Grad school is kicking my butt. So in an effort to keep this blog semi-active over the next few months, until I at least get my legs underneath me to start generating new content, I'll be recycling many of my old posts about the MFA application process. This information is a year old, but I think still very relevant for the upcoming 2009 application season.
So here it is, the Statement of Purpose, technically the most important piece of your application not called the manuscript. But it's also important to keep perspective. Your writing submission will by far be the most important part of your application, period. Everything else, even the Statement of Purpose, will be secondary, the thing that people read after they've decided they like your writing, which means you have a foot in the door to begin with. So keep that in mind. Your Statement of Purpose is a first impression, a way to tell people that you're not crazy, that you're a hard worker. With that, here's the Statement of Purpose I used for my Fall 2008 MFA applications:
My primary goals for pursuing an MFA degree are to significantly improve my writing and to become an integral part of a vibrant, close-knit writing community. To me, both of these goals are intertwined. It is difficult to improve as a writer without the feedback of peers, and similarly, one cannot be a successful member of a writing community without the rigorous application to craft. As such, I have been fortunate to be a part of the same close writing group for the past two years. Through my group’s honest and careful feedback, my writing has vastly improved, and as a result, I have had two of my short stories published: in the Concho River Review, Fall 2007 Issue, and in the Potomac Review, Fall 2008 Issue. I know that without their support, I would not be anywhere near the writer I am today.
By the same token, I understand I still have a great deal to learn. There are many aspects of craft that continue to elude me. For example, I would like to know how to effectively utilize an unreliable narrator, or how to transition from a third-person limited point of view to an omniscient point of view within a single scene. These techniques can only be improved through instruction, careful study, and access to knowledgeable professors. In essence, the intense academic environment provided by the University of Illinois’ MFA program is something that cannot be replicated. I would relish the opportunity to work with and be critiqued by fellow students and professors in such a setting.
In addition to writing, I have various professional and personal strengths to offer to the University of Illinois’ MFA program. Currently, I work as an editor in the newswire industry. In my three years in this position, I have not only been promoted from Associate to Senior Editor, but have also gained extensive experience in the areas of copy editing, professional writing, and documentation writing. Additionally, spending time in a professional environment has taught me the discipline necessary to complete large and small projects on a daily basis. I am more than confident that my real world experience has equipped me with the skills and habits needed to be a successful member of an MFA program.
I am interested in the University of Illinois’ MFA program because of its blend of writing workshops, literature classes, and elective courses on publishing, professional writing, and teaching. The emphasis on a practical range of topics related to creative writing is something that I value highly in a program. I also appreciate the three-year program the University of Illinois provides for its students. While I would savor any chance to study writing at an elite MFA program, a third year would provide more time to research and complete a full manuscript. Additionally, I believe I have much to offer to the University of Illinois. My years of professional experience in copy editing, combined with my personal experience as a contributing member of a close-knit writing community, provides me with a great understanding of what it takes to be a part of a successful program.
Obviously, this SOP varied from school to school. I didn't alter it too much, but I did apply some liberal editing to the last paragraph based on the school, and details specific to each school. I personally think my SOP is a bit wooden, and definitely on the professional side. But then, much of my formal writing experience is steeped in professional and business writing, and I'd be lying if I said that this style wasn't comfortable for me for the Statement of Purpose. Should everyone utilize this voice? Of course not. Being natural in voice and style is important; like writing stories, people can tell when you're faking it.
I should probably include another paragraph of text. Below is a snippet that I placed in some of my SOPs (usually appearing after the second paragraph of the above Statement of Purpose) to the schools that would allow over 500 words:
In regards to my writing, I am interested in exploring the issues of community and culture as it relates to the children of immigrants -- first generation immigrants -- in the United States. I was born and raised in the mostly Caucasian, middle class suburbs of Chicago, yet grew up in a primarily Chinese household. Like my parents, I was not only a minority in name and appearance, but also in culture and community. Most of our family friends were Chinese, I attended Chinese school every Sunday for five years, and we spent entire summers visiting family in Hong Kong. Yet, unlike my parents, being an American was also a far larger part of my identity than it was to them. First generation immigrants are embedded in both cultures, and often, embracing one comes at the expense of the other. To a child or a teenager, this dichotomy is made more complex with issues of identity as it pertains to adolescence and becoming an adult. I want my writing to occupy this space of tension, where to a child, their culture, community, and identity are multi-faceted, complex issues.
A dash of personal background and writing interest. Did it help? To be honest, probably not. It certainly didn't hurt, though. Of all the schools that either waitlisted or accepted me, two (Western Michigan University and Roosevelt) received the "personal" version, and two (the University of Illinois and Notre Dame) received the "vanilla" version. Purdue's case was special, as they asked for an additional written statement answering the questions: "Whose work do you admire? What collection of poetry and/or works of fiction read in the last year have been important to you, and why?" It was fairly simple for me to fold in that one paragraph with some immigrant fiction I had been reading and which were important to me.
In general, I think this is an interesting point, because I had readers who, in general, liked the additional paragraph in my SOP. It gave it a "personal" touch. I, however, was rather ambivalent about the extra paragraph. It felt a little out of place in terms of tone and content. And if a school has even gotten to your SOP, it stands to reason that they've already read and loved your manuscript, and are simply making sure you are a fairly driven, yet normal individual. You hear it over and over again: the manuscript comes first. Which is the reason why, given everything -- the dozens of drafts and the dozens of hours I spent on my SOP -- the Statement of Purpose seems to me both less important and as important as you think. It's fairly important that you try to convey an honest and interesting portrayal of yourself in the SOP. For me, this was utilizing a businesslike approach. Yet, at the same time, there's probably a fairly easy watermark to pass, kind of like a "you must be this sane to ride" type of deal.
But I don't want to dismiss the inherent value in the personal details expressed in the Statement of Purpose. When I first met the Director of the University of Illinois' program, the first few questions she asked me were related to the information and details in my SOP. I was struck by that. In a way, it was her first impression of me as a person, which is something you can never take too lightly.
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Recycled: Statement of Purpose, Part 1
Grad school is kicking my butt. So in an effort to keep this blog semi-active over the next few months, until I at least get my legs underneath me to start generating new content, I'll be recycling many of my old posts about the MFA application process. This information is a year old, but I think still very relevant for the upcoming 2009 application season. I like this post because it links to an incredibly valuable resource, a sort of mini-Q&A for the admissions committees, conducted on the MFA Blog last year. It's dripping with information straight from the decision-makers themselves, so I heavily advise checking it out. Also, this post is some random thoughts of mine on the all-important Statement of Purpose. It was put up on February 3, 2009, and is more of a retrospective on the Statements of Purpose I had already written and turned in. Also, stay tuned for my next post, where I will (re)share my original Statement of Purpose. Though it's right there, shortcutted in the righthand bar if you're too impatient to wait! Enjoy!
