May 26th, 2006

writing — No Comments
26
May 06

If You Want To Go To Grad School (Part 3)

In my last post, I mentioned a specific university job that was nightmarish. Mindy Shatner (not her real name) made my first semester of teaching a living hell. Hopefully, she’s got some of that karma coming back to her if she teaches in grad school. Before Ms. Shatner, there was Professor Joseph K. Needless to say, it’s not his real name. My first university job was working for him, and that became nightmarish towards the end.

My MFA career began during my senior period in undergraduate school. It would be a year and a half until I was matriculated in the graduate creative writing program, but I say it began during my senior year because that was when I met Professor Joseph K. I enrolled in his upper division 20th Century American literature course. His choice of books was definitely unconventional. Apart from the somewhat canonical Langston Hughes, we read poems by Joy Harjo and Jimmy Santiago Baca. Bloods, a transcription of oral narratives of the Vietnam War, sparked discussion. We also read two of Professor K’s books – his own collection of short stories centering on murderers and sexually unconventional people, and a university press journal (centered on “innovative fiction”) edited by Professor K himself. Even though I was not impressed with Professor K’s book, I was intrigued with his journal. His text selections represented the zeitgeist, and I enjoyed reading them and contributing to the class discussion. Somehow, I had an impact on Professor K. During one office meeting, he invited to take a graduate course he was offering for the following semester. As a senior, I was honored. He thought that much of me, but some bigger surprises were to come.

Professor K picked a small group of students from the American literature class to become part of his editorial team, and I was among the elite. Once again, I was honored that he chose me as he explained to us in his office that he valued our skills as readers and critics and that we had a lot to offer his journal. After the course was over, I kept in touch with Professor K during the following summer and visited his home for a journal party before the start of the fall semester. I was only one of two people who showed up from our class and everyone else present were graduate students. Professor K introduced me to the group as an excellent writer and critic, which definitely raised my confidence.

During the start of the fall semester, the assistant editor simply became unavailable to do his duties due to the demands of graduate school and his marriage. Since he could not keep office hours for the journal, I stepped in and Professor K gave me keys to his office and the mailroom. I processed the submissions and issued them to the readers, delivered Professor K’s mail to his desk, and read and recommended manuscripts to Professor K. He trusted my opinion, but he did not always accept my suggestions. Though I was not getting paid, I enjoyed the work because I was valuable. By the end of the semester, Professor K gave me the title of assistant editor.

Sometime during that semester, I stopped calling him Professor K and started to call him Joe. Everyone who worked with him was on a first name basis with him, so I felt I should too. While my relationship with Professor K was congenial, my relationship with Joe would be stormy after my admission into the MFA program. When I was in his upper division course, I mentioned my interest in the program. Professor K was skeptical because he had not seen any samples of my fiction. When I took his graduate literature course, he gave a lot of creative response exercises. I enthusiastically kept a journal. Actually, it was an 11×17 sketchpad. I wrote in it, but I also did visual art response – collages, drawings, and a hybrid work that would grow into my thesis. I showed Joe the first three pages of the seminal work and his reaction surprised me. He said it was good.

While Joe could not guarantee me a seat, he wanted me to apply to the program. He had seen my work and I was working for him. Somehow, I suspect the latter was more important. His former assistant was transitioning out of the program, so Joe hoped to continue the working relationship he had with me. He had me show him what I had compiled for my application portfolio. Several of my exercises comprised a bulk of it, while only one early story of mine made it. My stories about a crazy Japanese auntie figure seemed too tame. Joe also grilled me on who I would get letters of recommendation from (besides him). It was a given that he would write on my behalf. I mentioned one creative writing instructor I had as an undergraduate and he did not like her at all. I mentioned another, and this one had more credibility with Joe. To satisfy the requirement of three letters, I went through few choices with Joe on literature professors, and I settled with asking a professor I took British and Romantic literature courses with. He agreed. I wrote my statement of purpose and e-mailed it to Joe a few times. Each time, I was able to refine it due to Joe’s correction. Once the application package was complete, I mailed it from a post office that was only two hundred feet from the English Department.

To be continued…

teaching / writing — No Comments
26
May 06

If You Want To Go To Grad School (Part 2)

In my last post, I mentioned some university jobs and their basic challenges to grad students. The job mentioned in this post is one job that posed challenges to me at one point in my MFA career:

Sometimes, the jobs can be nightmarish. During my undergraduate career, I have long dreamed about becoming a creative writing teacher. I was so passionate about this subject because discovering writing was like a religious conversion. Throughout high school, I never had confidence in my ability to write. It was in a freshman literature course that sparked my interest. I read C.S. Lewis novels on my own at the time, but writing about short stories, poems, and plays also sparked my interest. A few semesters later, I worked up the courage to take a creative writing course, and my life has never been the same since. Since I had help in becoming a writer, I wanted to help other young writers as well. When I had the opportunity to teach lower division creative writing, my dream came true, even if the pay was lousy. I was filled with hope and ambition with how I was going to teach the class. I was not going to be like my first creative writing teacher, that jerk who ripped student’s works to shreds, killing them as writers in the process. I envisioned myself as their bodhisattva. I would nurture them and lead them to enlightenment in writing fiction and creative writing. However, experience of teaching was not what I expected. I only connected with a handful of students. In their varying levels of talent, they brought their interest and their desire to learn. One student was a joy to have because of his intelligence. Another brought her talent and joy (despite her many absences). Another applied her Marine Corp discipline to the crafts of fiction and poetry and I gladly gave her my time outside of class to help her. A conscientious man was my ally because he was the only thirty-something student in the class. Most seemed indifferent. They seemed to elsewhere, in side conversations, not caring about the subject. Many never read the assigned works. I vaguely remember them, but the student who was downright hostile is definitely indelible.

