I've been thinking about going back to school.
Which is ridiculous. Completely. utterly ridiculous. Don't I have more than enough degrees already? Don't I have more than my fair share of student debt? Haven't I talked time and time again, on this very blog, about how one doesn't need to garner an MFA in order to be a writer?
More importantly: don't I already have an MFA ... of sorts? I have a Master's degree. I have a Master's degree in Creative Writing from my *first choice* of universities. And when I got that paper in hand four years ago, didn't I pause for a moment and think, "Hurrah! It's all done now!" ... ?? DIDN'T I???
And still. Over the past few weeks I've been fantasizing about being back in school. This is probably driven in no small part by the utter un-glamourness (that's a word because I said so) of a writer's day-to-day life. People: I go to my day job, and then Iwrite try to write. Occasionally I make enough money to buy groceries, and then I make food. I tweet varying degrees of nonsense to the world. I read books. And I also, occasionally, watch TV. (Hello, Don Draper! Hello!)
But that's, like, it. That's all I do. So maybe this desire to go back to school is fuelled in part by a desire to feel like I'm Relevant, or Engaged and Involved in The World, or something, instead of being exactly what I am, which is a hermit of increasingly anti-social proportions.
It's also, I confess, driven by an increased fascination with the MFA program at Guelph-Humber. Last week I had lunch with Ayelet Tsabari (we went to an Indian buffet and I ate too much, but she didn't seem to mind and has therefore now become one of my best friends), and her tales of life as a G-H MFA student were quite lovely indeed. Apparently you get at least partial funding. And you don't take as many workshops as you do in the universities on the West Coast, and you get to study with a writing mentor of your choice from anywhere in the world (so long as they agree) during your first summer in the program, which gives G-H the best parts of both Canadian and UK MFA programs. And--oooh!--I could delve more deeply (in an academic sense, as opposed to a solitary-hermit-who-lives-in-her-pyjamas sense) into creative non-fiction, which is a genre that I didn't explore at all when I was at UVic and have now come to quite enjoy.
But I'd be an idiot if I didn't also acknowledge that sometimes it's just easier to go back to school. When you're lying awake at night trying not to hyperventilate over the possible future of your soon-to-be-published novel and the possible death of your struggling-to-be-written next novel, it is easy to think: I'll go back to school, and learn how to be a *real* writer, and two years from now when they spit me back out everything will make sense. In the intervening two years, I will have become awesome. Novels will spew from my fingertips like symphonies from the mind of Mozart. Or they will shape themselves beneath my hands like the bread dough that rises perfectly beneath the palms of Julia Child. Just think: in two years, after the MFA, I will no longer use bad metaphors!
That's almost worth the price of application alone.
The good news is I have lots of time to think about this. If I do decide to apply to Guelph, I'd be applying for the Fall of 2013, which means that I wouldn't have to get my application together until November, which means that I can comfortably put any more thought about this away until October 27th, at which point I will wake up in a roaring panic and send frantic emails to overseas acquaintances asking for letters of reference.
Procrastination. Bastard saves me every time.
Which is ridiculous. Completely. utterly ridiculous. Don't I have more than enough degrees already? Don't I have more than my fair share of student debt? Haven't I talked time and time again, on this very blog, about how one doesn't need to garner an MFA in order to be a writer?
More importantly: don't I already have an MFA ... of sorts? I have a Master's degree. I have a Master's degree in Creative Writing from my *first choice* of universities. And when I got that paper in hand four years ago, didn't I pause for a moment and think, "Hurrah! It's all done now!" ... ?? DIDN'T I???
And still. Over the past few weeks I've been fantasizing about being back in school. This is probably driven in no small part by the utter un-glamourness (that's a word because I said so) of a writer's day-to-day life. People: I go to my day job, and then I
But that's, like, it. That's all I do. So maybe this desire to go back to school is fuelled in part by a desire to feel like I'm Relevant, or Engaged and Involved in The World, or something, instead of being exactly what I am, which is a hermit of increasingly anti-social proportions.
It's also, I confess, driven by an increased fascination with the MFA program at Guelph-Humber. Last week I had lunch with Ayelet Tsabari (we went to an Indian buffet and I ate too much, but she didn't seem to mind and has therefore now become one of my best friends), and her tales of life as a G-H MFA student were quite lovely indeed. Apparently you get at least partial funding. And you don't take as many workshops as you do in the universities on the West Coast, and you get to study with a writing mentor of your choice from anywhere in the world (so long as they agree) during your first summer in the program, which gives G-H the best parts of both Canadian and UK MFA programs. And--oooh!--I could delve more deeply (in an academic sense, as opposed to a solitary-hermit-who-lives-in-her-pyjamas sense) into creative non-fiction, which is a genre that I didn't explore at all when I was at UVic and have now come to quite enjoy.
But I'd be an idiot if I didn't also acknowledge that sometimes it's just easier to go back to school. When you're lying awake at night trying not to hyperventilate over the possible future of your soon-to-be-published novel and the possible death of your struggling-to-be-written next novel, it is easy to think: I'll go back to school, and learn how to be a *real* writer, and two years from now when they spit me back out everything will make sense. In the intervening two years, I will have become awesome. Novels will spew from my fingertips like symphonies from the mind of Mozart. Or they will shape themselves beneath my hands like the bread dough that rises perfectly beneath the palms of Julia Child. Just think: in two years, after the MFA, I will no longer use bad metaphors!
That's almost worth the price of application alone.
The good news is I have lots of time to think about this. If I do decide to apply to Guelph, I'd be applying for the Fall of 2013, which means that I wouldn't have to get my application together until November, which means that I can comfortably put any more thought about this away until October 27th, at which point I will wake up in a roaring panic and send frantic emails to overseas acquaintances asking for letters of reference.
Procrastination. Bastard saves me every time.
Guelph-Humber provides at least $5,000 in funding for each year, automatically. I thought this was impressive until I learned how much their tuition is. Tuition at Guelph-Humber is just about $5,000 more than U of S. Of course this was a moot point because they didn't accept me, so I didn't have to worry about that!
ReplyDeleteBut AMANDA, remember, you are not supposed to pay for grad studies. You should not have to pay for your MFA. If you got into Guelph, I would hope you would not go unless you got full funding and then some. Enough to, like, pay for your living expenses? I just think that unless you're a bit solvent, or haven't used up all of your student loans, or are coasting off someone else's wallet, it's irresponsible to pay for more school. Especially when there is funding to be had.
U of S has a mentorship program, too, modelled on Guelph's. What do you mean by you take fewer workshops than in west coast programs?