I've been re-examining the comments on the MFA Faculty Forum I post on the MFA Blog. Now that everyone's commented, I've specifically noticed that there seemed to be a large emphasis (noted by the directors and faculty; the people who make the application decisions) of the value of Statements of Purposes/Personal Statements. In fact, five out of the eleven contributors exactly mention the importance of SOPs in their evaluation process, which has caused me to revise my original thoughts on the SOP.
First, let's get the obvious out of the way. Application season is all but over, and theorizing at this point in the game is little but "armchair quarterbacking." I understand that. But that doesn't mean we can't pore over every single minutiae, every little crumb of research, right? Right.
With that out of the way, I've noticed that one of the reoccurring themes on faculty members' views on SOPs was how it can (or cannot) speak directly to the applicant's desire and commitment to the craft of writing. The most illuminating quote on SOPs to me was what Mary Biddinger of Northeast Ohio had to say:
"I would encourage statement of purpose writers to 'be themselves' as much as possible, while maintaining a sense of audience, of course. The best statements work in tandem with the writing samples, leaving readers with a lasting overall impression. Students are often surprised when I meet them for the first time and remember some detail from their statement, but the good ones are quite memorable."
Some valuable words, in my opinion. What will a great SOP do? Ideally, it will speak to your passions and motivations as a writer. It will tell the reader what is important to the writer, but won't do so explicitly or (to borrow from Holden Caulfield) sound phony. It'll speak from the heart, and although that may sound corny, it's essentially what writers do implicitly with their writing anyways. Why not their SOPs?
I think what I realize now about SOPs is that it isn't necessarily an issue of templating or style. Business-like, casual, conversational -- does it really matter? What matters is what feels comfortable, what matters is that it tells your story, in your own words. If you fake it, people can and will be able to tell. As for my own SOP -- I do plan on sharing it after most of the acceptances have been sent out -- I used a semi-formal business letter approach. But rereading it, I think I can say that I did it not because I felt it was the style or template that allowed me to most effectively maximize my chances, but because it was what felt most comfortable to me in communicating what my writing was about, and what I was all about. And that, I think, is the most important thing.
I've been re-examining the comments on the MFA Faculty Forum I post on the MFA Blog. Now that everyone's commented, I've specifically noticed that there seemed to be a large emphasis (noted by the directors and faculty; the people who make the application decisions) of the value of Statements of Purposes/Personal Statements. In fact, five out of the eleven contributors exactly mention the importance of SOPs in their evaluation process, which has caused me to revise my original thoughts on the SOP.
First, let's get the obvious out of the way. Application season is all but over, and theorizing at this point in the game is little but "armchair quarterbacking." I understand that. But that doesn't mean we can't pore over every single minutiae, every little crumb of research, right? Right.
With that out of the way, I've noticed that one of the reoccurring themes on faculty members' views on SOPs was how it can (or cannot) speak directly to the applicant's desire and commitment to the craft of writing. The most illuminating quote on SOPs to me was what Mary Biddinger of Northeast Ohio had to say:
"I would encourage statement of purpose writers to 'be themselves' as much as possible, while maintaining a sense of audience, of course. The best statements work in tandem with the writing samples, leaving readers with a lasting overall impression. Students are often surprised when I meet them for the first time and remember some detail from their statement, but the good ones are quite memorable."
Some valuable words, in my opinion. What will a great SOP do? Ideally, it will speak to your passions and motivations as a writer. It will tell the reader what is important to the writer, but won't do so explicitly or (to borrow from Holden Caulfield) sound phony. It'll speak from the heart, and although that may sound corny, it's essentially what writers do implicitly with their writing anyways. Why not their SOPs?
I think what I realize now about SOPs is that it isn't necessarily an issue of templating or style. Business-like, casual, conversational -- does it really matter? What matters is what feels comfortable, what matters is that it tells your story, in your own words. If you fake it, people can and will be able to tell. As for my own SOP -- I do plan on sharing it after most of the acceptances have been sent out -- I used a semi-formal business letter approach. But rereading it, I think I can say that I did it not because I felt it was the style or template that allowed me to most effectively maximize my chances, but because it was what felt most comfortable to me in communicating what my writing was about, and what I was all about. And that, I think, is the most important thing.
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Recycled: Letters of Recommendation
Grad school is kicking my butt. So in an effort to keep this blog semi-active over the next few months, until I at least get my legs underneath me to start generating new content, I'll be recycling many of my old posts about the MFA application process. This information is a year old, but I think still very relevant for the upcoming 2009 application season. This post was put up on October 18, 2008. It covers my brief and neurotic thoughts on the art of recommendations. Specifically, why you should use physical letters of recommendations over electronic ones. Though I'm sure that emailed recommendations are perfectly fine, too. Enjoy!
My recommendation materials have been, to quote Stevie Wonder, "signed, sealed, and delivered" to my recommendors and I feel great. You'd think that such a thing would be a simple enough affair -- ask your three people to write you some letters -- but as I found out in my research, recommendations, if done properly and on time, are a complicated affair. Can you accommodate the timeline of all of your recommendors? What level of involvement should you have with your recommendors? But out of all the questions I had to answer, the one that was the far most difficult to answer was whether I wanted to send the materials to my recommendors by paper or email.
You might notice that nowadays most major schools encourage their applicants to use their online applications. And in general, this is a great idea, for both the school and the applicant. There's little to no paper or ink used, the computerized applications have a far less likely hood of being lost or delayed, etc. These schools even extend their online capabilities to recommendations. It seems simple enough. Just enter your recommendor's information into an online form, and the school's system will email them instructions on how to upload their letters online. Maybe even answer a couple questions. No muss, no fuss, right? Maybe. When I sat down and really thought about what was being asked of each of my recommendors, I began to realize how daunting the process was going to be. I'm applying to fourteen schools -- which means fourteen customized letters, fourteen cover sheets, fourteen different forms or general questions each school is asking. And while it would seem easy enough to put that into email terms -- electronic forms are easier to handle than paper ones, right? -- several problems rear their heads. For starters, if my email inbox is any indication of how most people keep and organize their emails, then I couldn't realistically expect my recommendors to keep track of each of the fourteen emails the schools would be sending them. Plus, we'd be talking about fourteen emails in the span of 1-2 hours (logging into a school's account and filling out all 3 recommendors' information takes at least 5-10 minutes each), not all at once. If I'm sending emails to someone's account over the span of 1-2 hours, then we'd be talking about fourteen emails intermixed with perhaps a dozen or so other personal emails. And on top of all that consider this note, which is a warning that some schools, like Notre Dame and the University of Indiana, put during their email submission process: Please note that notification emails will indicate "University of Notre Dame - the Graduate School" as the sender but will come from support@ApplyYourself.com. If they use a spam-blocking tool, please ask them to add this email address to their list of known/safe addresses. What? Spam-blockers? What kind of email account doesn't have some form of spam blocking software in this day and age? The opportunities for an email or two slipping through the cracks are simply too great.
