Posts Tagged ‘school’

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>Three Cheers for Maurice

April 10th, 2009 by Suzanne | No Comments | Filed in Damn, writing

>Frankly, I’m in deep shit. I think that working full-time, attending a full-time master’s program in creative writing, drafting two posts a week for BlogHer, serving on the Board of a nonprofit child care center that has real estate issues, attempting healthy-ish lifestyle through exercise, and continuing to have relationships with friends and family (which I am failing at miserably in some cases) is maybe more than I can handle. For the last two weeks, I’ve been exhausted constantly.

It’s not just me who needs a break. Maurice, the hamster who runs on the wheel that powers my brain, is on strike. At first I was mad at his furry ass for not keeping up, thus resulting in me making big mistakes like handing in the same story twice (written in two different ways, since I didn’t remember writing it in the first place) or smaller errors like when I called Oedipus Odysseus in yesterday’s blog post. Now I realize that the little dude is just overworked.

Maurice and I used to take breaks to read friends’ blogs or watch mindless TV. These days, I need to think for more hours, whether to learn about the nuances of Obama’s foreclosure prevention plan or to answer questions about a book I read for class, and poor little Maurice runs nonstop from when I wake up until I go to sleep. That’s a lot for any brain hamster, let alone a 33 year old one. So I want to thank him publicly for hanging in there. (Thanks Maurice!)

I need to take a hard look at everything that’s on my plate. I know what I want to cut, but Husband is not on board with that plan. If only I could write a book and sell it for six-figures, like, say fucking Meghan McCain,* that would solve everything. Uh, right….

*Love Jossip’s suggested title about Ann Coulter, as does Maurice.

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>Maybe the Childhood Concussions Did Have an Effect…

March 25th, 2009 by Suzanne | No Comments | Filed in fuck, mortification, writing

>A surge of excitement ran through me as my lit professor handed back our papers from the previous class. I had worked extra hard on mine, and thought that it was one of the best things I had written in a while. In addition to telling the story of my best friend from 4th grade and exploring racism in my hometown, it had metaphors!

The professor generally keeps the papers she likes best at the top of the pile, so I was a bit disconcerted when mine came in the middle of the stack. Looking it over, I was struck by the lack of comments on it. “Oh my God,” I fretted. “She hated it!” In the following nanoseconds, I realized that I was a talentless hack who should drop out of school and never show my face again. Then I decided that it might be more productive to ask her why she didn’t like it.

“Oh, I always look forward to reading your work,” she replied. “But I read this one already, so I was disappointed that it wasn’t anything new.”

“What? You did?” I urged the hamster to run more quickly on the wheel that powers my brain so that I could figure out how this was possible. Maurice grunted at me before reluctantly picking up the pace.

“Yes, this is a nice expansion of something you handed in earlier in the semester.”

I frowned. I knew that I had been thinking about this particular story for a few weeks, but I was pretty sure that it hadn’t left my head until I wrote the paper I now clutched in my bony hand. Finally, Maurice got his furry ass in gear and I realized that I had, in fact, handed in the same basic story my second week of class. Worse, I had just looked at that first story again on Monday night, and thought about where I wanted to go with it, making no connection to the fleshed out version that I eagerly anticipated receiving back on Wednesday night.

Very, very scary. I would think that I completely have lost it, except that I think that Maurice threw some information out of the mental filing cabinet to make room for all the details I learned about the Obama administration’s mortgage refinancing and loan modification program. (I am a very good resource on this!) Still, not good.

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>Something Not Funny Happened Part Way Through the Writing Program

March 8th, 2009 by Suzanne | No Comments | Filed in writing

>My goal was to attend an MFA program to better understand the craft behind writing a book, then to write a hilarious account of the horrors and indignities that I suffered through during puberty. My writing sample (or portfolio or whatever the fuck they call it) was an uproarious account of my first bra shopping experience and adjusting to having boobs. This culminated in the absurd experience of a breast reduction at the age of 22. I had a whole draft chapter on my first period and then what happened when I stopped getting it at all at age 17. Funny shit.

The problem is that as I’ve been studying literature, I find myself writing not so funny stories about the Holocaust and my family, the prejudiced community in which I was raised, and how direct and indirect discrimination impacted my decision to pursue a career in social justice. Sure, sometimes I am able to throw in a good joke about my bubbe’s tuchus (that’s butt in Yiddish), as my grandfather used a wicked sense of humor to deflect the pain of losing his family in the Holocaust (a tactic I also employ when I talk about subjects that are difficult for me, even if I can’t compare what he experienced to anything I did), but I’m finding myself scribbling all sorts of serious little stories. It’s both cathartic and distressing to explore these topics.

I hope that as I progress and develop my voice, I can strike a balance between the serious and the hilarious. Writing. Harumph….

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>No Whine with This Cheese

January 26th, 2009 by Suzanne | No Comments | Filed in Uncategorized

>Man, have I been whiny lately. I am happy to report that my first class of this semester was good. Fingers crossed, I think I will learn a lot from this workshop. The instructor laid down some clear ground rules, which pleased my fuddy duddy side. I suspect she will not indulge anyone who compares my writing to Oscar Meyer. Plus, she gave a quick lecture about what she looks for in nonfiction writing that actually provided some good insight and guidance.

