Skewl

    So I’ve been at my MFA program since Thursday.  I’ll be here until Sunday, so today is about the halfway point.
    For those of you who don’t know, I am in Pine Manor College's Solstice MFA Program.  The way I found it is actually pretty funny.  I went to Catholic high school (though I’ve never been super religious), and I looked at Pine Manor for undergrad.  Pine Manor and my high school were both all girls.  I did a tour, and the campus is beautiful, with a nice antique Administration building, a better shower/bathroom to student ratio than any other college I’ve seen, but I couldn’t do four more years of no boys.  I needed some penis in my classroom, goddammit!  Of course, I didn’t end up going where I picked, but that’s a story for another day.
    So I come to the Winter/Spring semester of my junior year of college (which, strictly year-wise, was my senior year - indeed, I was a super-senior.  Be jealous), and my parents ask if I’m thinking about grad school.  They didn’t want me to go into writing when I was in high school, because it’s rarely lucrative, but I think they had come to realize how passionate I was about it.  I loved my undergrad English courses, at any rate.  So I say no I hadn’t thought about it, I didn’t even know you could get a Master’s in Writing.  I believe you can, they say.
    So I go on the Googley and I search for Master’s in Writing.  I came across a site that would find colleges with the Master’s Program you desired, and I found a few.  To be specific, I found Pine Manor, Goddard, Lesley, and Vermont College of Fine Arts.
    I did a tour/open house for Goddard College, Vermont College of Fine Arts, Emerson College, and  Lesley University.  Each time I went to a new place I liked it better than the old.  Well, that’s not true.  I hated Emerson, and we left early.  I was disappointed, because I had looked there when I thought I wanted to get my Bachelor’s in Speech Therapy, but this time they just seemed beyond pretentious, and it gave me a bad feeling in my stomach.  Other than that, they were great.  What I liked the most was that (except for Emerson) they were all low-residency programs, something I’d never heard of before.
    If you don’t know, low-residency means that you are on campus for a short, action-packed amount of time, and the rest of the semester is spent in correspondence with a mentor.  Here at Solstice, most of the mentors work through email, though some prefer snail mail.  This is an ideal set-up if you have a full time job, as you don’t need to leave work early every day, but merely use your vacation time to go away.  It also allows people of all ages and locations to come to the program, since they don’t need to permanently relocate.
    So back to the school-checking out.  I go to all four of these, and am in the midst of filling out applications, when I realize there is no open house for Solstice.  So I email the director (Meg Kearney), and I ask if any such thing is possible, telling her I live locally.  She asks if I can come on a specific day at something like two in the afternoon, and I say sure.  What this turned out to be was a one-on-one meeting (well, my mom and brother came with me), with the director of the freaking program.  She answered all the questions I had, and if I had any stupid ones, she never let on.  I knew then that this was the place I was meant to be.
    I sent out applications to everywhere but Emerson and Goddard (because I was getting real sick of Goddard’s shit in regards to their lengthy application requirements), and waited.
    Solstice was the first to respond, and as embarrassing as this is, the only one to accept me.  Which makes me happy that they were first.  I tend to take things ridiculously personally, and I’m working on it, but a rejection would have crushed me if that’s what had come first.  Before I got my letter in the mail, I got a call from Meg herself, and a message on my voicemail with the good news.  I wasted no time in responding, even before I got the rejection letters.  I was thrilled that I would get to be a part of the community Meg and the assistant director Tanya Whiton had created.
    This low-residency program is four semesters and five residencies.  Each residency consists of workshops 9-noon on days 2-9, with classes in the afternoon.  You have to take come Craft, Criticism, and Theory classes (two hours long), and some Elective Sessions and Seminars (one hour long).  You have to take three of each, but everyone takes more.  The day the class list gets emailed is a day no real school work gets done.  For seven nights, there are faculty and guest readings, as writers not slated to be workshop leaders and mentors come in to teach classes, also.  A lot of people stay in the dorms, but some people stay in the hotel down the road that offers discounts to Solstice students and faculty.  There is a reading where the graduating students do a fifteen minute reading of their creative thesis, and a reading where the other students read 1-2 minutes of whatever work they want to share.  The second Saturday (day 9) is Graduation.  The fourth semesters decorate, which is nice unless you’re a fourth semester!  The ceremony is always classy, and there’s a reception afterward.
    Throughout the first two semesters, you work on your creative work and learn to write craft analyses, in preparation for the third semester and the critical thesis.  I just finished this semester, and it was hard, but I did it.  The paper is supposed to be 30-35 pages, and mine went onto the 36th a little bit.  I wrote about narrative distance in first and third person, so next residency (Summer), I’ll teach an hour long class about it.  I’m nervous, because I’m the kind of person who would never not use an Invisibility Cloak if I had one.  Again, I’m working on it.  The fourth semester, students work on their critical thesis.  It has to be 120-150 pages, and there are special rules for having it bound and such.  I’m excited to get back into my zombie novel.
    Despite all the ways my writing, both critical and creative has grown, my favorite part of Solstice is the people.  Meg and Tanya are so accessible, and so are the faculty.  But my fellow students are great.  Without a doubt my favorite people in the world are people I met here.  I won’t mention names, because this is spur of the moment so I didn’t get permission, but I know I can mention one name, because she blogs about Solstice sometimes, too, and that’s Amanda.  She and the other people in the program are my tribe, and it feels silly to say that, but my family just doesn’t understand me the way they do, and they never will because they’re not writers.  I’m sad that I only have one residency left, because I love this community so much, but I’m happy that I love close and I can continue to come to classes and graduation and such even after I’m “done.”  And now I’m going to go get my shiz together for the class I have this afternoon.  If you’re a random writer and you’re thinking about an MFA program, look at Solstice!