I understand that at this point, I probably sound like a raving paranoid lunatic, but consider this: Whose job is it to make the process as simple and easy as possible? Whose job is it to make sure all the letters are received and sent on time without fuss? If a school or two falls through the cracks, who's going to worry about it -- you or the recommendor? Certainly, if your recommendor is a decent human being -- and they all are, or we wouldn't ask them to write us words of praise -- then they might ask about where this or that school's email went, but would you really expect them to look out for your big picture? At the end of the day, you are your own greatest advocate. It's as simple as that. And if you don't do the dirty work, if you don't follow up and make sure that what needs to be done actually gets done, then no one else will.
Which is why I decided to go low-tech and send out the letters by paper. One big package, with all fourteen envelopes and the correct cover letters, and one big manila envelope inside for them to mail the entire thing back to me when they're done. And when I get them back, I'll know exactly where they're going and when, and if something goes wrong, it'll be because I didn't do something right. Am I a control freak? Most certainly. But I'd rather put it in my hands than someone else's.
My recommendation materials have been, to quote Stevie Wonder, "signed, sealed, and delivered" to my recommendors and I feel great. You'd think that such a thing would be a simple enough affair -- ask your three people to write you some letters -- but as I found out in my research, recommendations, if done properly and on time, are a complicated affair. Can you accommodate the timeline of all of your recommendors? What level of involvement should you have with your recommendors? But out of all the questions I had to answer, the one that was the far most difficult to answer was whether I wanted to send the materials to my recommendors by paper or email.
You might notice that nowadays most major schools encourage their applicants to use their online applications. And in general, this is a great idea, for both the school and the applicant. There's little to no paper or ink used, the computerized applications have a far less likely hood of being lost or delayed, etc. These schools even extend their online capabilities to recommendations. It seems simple enough. Just enter your recommendor's information into an online form, and the school's system will email them instructions on how to upload their letters online. Maybe even answer a couple questions. No muss, no fuss, right? Maybe. When I sat down and really thought about what was being asked of each of my recommendors, I began to realize how daunting the process was going to be. I'm applying to fourteen schools -- which means fourteen customized letters, fourteen cover sheets, fourteen different forms or general questions each school is asking. And while it would seem easy enough to put that into email terms -- electronic forms are easier to handle than paper ones, right? -- several problems rear their heads. For starters, if my email inbox is any indication of how most people keep and organize their emails, then I couldn't realistically expect my recommendors to keep track of each of the fourteen emails the schools would be sending them. Plus, we'd be talking about fourteen emails in the span of 1-2 hours (logging into a school's account and filling out all 3 recommendors' information takes at least 5-10 minutes each), not all at once. If I'm sending emails to someone's account over the span of 1-2 hours, then we'd be talking about fourteen emails intermixed with perhaps a dozen or so other personal emails. And on top of all that consider this note, which is a warning that some schools, like Notre Dame and the University of Indiana, put during their email submission process: Please note that notification emails will indicate "University of Notre Dame - the Graduate School" as the sender but will come from support@ApplyYourself.com. If they use a spam-blocking tool, please ask them to add this email address to their list of known/safe addresses. What? Spam-blockers? What kind of email account doesn't have some form of spam blocking software in this day and age? The opportunities for an email or two slipping through the cracks are simply too great.
I understand that at this point, I probably sound like a raving paranoid lunatic, but consider this: Whose job is it to make the process as simple and easy as possible? Whose job is it to make sure all the letters are received and sent on time without fuss? If a school or two falls through the cracks, who's going to worry about it -- you or the recommendor? Certainly, if your recommendor is a decent human being -- and they all are, or we wouldn't ask them to write us words of praise -- then they might ask about where this or that school's email went, but would you really expect them to look out for your big picture? At the end of the day, you are your own greatest advocate. It's as simple as that. And if you don't do the dirty work, if you don't follow up and make sure that what needs to be done actually gets done, then no one else will.
Which is why I decided to go low-tech and send out the letters by paper. One big package, with all fourteen envelopes and the correct cover letters, and one big manila envelope inside for them to mail the entire thing back to me when they're done. And when I get them back, I'll know exactly where they're going and when, and if something goes wrong, it'll be because I didn't do something right. Am I a control freak? Most certainly. But I'd rather put it in my hands than someone else's.
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Recycled: GRE Thoughts, Part 2
Grad school is kicking my butt. So in an effort to keep this blog semi-active over the next few months, until I at least get my legs underneath me to start generating new content, I'll be recycling many of my old posts about the MFA application process. This information is a year old, but I think still very relevant for the upcoming 2009 application season. This post was put up on October 10, 2008, and is my second post on GREs, how they relate to MFA programs, some general thoughts, and preparation. Enjoy!
Welcome to my random thoughts on the GREs, part two. Part one can be found here. It occurred to me yesterday that I needed to give a little more background to where I'm coming from educationally to give a little bit more perspective on my scores. I graduated from college four years ago from Purdue with a degree in Genetics with a horrible 2.46 GPA. Suffice to say that I have never been a very hard worker. But I've always been a pretty good standardized tester. In the month leading up to my test on September 13, I first took a baseline practice test just to see how badly my verbal skills had declined in college and got a 500-550 score. Following that, I studied semi-regularly on the weekends, taking practice tests, memorizing words. When I was about a week out before the real thing, I went into "hardcore" mode and studied nonstop using the strategies I outlined in my GRE thoughts, part one. Additionally, I did some very light studying on the math and essay sections.
On to the various websites and resources, as promised in my previous post.
Barron's GRE Guide -- This was the first thing I bought in preparation for the test, and was my base resource. It's basically everything you'd expect from a GRE guidebook -- complete with five paper practice tests, one CAT test (on a CD), general study strategies, a "most frequent word" list (weighing in at 333 words), and a much more massive 3,500-word list. To be honest, I have no idea why the 3,500-word list was in there. Unless you buy this book a year to six months outside of the test, there's no way anyone would be able to reliably memorize all those words. And even then, it's not going to cover all the possible words you would potentially see on the test. Simply put, the best way to get that tasty 700+ GRE score is to be generally well read -- something that comes from decades of reading regularly. For the more realistic studier, the "most frequent word" list was by and far the most valuable thing in the book (and something that is in every respectable GRE guidebook -- Princeton, Kaplan, etc.). As I mentioned in my last post, I saw at least 7-10 words on test that were on the list, a larger portion than I would've expected. Memorize that list. At the end of it all, I took all the paper practice tests and the CAT test on the CD-Rom, and got scores consistently in the 600-650ish range. The CAT test I scored a 550.
MyGRETutor.com -- I stumbled on this website after I had exhausted all the practice tests that the Baron's guide had to offer. This site has hundreds of test questions (the first ten on each section are free) and one free CAT. There are also four other tests that can be unlocked, as well as the other test questions, for $5. The cheap price of the tests should've been a warning sign, but I didn't do my research and promptly paid to access the rest of the tests. In short, this site is horrible. The practice questions are inexact, vague, and confusing. While I'd never hold the GREs up on a pedestal as paragons of testing standards -- you can always count on their questions as at least definite. It's a very bad sign when you read through the answers of a test and find yourself saying "really?" over and over again. Even worse, there were at least a few grammatical errors on the reading comprehension sections of their tests. So yeah. Not very reputable. To give you an idea of how accurate their internal CAT scoring was, I scored on the five tests as high as 710 and as low as 540.
