My Summer (Non)Vacation

My buddy Michael recently chronicled his first few weeks in an online PhD program. Last week I finished my first semester in a completely different program, and I’ll share that with my “readership” (all five of you).

I’m in an MFA in Writing program at the University of San Francisco. The class of 2006 started with an intensive weekend in late June, followed by a six-week class where we learned “aspects of the craft.” It was the fire-hose treatment: we were gulping down new things to learn while we churned out writing assignments and struggled to create a 40-page manuscript that would be our final project for the six-week semester. (I recall producing a 40-page final project for my senior year at Barnard, but I had an entire spring semester to do it in!)

We met twice a week, on Tuesdays as a group with all 26 students (we started with three groups of nine, but one student dropped out after the first weekend), then met on Wednesdays in our separate workshops.

We had three books to read, as well as a student reader and a number of handouts. I thought I was getting ahead by reading the books before class started (Geography of the Heart, The Woman Warrior, and Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight). However, I realized I needed to re-read the books during the semester, because I was learning “aspects of the craft,” to quote a handout, that I hadn’t picked up in the earlier readings. (Though I suppose no reading is ever wasted.)

The Wednesday workshops were the most intense, but also the most productive. We handed in sections of our work in progress and shared sections of our work with two other students. Every week, two of us turned in a longer piece (10 pages) that everyone read and then closely critiqued. We all had the same experience of learning this week what we wanted to apply to work written last week.

“Critiqued” is the operative word here, because the feedback was always careful, frequently positive, and quite constructive. We had to prepare written feedback to each student, which naturally helped shape our class input, and everyone in my class always gave 1000%. I found I learned as much or more about craft from the successes of my fellow students than from the formal readings. I wondered in advance about the workshop experience, but at least this semester, in these classes, the feedback was respectful and even heartening for everyone involved.

I loved the experience of real face-to-face instruction. All three instructors were marvelous, and our workshop instructor was just amazing. I’m aware that in two years of classes it is possible I won’t be as thrilled with every instructor (although that information won’t find its way to this blog, since I believe in “praise in public, criticize in private”). Nevertheless, the quality of teaching and the dedication of our instructor was just remarkable. I haven’t had that kind of intellectual guidance or stimulation since my senior seminars in college, and this was a few notches higher than that.

Some of my friends have asked me what I am going to “do” with my MFA, as if it were a kitchen appliance they couldn’t quite dope out. So here are my plans:

1. I will improve my writing.
2. I will have a marvelous educational experience.
3. I will enjoy the collective experience of being part of a class of students sharing the same education.
4. I will benefit and learn from being at the receiving end of education.
5. I will grow from the many great readings I will carefully work through, those assigned by my instructors as well as shared by my peers.
6. I will produce a book-length work that has nothing to do with libraries.
7. I will allow this program to help shape my values and my priorities.

Regarding #7, I have already learned to set aside treats such as favorite television programs, and to turn down or negotiate speaking engagements that interfere with my classes. I insist on exercising every day–it’s important for my mental and physical health. I leave some time for family, because a few hours with my partner and our cats replenish me like few other things can, and I gave myself a church waiver for the first semester, because I felt so overwhelmed that I knew I wouldn’t be there in the spirit even if my body was there. Still, beyond bills and taxes, it’s amazing how much can wait.

Speaking of waiting, after three years, it was time for my job to stop being my hobby. I give it 1000%, and have found myself being LII’s “mom” at the craziest times and places. But no job can give back to you the way that life and love and education can, and this was a good opportunity to begin drawing that line much more clearly. I am too happy in the other parts of my life to ever think of applying to be a charter member of People Overinvolved in Jobs That Substitute for Other Things.

Class resumes August 31, although there are socials and readings next week that have that back-to-school feeling (which in the Bay Area means to me a sudden heat wave, right after I pull my warmest sweaters out of the trunk). The semester I just finished is supposed to be the hardest; we’ll see about that. I look forward to all of it: the challenge, the discipline, the collegiality, the strides we all will take, including me.

That’s the dilly yo on my last few weeks, if not the 411, to use the idioms of the Youth of America (and may a thousand flowers bloom). Meanwhile, I have a pile of magazines, the Olympics, and three or four good movies to see, not to mention a list of “honeydews” and a few hours intended for lying on the floor playing with the cats, our lilies of the field who neither read nor write.