of the same sort of urban life in Philadelphia and Baltimore and was drawn to the sort of small-town life that Blacksburg would offer. So far, it's been great. My life has been in full-speed this entire summer. I bought my first car, stopped working, packed my things and moved into my first apartment. The first couple of days in Blacksburg, I was too exhausted by the move that I fashioned cut up trashbags into a shower curtain and slept on the floor. The ten hour drive from Philadelphia (thanks to the U-Haul trailer) was just too much. Haha!

This week has been full of emotions, wavering from "Omg! I am so happy and blessed to have this sort of opportunity! I am up and ready to take full-advantage of everything presented to me!" to "What?! Why am I doing this to myself? Is it time for bed, yet?! Was I really on campus for 12+ hours today?!" It's all in good, clean, educational fun, though. As everyone is telling me, this is the time of transition and it will get better.

A bit about the program: We have seven new MFA students, 3 poets and 4 fiction writers. I believe we are all signed up for 18 feisty credits of English and Graduate School courses. My schedule this semester includes courses in Teaching Composition, New Media Writing, Poetic Forms, as well as a Poetry Workshop, a series of Graduate TA workshops, and Library Research workshops. My Teaching Composition course is 6 hours and includes students from the MFA program, MA and PhD in composition and rhetoric programs, which is pretty interesting! There also some experience teachers in the classroom, so everyone is pretty varied on the teaching spectrum, but we're all excited and ready to learn more to impart on our students!

While we don't teach this semester, we do get to assist in teaching a course and then next semester, we are given our own classroom! WOW! Haha! Also, this semester, we work in the Writing Center, assisting students in their writing papers and projects.

So far, I have to say my favorite course has been New Media taught by Ed Falco. It's been really interesting learning the basis of hypertext writing. We also have some great reading coming up, including Carole Maso's Ava and Nabokov's Pale Fire, two precursors to the hypertext writing movement. Yesterday in class, we all did a "exquisite corpse" and had to write a line based on a picture we were given and we linked certain words in the lines to other students' lines. It was fun and interactive and I love that! Our final project is that we all create our own hypertext writing. Wow! We even get to use Dreamweaver! I love technology :)

I'm also really excited for my Poetry Workshop tonight. I'm sure it will be fabulous! The thing I'm most nervous about is my current lack of creative writing. I'm in that stage where I haven't written a poem in a long time. I'm contemplating by giving introductions as "Hi I'm Raina! I used to be a poet! I hit my peak and now I'm struggling through graduate school pretending to be a talented writer! What's your name?!" I can only be proactive and do one thing and write, so that is a challenge I (and the program) has and that's what I will do. But in the meantime, PRAY FOR ME! Haha!

Well, it's back to reading Aristotle's Poetics! Best of luck to everyone who already started! I can't wait to read your stories :)