800score.com -- Frustrated by MyGRETutor.com, I continued to search online for a resource of reputable (and accurate) CATs to practice, and found this site. They're a pure test site, and offer five CATs to download for $20. I did a little bit of research, sampled a little bit of their free test, and went ahead and paid for their product. Much much better. The questions were better worded, more precise, and, most importantly, had answers that did not leave me scratching my head. My test score range was 540 to 600, a much tighter band of numbers, which is indicative of a more accurate test.
The ETS website -- ETS provides two free CATs for download from their website, both of which I scored 630 on. They can be found here. There's not too much to say, except that these tests come straight from the horse's mouth, and (unsurprisingly) yielded the scores that were most similar to my eventual score. A definite download, since they are free (though not really, since you pay through the nose to just take the test, never mind the $20 fee you pay per school to send the test!) and since they will be most representative of the GRE test you'll be taking.
Notice the wide range of scores that I got on each of the CATs above:
Barron's: 550-650
MyGRETutor.com: 540-710
800score.com: 540-600
ETS website: 630
The lesson? The GRE's computer adaptive tests are notoriously difficult to emulate without the exact scoring system utilized by the ETS and without the amount of data that the ETS has at their fingertips. My actual score was 650, which was a bit higher than I expected, but one that makes sense in retrospect. It was the score that was closest to the practice tests provided by the ETS. You'd almost expect the other resources to want to underscore people -- which I believe they do -- because it simply makes sense as a business practice; lower expectations are much easier to deal with than higher ones. So what do we take from this? Find and take as many tests as you can afford. But do your research, and stay away from the poor websites. Interpret your scores with a large grain of salt. And most importantly, have faith in your abilities!
Welcome to my random thoughts on the GREs, part two. Part one can be found here. It occurred to me yesterday that I needed to give a little more background to where I'm coming from educationally to give a little bit more perspective on my scores. I graduated from college four years ago from Purdue with a degree in Genetics with a horrible 2.46 GPA. Suffice to say that I have never been a very hard worker. But I've always been a pretty good standardized tester. In the month leading up to my test on September 13, I first took a baseline practice test just to see how badly my verbal skills had declined in college and got a 500-550 score. Following that, I studied semi-regularly on the weekends, taking practice tests, memorizing words. When I was about a week out before the real thing, I went into "hardcore" mode and studied nonstop using the strategies I outlined in my GRE thoughts, part one. Additionally, I did some very light studying on the math and essay sections.
On to the various websites and resources, as promised in my previous post.
Barron's GRE Guide -- This was the first thing I bought in preparation for the test, and was my base resource. It's basically everything you'd expect from a GRE guidebook -- complete with five paper practice tests, one CAT test (on a CD), general study strategies, a "most frequent word" list (weighing in at 333 words), and a much more massive 3,500-word list. To be honest, I have no idea why the 3,500-word list was in there. Unless you buy this book a year to six months outside of the test, there's no way anyone would be able to reliably memorize all those words. And even then, it's not going to cover all the possible words you would potentially see on the test. Simply put, the best way to get that tasty 700+ GRE score is to be generally well read -- something that comes from decades of reading regularly. For the more realistic studier, the "most frequent word" list was by and far the most valuable thing in the book (and something that is in every respectable GRE guidebook -- Princeton, Kaplan, etc.). As I mentioned in my last post, I saw at least 7-10 words on test that were on the list, a larger portion than I would've expected. Memorize that list. At the end of it all, I took all the paper practice tests and the CAT test on the CD-Rom, and got scores consistently in the 600-650ish range. The CAT test I scored a 550.
MyGRETutor.com -- I stumbled on this website after I had exhausted all the practice tests that the Baron's guide had to offer. This site has hundreds of test questions (the first ten on each section are free) and one free CAT. There are also four other tests that can be unlocked, as well as the other test questions, for $5. The cheap price of the tests should've been a warning sign, but I didn't do my research and promptly paid to access the rest of the tests. In short, this site is horrible. The practice questions are inexact, vague, and confusing. While I'd never hold the GREs up on a pedestal as paragons of testing standards -- you can always count on their questions as at least definite. It's a very bad sign when you read through the answers of a test and find yourself saying "really?" over and over again. Even worse, there were at least a few grammatical errors on the reading comprehension sections of their tests. So yeah. Not very reputable. To give you an idea of how accurate their internal CAT scoring was, I scored on the five tests as high as 710 and as low as 540.
800score.com -- Frustrated by MyGRETutor.com, I continued to search online for a resource of reputable (and accurate) CATs to practice, and found this site. They're a pure test site, and offer five CATs to download for $20. I did a little bit of research, sampled a little bit of their free test, and went ahead and paid for their product. Much much better. The questions were better worded, more precise, and, most importantly, had answers that did not leave me scratching my head. My test score range was 540 to 600, a much tighter band of numbers, which is indicative of a more accurate test.
The ETS website -- ETS provides two free CATs for download from their website, both of which I scored 630 on. They can be found here. There's not too much to say, except that these tests come straight from the horse's mouth, and (unsurprisingly) yielded the scores that were most similar to my eventual score. A definite download, since they are free (though not really, since you pay through the nose to just take the test, never mind the $20 fee you pay per school to send the test!) and since they will be most representative of the GRE test you'll be taking.
Notice the wide range of scores that I got on each of the CATs above:
Barron's: 550-650
MyGRETutor.com: 540-710
800score.com: 540-600
ETS website: 630
The lesson? The GRE's computer adaptive tests are notoriously difficult to emulate without the exact scoring system utilized by the ETS and without the amount of data that the ETS has at their fingertips. My actual score was 650, which was a bit higher than I expected, but one that makes sense in retrospect. It was the score that was closest to the practice tests provided by the ETS. You'd almost expect the other resources to want to underscore people -- which I believe they do -- because it simply makes sense as a business practice; lower expectations are much easier to deal with than higher ones. So what do we take from this? Find and take as many tests as you can afford. But do your research, and stay away from the poor websites. Interpret your scores with a large grain of salt. And most importantly, have faith in your abilities!
Friday, October 16, 2009
Recycled: GRE Thoughts
I've been away for a long, long time, but I've had a good excuse. I've been toiling away, hard at work in grad school. This should be no news at all to anyone who is seriously preparing for grad school, but it is busy. Really busy.
But that's another post. In an effort to keep this blog semi-active over the next few months, until I at least get my legs underneath me to start generating new content, I'll be recycling many of my old posts about the MFA application process. This information is a year old, but I think still very relevant for the upcoming 2009 application season. This first post was put up on October 7, 2008, and is on GREs, how they relate to MFA programs, some general thoughts, and preparation. Enjoy!
