Remind me to talk about the Japanese restaurant and the waitress with herpes...

I start graduate school this fall.

Well, August 24th if you’d like to mark it on your calendar. (It’s a Wednesday.)

I’ll be earning an extremely valuable degree that’s sure to do wonders for my income. I can only imagine at this point the amounts of sheer wealth I’ll be able to drape myself in. I imagine entire days having semi-erotic photos taken of myself covered in cash in ironically inappropriate settings. Credit Unions. Arctic Circles. You know... the usual.

But this is what a degree in Fine Arts can do for you. Especially creative writing. I hear that creative writing is actually number three in terms of most positions outsourced to India. After Illustration and Film Directing, of course. Philosophy is fourth.

I think I’m lying again.

In total, I applied for five Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing programs: The University of Utah, New York University, Arizona State, the University of Montana and the University of California at Irvine.

My letters of recommendations (a.k.a. some of my favorite professors and people) had told me that I shouldn’t have a problem getting into a few of the schools. My writing has potential (which I believe is saying it’s pretty good or could be someday) and the grades, GRE scores and racial minority-ness were all in line.

Long story short (i.e. without the rushing home from work everyday to see if I have any more acceptance letters, getting the first one with a yes, then slowly getting four more with a no, no, no and no) I was accepted to the University of Utah. Which is an amazing program, but it is also the same place I earned my undergrad. I wasn’t sure getting a BA and an MFA from the same school was the best choice.

(There were some money issues too, but I worked all that out. Suffice to say that I will not be un-selling out anytime soon – if ever.

Deciding to go to Utah ended up being a much harder choice than I had expected... (marathon sessions with the Magic 8 Ball® – by the way, I've invented a new tool that will help everyone make a decision, details soon!). I have no greater desire than to go through an MFA program and learn all about how author, novel, story, reader and text don’t exist. It’s only the cover photo and phonetic resonance that matters.

Or something like that... I don’t know what I’ll be learning. But I know I will be a better writer in two years than I am now.

Which is the point.

I have much more to say about the process of entering graduate school. It isn’t as easy or transparent as it could be. And the marketer in me seems to think so much more could be done to sell the programs. (“Sell” being a fill in for a better word that must exist.)

But I’ll wait to really complain until I’m a graduate student. I’m still not one. Not technically.

I think complaining and criticizing are what graduate students learn to do first.

Oh yeah, remind me to talk about the Japanese restaurant and the waitress with herpes sometime...