The other exciting aspect of the class is that no one seems like a pretentious fuck. I walked out of my first class last semester and blew up over some of the outrageous, obnoxious things that my fellow writers said to introduce themselves. No one made me want to stab them in the face tonight. Hurray! Plus, one of the guys sells mattresses. (Or at least I think that was what he said he did for a living when I met him at a student event back in September.) Joe Biden also sells mattresses (or at least he looks like he should), so I am excited that vice presidential material is hanging around me.

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AAA

January 7th, 2009 by Suzanne | No Comments | Filed in Damn, writing

Three As are a cause for suspicion these days. The bond rating agencies ignored all common sense, succumbed to pressure, and gave AAA ratings to all manner of junk securities. (As Husband explained to me, when there’s a lot of shit in a lot of buckets, the smell of each bucket doesn’t offset the others, which how how the rating agencies justified giving excellent ratings to buckets of shit.)

I thought about the AAA rating when I checked my grades online. It turns out that I got an A in my workshop, an A in my lit seminar, and an A in my colloquium. Under normal circumstances, I’d be puffing my chest and celebrating with a metaphorical cigar. However, I know that my grades are as inflated as Moody’s ratings on collateralized debt obligations full of subprime mortgages. And just like with all the securities ratings, I know that all of my classmates’ “products” were given triple As, too. It’s sort of hollow.

Once, way back in the day when I thought that a career in public policy would fulfill me and thus pursued a graduate public administration degree, I aced a semester. I received an A in my advanced seminar on child & family policy (actually a PhD class in the School of Social Work), an A in my seminar on social policy analysis (also a social work PhD course), an A in a course on the legal environment of policymaking, and an A in my public management practicum. Damn, I feel my chest puffing up as I write this. The next semester I almost outdid myself, earning two As (in an insane course on public housing policy and in a policy analysis practicum), and A+ (seriously, they gave me an A+!) in a research practicum on poverty and public policy. Then I got a B+ in a sociology course in which the professor refused to talk to me after I missed a class due to illness, so that ruined it, but whatever. I’ve never been prouder of my work.

Grades don’t buy happiness, that’s for sure. I’m pretty nervous to start over again at the end of the month. I won’t even go into the problem I’m having trying to change a class because no one is overseeing the fucking program right now; the director is on leave for the semester, and the associate director is out until Jan. 20. Not that they should be at the beck and call of students just because we pay $22,000 a year in tuition, but you’d think someone might stick around for little issues. What do I know about running programs, though? I just got an A in public management and have been administering nonprofit programs for almost a decade. I smell some buckets. (Man, this is way more bitter than I intended it to be.)

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>I’ll Drink to That!

December 17th, 2008 by Suzanne | No Comments | Filed in random

>A mojito in a diner cost me $8 last night. Eight dollars!!! And, of course, I could only manage to drink half of it, even though it was fairly tasty. With the first sip, my gut started to feel funny, as my liver yelled, “What are you putting in me? Get that gunk away from my pure lifestyle! Harridan!”

My liver will once again be forced to cope with one little drink, as I intend to imbibe tonight as well. Last night was the final workshop of the semester, something to celebrate. (Not that the class was completely awful, and I did learn many things, but it presented me with intellectual and emotional challenges that I am glad I don’t have to face until at least Jan. 26, when school starts again. Hopefully, I’ll be better equipped to cope with nasty comments, pretentious fools, and implications that I am a talentless hack now that I know how it goes. Even better, perhaps no one will be an asshole! And damn, that is one long winter break. But I digress…) I am sad that my lit class is over tonight, as I also learned a lot (and at various times, also felt like Trig Palin at the RNC convention, but overall this was not the case) and immensely enjoyed the reading we did and how the professor parsed the material to show us the craft in each piece. She’s an interesting person, as were all the people in the class.

Blah blah blah. At any rate, I survived my first semester as an MFA student, and I think my liver needs to deal with my one toast. I’m hoping for a grasshopper (some green alcohol and milk)or toasted almond (amaretto and milk), but I’ll settle for a amaretto sour if I must. Or cheap sangria. Whatever.

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>Backfire

November 12th, 2008 by Suzanne | No Comments | Filed in Asshole idiots, What is wrong with people?

>I hate my workshop. Two weeks ago, our writing workshop professor asked us to hand in a copy of the comments we left on other students’ papers so she could have a sense of what we were thinking about feedback and criticism. I suspect that my complaint about Cunty McCunterson’s rude comments and illustrations in my paper played some role in this exercise. While I am not obnoxious, I also do not think I leave the most useful feedback in the world. I try my best, but sometimes I just don’t know what to say. I hoped that the professor might have some useful tips for me.

Instead, she photocopied Cunty McCunterson’s comments and handed them out to the class as an example of how we should all provide feedback. Of course, Cunty’s comments were far more constructive when she knew that the professor would be reading them. Only an idiot would turn in something rude and insulting when she knew the prof would see it. Sigh. I knew this would backfire on me.