Ah, the GREs. The GREs manage walk the frustrating line of being barely important enough to an application to warrant studying for. Many top schools don’t "require" the GREs, but as some websites gently suggest (like Iowa in this link -- scroll down to point 4 under "Other Notes on Admission and Residency Requirements"), scores can often affect funding. And whenever funding dollars are involved, you can be sure that it is important enough to put time and study into. Some insights and strategies I learned when preparing for the GREs:
I took the test on September 13th, and got a 650 on the Verbal, a 680 on the Math, and a 6.0 on the essay section. Verbal, of course, is the big kahuna of the GREs, and really the only score that the schools will care about. My basic strategy for the Verbal portion consisted of two basic rules:
1) Memorize the "most frequent word" lists provided by any of the Barron's/Kaplan/Princeton study books. This was important to my success. Already have a gigantic vocabulary? Great. You'll do wonderfully on the test, and will have nothing to worry about. But for the rest of us, it’s impractical and unrealistic to even attempt to memorize the 3,500 word lists provided by the preparation books. The "most frequent word" list represents a much more realistic and efficient way of targeting words that you'd be likely to see on a test. My prep book's list was a little over 300 words, which I managed to cram in about two weeks before the test. During the test I recognized at least 7-10 words from that list, which was a significant portion of the test.
2) Take as many practice tests as you can. Myself, I took at least 20 practice tests from a variety of sources. I can’t stress how important it was to me to take those practice tests. As much as the ETS would like you to believe, the GREs are not a measure of practical knowledge, but really a measure of well you can take the GREs. The problems on the Verbal section of the GREs, especially the analogy questions, require a large amount of familiarity to have any kind of success. So in addition to the relearning those baseline strategies you’d use for the SATs or ACTs back in high school (eliminating obvious answers, etc.), I was able to improve my pattern recognition of certain kinds of questions through a ton of repetition. Cramming works.
Another tricky aspect of the GREs is the fact that they are Computer Adaptive Tests (CATs) conducted on computers, as opposed to paper tests. What is a CAT? In essence, it’s a test that “adapts” its question difficulty based on how many questions you answer correctly or incorrectly. The more consecutive questions you get correct on a test, the more difficult a test becomes, and vice versa, all to eventually determine your final score. But there's more than that. Since the test uses the thirty questions to zero in on your score, it tends to weight the first 15 questions more heavily than the last 15. For example, before you answer even one question, your initial score, like everyone else's, will be set on the average of the bell curve of all those who've previously taken the test (somewhere around 400-500). If you answer the first question right, the computer will nudge you up into the tier of questions intended for 500-600 scoring folks, and if you were to get it wrong, the computer will shift you down into the tier for the 300-400 folks. As the test progresses, those large point swings will get smaller and smaller as the computer "figures out" the appropriate level of difficulty of questions for you. By the end of the test, a correct question will only be work 10-20 points each. Keep in mind that while my math above is hypothetical (I don’t really know if the point swings are 100 at the beginning or not), the process is the same.
As you can see, the first 10 or so questions are incredibly important to moving into the highest possible tiers, as you can only move your score so much once you get into the later stages of the test. One of the most common criticisms of the GREs is that the test unfairly punishes those who make mistakes early on without much hope for improvement later. But if you go into the GREs knowing this, you can similarly use this to your advantage. With 30 minutes to answer 30 questions, I knew I wasn't going to get every single question right, but I took the extra time on the first 10 questions to carefully answer them and to make sure that I got as many right as I possibly could. In fact, I probably employed this strategy a little too effectively -- at one point I had about 14 minutes to answer the remaining 20 questions -- and had to really rush in order to answer every single question. I had no doubt I probably answered more questions incorrectly on the second half of the test, yet I still got (in my own estimation) a pretty good score. So while it may feel counterintuitive as a test-taking strategy to front weight your time on the test, it really is something worth thinking about.
In my next post I'll go a little bit deeper into the resources and tests I used for preparation for the GREs.
But that's another post. In an effort to keep this blog semi-active over the next few months, until I at least get my legs underneath me to start generating new content, I'll be recycling many of my old posts about the MFA application process. This information is a year old, but I think still very relevant for the upcoming 2009 application season. This first post was put up on October 7, 2008, and is on GREs, how they relate to MFA programs, some general thoughts, and preparation. Enjoy!
Ah, the GREs. The GREs manage walk the frustrating line of being barely important enough to an application to warrant studying for. Many top schools don’t "require" the GREs, but as some websites gently suggest (like Iowa in this link -- scroll down to point 4 under "Other Notes on Admission and Residency Requirements"), scores can often affect funding. And whenever funding dollars are involved, you can be sure that it is important enough to put time and study into. Some insights and strategies I learned when preparing for the GREs:
I took the test on September 13th, and got a 650 on the Verbal, a 680 on the Math, and a 6.0 on the essay section. Verbal, of course, is the big kahuna of the GREs, and really the only score that the schools will care about. My basic strategy for the Verbal portion consisted of two basic rules:
1) Memorize the "most frequent word" lists provided by any of the Barron's/Kaplan/Princeton study books. This was important to my success. Already have a gigantic vocabulary? Great. You'll do wonderfully on the test, and will have nothing to worry about. But for the rest of us, it’s impractical and unrealistic to even attempt to memorize the 3,500 word lists provided by the preparation books. The "most frequent word" list represents a much more realistic and efficient way of targeting words that you'd be likely to see on a test. My prep book's list was a little over 300 words, which I managed to cram in about two weeks before the test. During the test I recognized at least 7-10 words from that list, which was a significant portion of the test.
2) Take as many practice tests as you can. Myself, I took at least 20 practice tests from a variety of sources. I can’t stress how important it was to me to take those practice tests. As much as the ETS would like you to believe, the GREs are not a measure of practical knowledge, but really a measure of well you can take the GREs. The problems on the Verbal section of the GREs, especially the analogy questions, require a large amount of familiarity to have any kind of success. So in addition to the relearning those baseline strategies you’d use for the SATs or ACTs back in high school (eliminating obvious answers, etc.), I was able to improve my pattern recognition of certain kinds of questions through a ton of repetition. Cramming works.
Another tricky aspect of the GREs is the fact that they are Computer Adaptive Tests (CATs) conducted on computers, as opposed to paper tests. What is a CAT? In essence, it’s a test that “adapts” its question difficulty based on how many questions you answer correctly or incorrectly. The more consecutive questions you get correct on a test, the more difficult a test becomes, and vice versa, all to eventually determine your final score. But there's more than that. Since the test uses the thirty questions to zero in on your score, it tends to weight the first 15 questions more heavily than the last 15. For example, before you answer even one question, your initial score, like everyone else's, will be set on the average of the bell curve of all those who've previously taken the test (somewhere around 400-500). If you answer the first question right, the computer will nudge you up into the tier of questions intended for 500-600 scoring folks, and if you were to get it wrong, the computer will shift you down into the tier for the 300-400 folks. As the test progresses, those large point swings will get smaller and smaller as the computer "figures out" the appropriate level of difficulty of questions for you. By the end of the test, a correct question will only be work 10-20 points each. Keep in mind that while my math above is hypothetical (I don’t really know if the point swings are 100 at the beginning or not), the process is the same.
