It is hilarious to me that the last line of my last blog post is, "I'll post again after my date ;)".
Because that was the weekend of my first date with a guy who became my boyfriend for three months and then it ended, oh let's see, two months ago!
So that really puts in perspective how long it has been since my last post! A whole relationship.
Well as a catch-up, my first year of graduate school is over.
Finally, over.
Which now means I have the summer to write my thesis.
I was researching jobs last night and an MFA is a requirement either as the highest achieved or as an alternative to having a PhD. Also another stipulation is to have a book published.
This is where the thesis is supposed to come in handy, as does the final Thesis Practicum class, which is next spring. Spring 2015 we will have a course in New York City, Right by Tribeca, where it will be practical applications of the things we have learned, the publishing world, marketing our work and ourselves, and more networking opportunities. Because really, with so many people in the world, it's who you know.
This past semester I taught a section of Introduction to Creative Writing.
They called me Professor and it was hella cute, but I spent the better part of the first 5 classes simultaneously questioning why I deserved to be there, and also thinking how much I enjoyed the job and how I felt at home up at the board.
My other friend who taught Composition, said, and I agree, that teaching is a series of good days and bad days and a constant push and pull with feeling great and feeling like a failure.
There were class periods where I knew everyone was engaged and that they were not only learning but that they were enjoying themselves doing it, which is ideal!
Other days I spent the entire commute home just questioning every move I made and repeating things that were said and shaking my head. The failure surrounded a lot of factors, like, how the class was feeling, what the weather was, what the lesson was, how I structured the lesson, what their homework assignment was, what assignments were coming up, etc.
It was a circus of information and emotions and worries both on my part and the students that when they all lined up perfectly it reaffirmed that I did in fact want to teach college for the rest of my life, and on other days I researched joining the Peace Corps and going off the grid in Ecuador for 2 years.
It would be a pleasure to continue to teach both at this university and once I graduate.
Practice makes perfect and after one semester I am aware of 15 extra mistakes that I couldn't have known, and I'm sure with every semester there will always be an additional 10, and maybe 1 or 2 issues that right themselves depending entirely on that mystical circus of possibilities.
I've also dipped my hand further into the vat of existential funk that is creative nonfiction.
I took a memoir class in undergrad, where I wrote about my first relationship. That was the same semester I developed anxiety disorder, and I found them to be linked in some way. Me having to explain why I was me to a room of people and for a quality grade.
In the end I got a B+ in the course because as the Professor said, my story wasn't as interesting as other people in the class, and he had convinced himself I was just not opening up.
That was so far the only time in my life I was told my life wasn't interesting because I hadn't been abused, gay, or an alcoholic.
But with this course I learned exactly how much I have to offer in terms of experience. My professor keeps pushing me to publish and every time I think of it I just don't think I've been through enough for strangers to care about my life, or to want to read it.
So there just in that moment it becomes another point of self-consciousness and self-degradation apparently.
I'll be writing my thesis this summer, which at the moment I have plans for it to be some hybrid of fiction and creative nonfiction. I have more ideas for nonfiction essays than I do for fiction pieces. Probably because fiction there's a lot more to think about and be aware of, and personal essays are given value by honesty and by impact on the reader.
If there is one thing I'm good at, it's being honest.
Which in itself, wasn't necessarily a lie...
Is doubting the same thing as lying?
The main thing graduate school has really questioned of me (and I think every writer should ask this of themselves as well:
why do you write?
I know I write because I don't have a voice in person. I write because I've read books around me and know I can write something better. I write because I don't want to die.
I'm happy to be in the back corner and to observe, but on some level I hate myself for feeling like I wasted too much of my life in the back corner observing when I could have been doing something else. But then I look at the things I have done and wouldn't want to change anything. I've done more than a lot of people I know. I moved to Australia for God's sake.
It brings me back to a quote from Memoir class.
"The sorrow we feel over the ending of a relationship isn't the loss of the significant other, rather the lost possibility of self."
When I say I regret being in the corner, I really mean that I wonder what my life could have been like. How would it have been different? This is perhaps another reason to write.
Being able to play out the lives of every possibility you can think of, putting them in a world of your own design and orchestrating the drama to how it all plays out.
Part of being a writer is seeing every possibility.