There’s another woman in the class who didn’t read anyone’s work for two weeks, and yet we all workshopped her story last week. She also yelled at someone last night for using the word “analysis” to describe the analysis of film that another student wrote, insisting that “analysis” was too Freudian. (I wonder how upset she would be if she knew that I applied for a part-time data analysis job yesterday.) I watched the person whose piece we were discussing doodle in his notebook the whole time. I’m not sure he cared what anyone in the class thought.

That I am counting down until this class is over (only four to go…) is upsetting. It didn’t have to be this way. I like the professor a lot on a personal level and tremendously value what her insight. But that two or three people have managed to make class so dysfunctional and unpleasant for six of us (I think one person is unperturbed because she is low key like that), infuriates me. I can’t believe how much money I paid for this. I am getting things out of it, so it’s not a total loss, but it’s enough to make me apply for a part-time data analysis job. Ba dum dum cha.

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>Digging Deep

November 6th, 2008 by Suzanne | No Comments | Filed in hilarity, writing

>”What does this mean to you? Dig deeper!

Numerous people in my workshop wrote this comment on my story about developing breasts and being tormented by their ginormous size and then undergoing breast reduction surgery (if they bothered to give me back my paper at all, which one person did not, but that is another story). It vexes me because in many cases I don’t say what the situation means because it means (or meant) nothing.

For example, I talk about how breasts have not worked out so well for the women on my maternal side. My granny is a short women who walks around stooped over, maybe partially from the two watermelons stuck to her chest. On the other hand, my mom is a woman of average height with a very small frame who had two small boobs until she lost one to cancer when I was 4 years old. The people in my class wanted to know what I thought about her scarred chest when I was growing up, and the honest answer is that I didn’t. It was just a fact of life that I accepted. My mom had cancer. They had to cut off one of her boobs. The end.*

The point is that this made me realize two things. First, I am not a deep person. I really do often accept things for their surface explanation. This is not entirely true, as I also analyze certain things that happen until I’ve beaten the dead horse to a bloody mixed metaphor, but still – I’m shallow. The second thing is that I am lazy. I’m probably not as shallow as I claim (see dead horse metaphor), but digging deep means extra work and maybe even painful revelations, and I’m not going there. Sometimes I just want to tell a funny story. Why look for the underlying pathos just to make the story more literary? It’s all very distressing to think about.

*Now you know the truth, so if I ever do write a best-selling book about puberty and there are paragraphs describing how I didn’t want to get boobs because I was scared of cancer and blah blah blah, you can all go to the tabloids and say that I am a liar just like James Frey. And then I will have to lie and say that I had recovered memories in the process of writing the book and blah blah blah and it will all be very scandalous. If you do sell me out, I hope that the tabloids pay you good money. Then you can take me out for afternoon tea and we can laugh about it.

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>Things I Know

October 7th, 2008 by Suzanne | 1 Comment | Filed in Asshole idiots

>I know that I am not a great writer, and probably will never be a great writer.
I know that I want to be a better writer.
I know that I decided to go back to school so I could learn more about the craft of writing.
I know that attending an MFA program was a scary decision because it meant I would have to confront my lack of literary skill.
I know that I am not a lyrical or beautiful writer, but I also know that it is as hard to pull off humorous writing as it is to craft a gorgeous sentence.
I know that, although I am not a literary writer, I deserve to have my writing treated with respect.
I know that one person in my workshop thinks so lowly of me that she thought it was appropriate to leave me the following comment: “My bologna has a first name! It’s n-o-t t-h-i-s s-e-n-t-e-n-c-e, p-l-e-a-s-e!”
I know that the person who wrote such an obnoxious line of criticism is capable of writing lyrical sentences.
I know that I have a published book that seems to be selling well.
I know that two publishers asked me whether I would be interested in writing more books about New York City.
I win.

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>Workshop

October 6th, 2008 by Suzanne | No Comments | Filed in Damn, mortification

>Tonight my story about developing breasts and how boobs have affected me over time will be workshopped in class. I am excited, but also nervous. The good news is that a few people already mentioned that they enjoyed reading it. (Right after I submitted my work two weeks ago, I convinced myself that I would be asked to leave the program.) Mostly, I look forward to hearing what people think I can do to make it a richer piece, but I am also relieved that at least a few people found it funny.

If I am lucky, I will avoid the same fate I suffered in class last Wednesday. My mysterious digestive ailment reared its ugly head earlier that week, plaguing me with acid reflux and cramps. The cramps and gas pockets were particularly painful on Wednesday night, and it is only a testament to how much I enjoy my literature class that I was able to focus on the discussion while simultaneously worrying that I might literally shit myself.

During the peak of my mysterious digestive ailment, I often worried that I might poop my pants, but I had never done so. As I gathered my belongings and dashed out of the classroom last Wednesday, I felt wetness on my ass. Two possible explanations ran through my head: 1. I got my period early (please, please, please); or 2. anal leakage. Whatever it was, I prayed that I did not reek. The two women who walked out with me did not seem to notice anything, so I took that as a good sign. All I can say is that I subsequently learned that anal leakage does not smell. Sigh.

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