As you can see, the first 10 or so questions are incredibly important to moving into the highest possible tiers, as you can only move your score so much once you get into the later stages of the test. One of the most common criticisms of the GREs is that the test unfairly punishes those who make mistakes early on without much hope for improvement later. But if you go into the GREs knowing this, you can similarly use this to your advantage. With 30 minutes to answer 30 questions, I knew I wasn't going to get every single question right, but I took the extra time on the first 10 questions to carefully answer them and to make sure that I got as many right as I possibly could. In fact, I probably employed this strategy a little too effectively -- at one point I had about 14 minutes to answer the remaining 20 questions -- and had to really rush in order to answer every single question. I had no doubt I probably answered more questions incorrectly on the second half of the test, yet I still got (in my own estimation) a pretty good score. So while it may feel counterintuitive as a test-taking strategy to front weight your time on the test, it really is something worth thinking about.
In my next post I'll go a little bit deeper into the resources and tests I used for preparation for the GREs.
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Almost Famous
Check it out. The University of Illinois recently updated the listing of its graduate students webpage here. If you scroll down to the bottom, where all the "First Year" students are, you'll find my picture and undergraduate educational background. I know, it's the same picture as the one listed on this blog, but having my name and photo on a third party website -- a University website! -- is exciting.
Thursday, August 6, 2009
Retrospective: Everything Else
Okay, it's about time I tie up all the loose ends regarding my experience applying to MFA programs last fall. I wrote a retrospective on my Statement of Purpose and a retrospective on the very general topic of choosing wisely when making your MFA school list in previous posts some time ago. So what about everything else required in the MFA application process? They are, by my count, the:
On GPA: I've complained about GPA requirements before, and have come to the happy conclusion, based on my experience with applications and where I had been accepted, that GPAs mostly do not matter. A little background. My undergraduate GPA was a horrible 2.46. Very low. Many schools have a "minimum 3.0" GPA requirement, either explicitly listed on their website or buried away in the graduate school's handbook online. At any rate, my score and many schools' requirements did not engender me with much confidence. So what I did was a hybrid approach. I actively searched for schools that did not have the "minimum 3.0" requirement, and was especially careful to read all the literature available on each schools' website. In addition, for the schools that I had my sights set on which did have GPA requirements, I emailed politely, asking if said requirement was a hard and fast rule, and whether my application would be considered holistically. Those were the schools I applied to.
Looking back on my experience, I think I can confidently say that, in general, the GPA requirement is a grad school one. The extent to which a program can "ignore" a potential candidate's poor GPA is dependent more upon how much latitude that program has within a school. Some grad schools have short leashes on their MFA programs, while others are free to ignore them completely. In cases of Iowa and Michigan, for example, I did not find any language on their websites pertaining to GPA requirements, and in fact, Michigan's website goes out of their way to say that their MFA applicants do not need to complete their "Worksheet for Computing GPA." This makes sense, as both of these schools are top-five caliber programs with tremendous cachet and influence. I can't imagine a grad school complaining about their methods of accepting and screening the students they wish for their programs. So, long story short, GPA isn't a problem if you prepare for it. Make sure the schools you apply to won't immediately disregards your application because of it, and you'll be fine.
On GRE Verbal scores: I've extensively outlined my basic strategies on how to improve your GRE Verbal scores here and here. As to the big question of how important these scores actually are, I'd have to guess that they're not important at all, even less important that the GPA. While the GPA is often used as a minimum watermark for many schools out there, I've only seen one school require a minimum GRE Verbal score, Ohio State University. All the others, with about maybe a little over half requiring the scores to be officially submitted, do not outline what scores, if any are preferable. Personally, I think GRE Verbal scores are redundant to the GPAs. What can a grad school see in your GRE scores that informs your academic (or intellectual) abilities that they can't already see in your GPA? If anything, a GRE scores merely says whether or not you can do well on a really hard test. Your GPA? It represents four years of work and effort and, to say nothing about the babysitting institution of college, it suggests a more "real life" barometer of said work and effort. Yes. What your mom always told you was right, your GPA is important. More important, at least, than your GRE scores.
I do want to temper that idea with this, however: there's NO reason to mail it in with your GRE scores if you can help it. You definitely do not want to give the graduate school a reason, however insignificant, to disqualify your application. And who wants to turn in a GRE Verbal score of 300 anyways? While a high GRE score can say any number of things -- you're smart, you're well read, you take tests well, you prepare -- a really low GRE score can really say only one thing if you're serious about writing: you didn't take the GREs seriously. And if you don't take a test that you know about several months ahead of time seriously, how can a school take your application seriously? Take the test. It sucks, it takes up a lot of brainspace, and it's a waste of time, but it's important. The GREs in a nutshell.
On the Critical Essay: Of the schools I applied to, two required a critical essay: Purdue and Ohio State University. A critical essay, as requested from Ohio State's website is a paper that should "demonstrate the applicant's ability to write clear expository prose and to construct a persuasive argument." It's a good definition as any. General consensus will also tell you that the best candidate for a previously written critical essay (so you wouldn't have to write one ground up from scratch) is one that was written from your time in undergrad school, something, ideally, having to do with literature or literature analysis. For some, this prospect may be simple, having majored in English or English Lit as an undergrad. For many, however, this becomes a tricky subject, as the last time most have written a paper for an English class (as with me) was sometime in freshman year, probably during first year composition or rhetoric. And if your writing quality was anything like mine at eighteen, well... the less said the better. So what to do? Short of majoring in anything other than mathematics or statistics, chances are that the major you did end up with required some sort of paper writing. Mine was genetics, which, unfortunately, was a subject where all the stuff I was writing was far too technical and insular to be of any use to an application committee. I ended up combing through all my old essays (fortunately I never throw anything away), and found a paper on existentialism on a philosophy class I took as a junior. The paper itself was poorly written by my standards today, but it provided a decent skeleton from which to work with. I ended up revising it heavily to bring it up to par, but it totaled far less work and time than if I had picked a random subject and wrote from scratch.
A common question is whether or not subject matter is important. There are some schools that specifically request a paper that is based in literature or literature analysis. This is again a situation where, if necessary, I'd suggest contacting the school for clarification. A lot of times, these requirements are not hard rules, but rather guidelines (like GPA requirements set by grad schools) to steer applicants towards a single set of standards. In general, I'd suggest keeping your critical essay in the general humanities. That an essay isn't about postmodernism or literary theory isn't very important, in my opinion; it seems to me that what a school is using these essays for is to determine whether you can think and write critically about a subject. Remember, these schools are not only asking you to write, but also teach, which often requires are completely different set of skills from creative writing or poetry. Critical thinking and writing, for example.