I don’t remember when the hostility began or whose fault it was. She definitely made a bad impression with her early departures. She was smug, sure of herself, and definitely too smart for me. She was a college senior intellectually slumming it in a class for freshmen and sophomores. She was taking graduate course, one or two upper division courses, and my course. Sometimes she was above me and my topics; other times she looked at me with contempt. And for someone at her level, she had the worst classroom etiquette. She often talked while I was speaking or made noises while I wrote on the chalkboard, my back turned to the class. I often responded in kind – directly telling her to be quiet. This only made the situation worse. When I confronted her after class about a side conversation she had with a classmate and warned her about the consequences, she accused me of persecuting her. As I tried to hold my ground in the discussion, she became more belligerent. I told her we would have a discussion with the department head the next time it happened and she bellowed at me that she had a lot to tell her about my teaching ability. She then stormed out of the classroom.

I left the class shaking. By the time I walked to the library, I was in tears. I went to the English department and hoped to find the Chair in her office. She was away on a conference. I spent the next hour talking to the graduate advisor. She listened, gave me anecdotes of other graduate students who also had students treat them terribly, and humorously refer to my student as a “bastress.” I always chuckle when I think of that word. I went home and did not go to the literature seminar later that evening. One or two more absences occurred because I was extremely stressed out. I wrote reports to the Chair about the incident and stated I was going to fail her; my student also e-mailed complaints to her. The student sent me an extremely long e-mail about the issue, and, in the end, I declared an uneasy truce with her.

I nearly failed the graduate seminar because of my absences. I did not communicate with the professor at all until I was ready to return to class. I knew my grade and my seat in the program were in jeopardy, so I sent the professor a “mea culpa” e-mail apologizing for my absences and explaining my reasons for them. Because this professor had been a significant part of my undergraduate career, he expressed his disappointment and displeasure in his reply, but he was willing to meet me and discuss what could be done about me and my grade. He said that he had observed that I seemed distracted with teaching before the absences. My reading essays were not what they could be and I was not as present in the course. In the end, I was allowed to finish the course with a satisfactory grade, even if my paper had to be turned in late.

My thesis chair, who mentored my creative writing class, also observed that the experience was not good for me. I was working extremely hard teaching the class, much to my detriment as a writer. I found it difficult to focus on my own creative writing and he commented that the quality was declining. He also noticed the lack of reading. I evaded the topic of books, but it was something he was able to see in my language. I was shocked by his frankness, especially when he said the school was exploiting me. It made me angry because it brought me back to when I felt exploited as a writing tutor and as a professor’s assistant. I was only paid $343 a month that semester and it felt like I was doing $1292 worth. I was in the program to write fiction and I was hardly writing at all.

To be continued…

teaching — No Comments
26
May 06

If You Want To Go To Grad School…

If you want to go to grad school, run! Run as hard and as fast as you can away from the idea. If you picked up an application during a campus visit, put it down and walk away. If you had already sent to the university for an application, put the thing in the shredder. If you’re on the university’s website and have accessed the online application, type in another URL and do something else. Shop, look at porn, have cybersex, or do whatever else you like to do online. Just don’t go to another university’s website.

This advice applies if you’re considering an academic master’s or doctorate degree or you’re aimless after getting that BA or BS. Of course, there is something fun about extending a college career. The parties are better and the professors will drink with you. Oh, and there is this thing called work. For the truly dedicated who someday wish to become professors themselves, there are plenty of coveted, but low paying jobs. For $200-$600 a month, grad students can expect to work as a tutor, an assistant to a professor, or a TA (which could either stand for [student] teaching associate or teaching assistant). During my time earning an MFA in creative writing, I worked as a writing tutor, an assistant to an English professor, a lower division creative writing instructor, a TA attached to an Intro to Literature lecture class, and even as an adjunct professor at a local community college. Most of these jobs were in the $200 to $340 range each, and perhaps came to $600 if several were combined. My adjunct instructor job during my thesis semester was wonderful. I would have to work several of the university jobs for what I got paid to teach developmental writing at the community college.

Pay was only one issue of the grad school gigs. For the compensation offered, these jobs were extremely demanding. Tutoring students took a great deal of emotional and intellectual resources. Teaching lower division courses, of course, required lesson plans, attention to student work, and patience that is definitely required of high school teachers. One has to read the material, create assignments, grade papers, and interact with friendly or hostile students. While the professor takes care of lessons for a lecture class, the TA still has a lot of work. One has to work with one or two groups of students from the class (which can be up to 60 people), facilitate discussions, and give tests and quizzes (some TA’s even give homework). While the professor lectures, the TA is essentially responsible for the student’s grade. However, the professor can overrule the grades if she sees fit. The student workers must shoulder the responsibilities of their jobs in addition to the work required of them in their graduate courses. While graduate programs come with obligations to read, study hard, and write well, students often work to meet more basic needs such as food, clothing, and shelter.

To be continued…