On Recommendations: I haven't written too much on the art of recommendations, primarily because I did not have the sparkling recommendation from the world famous professor who took me under his/her tutelage in college. In fact, my recommendations were rather run-of-the-mill: two supervisors from work and a writing group member. I can really only say a couple things on recommendations. First, get them done early, as early as possible. It is your responsibility to make sure the schools receive these letters on time and sealed, not your recommendors. They're doing a favor for you, sometimes a tremendous favor, and the easier your make it for them to do their job, the happier they'll be. And it seems to me very obvious to keep your recommendors as happy as possible. Second, make sure you choose the right people to write you recommendations. This is one of those "obvious in theory, but hard in practice" things. Given the choice between a coworker who knows your writing really well and speak on you behalf on a close personal and professional level, and, say... Cormac McCarthy, who just signed your copy of "The Road," I'd suggest going with the coworker. Okay, so that's an extreme example, but I do think there is a certain art in choosing who you want to speak on your behalf. Obviously, you'd want them to be authority figures in your life, people who have seen your work and work ethic. But do you go with the person who knows you very well, but may not have the sterling or relevant background to creative writing, or do you go with the world-famous professor with whom you've taken one class under and may or may not remember your name? An application committee may pause at the famous name on the top of the letterhead, but they'll remember the story about how your insight singlehandedly helped turn someone's story into a work of art.
On the Manuscript: Not much to say here, unfortunately. This is all you, and no amount of offhand blog advice can replace good, old fashioned practice. There's no other way to do it, believe me, I've tried. BUT, if you really want to know: Feedback, critical unflinching feedback, is always good. Take a craft class over the summer. Some are better than others, so do your research. Go to a writer's conference. Found a writing group. The last one is often the best option, because it's free, and infinitely more valuable if you find a great group of people. Pick up other hobbies. It's a good way to give yourself space from writing. But don't procrastinate. (Or try not to.) And write. Write, write, write. Everything else is gravy -- feedback, a support group of friends, family, and coworkers -- but at the end of the day, they won't be the ones producing work, you will. This is by far the most important element of your application, with the Statement of Purpose coming in at a distant second. Make it count. Good luck!
- GPA
- GRE Verbal scores
- Critical essay
- Recommendations
- Manuscript
On GPA: I've complained about GPA requirements before, and have come to the happy conclusion, based on my experience with applications and where I had been accepted, that GPAs mostly do not matter. A little background. My undergraduate GPA was a horrible 2.46. Very low. Many schools have a "minimum 3.0" GPA requirement, either explicitly listed on their website or buried away in the graduate school's handbook online. At any rate, my score and many schools' requirements did not engender me with much confidence. So what I did was a hybrid approach. I actively searched for schools that did not have the "minimum 3.0" requirement, and was especially careful to read all the literature available on each schools' website. In addition, for the schools that I had my sights set on which did have GPA requirements, I emailed politely, asking if said requirement was a hard and fast rule, and whether my application would be considered holistically. Those were the schools I applied to.
Looking back on my experience, I think I can confidently say that, in general, the GPA requirement is a grad school one. The extent to which a program can "ignore" a potential candidate's poor GPA is dependent more upon how much latitude that program has within a school. Some grad schools have short leashes on their MFA programs, while others are free to ignore them completely. In cases of Iowa and Michigan, for example, I did not find any language on their websites pertaining to GPA requirements, and in fact, Michigan's website goes out of their way to say that their MFA applicants do not need to complete their "Worksheet for Computing GPA." This makes sense, as both of these schools are top-five caliber programs with tremendous cachet and influence. I can't imagine a grad school complaining about their methods of accepting and screening the students they wish for their programs. So, long story short, GPA isn't a problem if you prepare for it. Make sure the schools you apply to won't immediately disregards your application because of it, and you'll be fine.
On GRE Verbal scores: I've extensively outlined my basic strategies on how to improve your GRE Verbal scores here and here. As to the big question of how important these scores actually are, I'd have to guess that they're not important at all, even less important that the GPA. While the GPA is often used as a minimum watermark for many schools out there, I've only seen one school require a minimum GRE Verbal score, Ohio State University. All the others, with about maybe a little over half requiring the scores to be officially submitted, do not outline what scores, if any are preferable. Personally, I think GRE Verbal scores are redundant to the GPAs. What can a grad school see in your GRE scores that informs your academic (or intellectual) abilities that they can't already see in your GPA? If anything, a GRE scores merely says whether or not you can do well on a really hard test. Your GPA? It represents four years of work and effort and, to say nothing about the babysitting institution of college, it suggests a more "real life" barometer of said work and effort. Yes. What your mom always told you was right, your GPA is important. More important, at least, than your GRE scores.
I do want to temper that idea with this, however: there's NO reason to mail it in with your GRE scores if you can help it. You definitely do not want to give the graduate school a reason, however insignificant, to disqualify your application. And who wants to turn in a GRE Verbal score of 300 anyways? While a high GRE score can say any number of things -- you're smart, you're well read, you take tests well, you prepare -- a really low GRE score can really say only one thing if you're serious about writing: you didn't take the GREs seriously. And if you don't take a test that you know about several months ahead of time seriously, how can a school take your application seriously? Take the test. It sucks, it takes up a lot of brainspace, and it's a waste of time, but it's important. The GREs in a nutshell.
On the Critical Essay: Of the schools I applied to, two required a critical essay: Purdue and Ohio State University. A critical essay, as requested from Ohio State's website is a paper that should "demonstrate the applicant's ability to write clear expository prose and to construct a persuasive argument." It's a good definition as any. General consensus will also tell you that the best candidate for a previously written critical essay (so you wouldn't have to write one ground up from scratch) is one that was written from your time in undergrad school, something, ideally, having to do with literature or literature analysis. For some, this prospect may be simple, having majored in English or English Lit as an undergrad. For many, however, this becomes a tricky subject, as the last time most have written a paper for an English class (as with me) was sometime in freshman year, probably during first year composition or rhetoric. And if your writing quality was anything like mine at eighteen, well... the less said the better. So what to do? Short of majoring in anything other than mathematics or statistics, chances are that the major you did end up with required some sort of paper writing. Mine was genetics, which, unfortunately, was a subject where all the stuff I was writing was far too technical and insular to be of any use to an application committee. I ended up combing through all my old essays (fortunately I never throw anything away), and found a paper on existentialism on a philosophy class I took as a junior. The paper itself was poorly written by my standards today, but it provided a decent skeleton from which to work with. I ended up revising it heavily to bring it up to par, but it totaled far less work and time than if I had picked a random subject and wrote from scratch.
A common question is whether or not subject matter is important. There are some schools that specifically request a paper that is based in literature or literature analysis. This is again a situation where, if necessary, I'd suggest contacting the school for clarification. A lot of times, these requirements are not hard rules, but rather guidelines (like GPA requirements set by grad schools) to steer applicants towards a single set of standards. In general, I'd suggest keeping your critical essay in the general humanities. That an essay isn't about postmodernism or literary theory isn't very important, in my opinion; it seems to me that what a school is using these essays for is to determine whether you can think and write critically about a subject. Remember, these schools are not only asking you to write, but also teach, which often requires are completely different set of skills from creative writing or poetry. Critical thinking and writing, for example.
On Recommendations: I haven't written too much on the art of recommendations, primarily because I did not have the sparkling recommendation from the world famous professor who took me under his/her tutelage in college. In fact, my recommendations were rather run-of-the-mill: two supervisors from work and a writing group member. I can really only say a couple things on recommendations. First, get them done early, as early as possible. It is your responsibility to make sure the schools receive these letters on time and sealed, not your recommendors. They're doing a favor for you, sometimes a tremendous favor, and the easier your make it for them to do their job, the happier they'll be. And it seems to me very obvious to keep your recommendors as happy as possible. Second, make sure you choose the right people to write you recommendations. This is one of those "obvious in theory, but hard in practice" things. Given the choice between a coworker who knows your writing really well and speak on you behalf on a close personal and professional level, and, say... Cormac McCarthy, who just signed your copy of "The Road," I'd suggest going with the coworker. Okay, so that's an extreme example, but I do think there is a certain art in choosing who you want to speak on your behalf. Obviously, you'd want them to be authority figures in your life, people who have seen your work and work ethic. But do you go with the person who knows you very well, but may not have the sterling or relevant background to creative writing, or do you go with the world-famous professor with whom you've taken one class under and may or may not remember your name? An application committee may pause at the famous name on the top of the letterhead, but they'll remember the story about how your insight singlehandedly helped turn someone's story into a work of art.
On the Manuscript: Not much to say here, unfortunately. This is all you, and no amount of offhand blog advice can replace good, old fashioned practice. There's no other way to do it, believe me, I've tried. BUT, if you really want to know: Feedback, critical unflinching feedback, is always good. Take a craft class over the summer. Some are better than others, so do your research. Go to a writer's conference. Found a writing group. The last one is often the best option, because it's free, and infinitely more valuable if you find a great group of people. Pick up other hobbies. It's a good way to give yourself space from writing. But don't procrastinate. (Or try not to.) And write. Write, write, write. Everything else is gravy -- feedback, a support group of friends, family, and coworkers -- but at the end of the day, they won't be the ones producing work, you will. This is by far the most important element of your application, with the Statement of Purpose coming in at a distant second. Make it count. Good luck!
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
The MFA Chronicles
Hi there! I'm back after a somewhat longish layoff, and will be resuming semi-regular posting on this blog. The reason for the delay? Oh... grad school stuff. Moving. Studying. Reading. Not writing. The weeks and months leading up to grad school have been incredibly busy for me, and unfortunately, I suspect that it'll only get busier once school actually starts. How's that for a kick in the pants? At any rate, I'm very happy to say that I will now be contributing to a blog called the The MFA Chronicles, brainchild of Jonterri Gadson. It's a blog with about a dozen or so first year MFA students talking about their various experiences through their first nerve-wracking school year and beyond. I imagine that it'll be a great resource for those of you looking towards applying or thinking of applying this fall, especially in the decision making process of what you will exactly want or not want in an MFA program. Plus, the community we have going for this blog looks to be an enthusiastic one, which is always great.
So what have I been doing these past few weeks? Well, as I mentioned above, a lot of stuff. I quit my job, which was in itself a great deal of work. You wouldn't think that something as freeing as ending your 9-5 job would require so much time and energy, but there was that curious sense of guilt and duty to my co-workers combined with my company's desire to get as much out of me as possible before I left for good that led to a very busy last few weeks. Shortly after that, me and my fiancee had to move out of our apartment and into a new one just around the block. And since I'll be moving down to Champaign separately a few weeks later (now a little over one week from today), I'll have the fine pleasure of essentially making two moves in a matter of one month. Fun, fun, fun. And then there's the stuff related to school. Of my craft class, I've managed to read four of eight books required for the semester, which is less than I'd like, but not bad considering everything, and of my teaching assistantship (which I am by and far most nervous for), I have read the teacher's handbook, the skeleton syllabus, and one textbook. And still I feel horribly, horribly unprepared.
The University of Illinois, I am incredibly happy to say, will provide a great support system for all their incoming TAs. In addition to a week-long orientation before classes start, I'll be taking classes in parallel to the one I'm teaching on, well, teaching, as well as participating in weekly meetings (support groups, really) with other TAs teaching the same class. What's not to like? Not much, as far as I'm concerned, except for the whole teaching bit. Getting up in front of 15-20 students and talking to them for an hour is not my idea of fun, even less so considering that I hate, hate, hate public speaking. Ah well. I'll get over it. Eventually.
So what have I been doing these past few weeks? Well, as I mentioned above, a lot of stuff. I quit my job, which was in itself a great deal of work. You wouldn't think that something as freeing as ending your 9-5 job would require so much time and energy, but there was that curious sense of guilt and duty to my co-workers combined with my company's desire to get as much out of me as possible before I left for good that led to a very busy last few weeks. Shortly after that, me and my fiancee had to move out of our apartment and into a new one just around the block. And since I'll be moving down to Champaign separately a few weeks later (now a little over one week from today), I'll have the fine pleasure of essentially making two moves in a matter of one month. Fun, fun, fun. And then there's the stuff related to school. Of my craft class, I've managed to read four of eight books required for the semester, which is less than I'd like, but not bad considering everything, and of my teaching assistantship (which I am by and far most nervous for), I have read the teacher's handbook, the skeleton syllabus, and one textbook. And still I feel horribly, horribly unprepared.
The University of Illinois, I am incredibly happy to say, will provide a great support system for all their incoming TAs. In addition to a week-long orientation before classes start, I'll be taking classes in parallel to the one I'm teaching on, well, teaching, as well as participating in weekly meetings (support groups, really) with other TAs teaching the same class. What's not to like? Not much, as far as I'm concerned, except for the whole teaching bit. Getting up in front of 15-20 students and talking to them for an hour is not my idea of fun, even less so considering that I hate, hate, hate public speaking. Ah well. I'll get over it. Eventually.
Thursday, July 9, 2009
Facebook vs MySpace
Now for something a little different. Check out this piece from the website Racialicious here on the concepts of race and class divisions as it relates to social networking sites; primarily facebook and MySpace. As I've mentioned in previous posts, I'm a bit of a technophile. I'm also deeply interested in the concepts of race and class, and the merging of the two subjects in this particular Racialicious post a hit fuzzy spot in my brain. Check it out.
Monday, June 29, 2009
Summer Reading, Part 2
Finished "I, the Divine" by Rabih Alameddine last weekend . An aborted fictional memoir, written entirely in half-finished first chapters, "I, the Divine" is an impressive a technical feat. Some immediate thoughts: It works. Kinda. The novel is less like a traditional linear novel (duh), and more like a series of vingettes, of little windows into the narrator's life. As a character examination, it works fantastically. I really came to know the protagonist, Sarah Nour El-Din, inside and out; her ticks, her habits, her values. And by sharing all of Sarah's attempts at writing, you get a great sense of her personal voice and, just as importantly, her writing voice. She experiments with tone, with voice, with POV over the course of three hundred pages. She contradicts her facts from one chapter to the next -- some not important, some quite important -- and in doing so, reveals how truth-bending writing, even in memoirs, must and can be to best serve a story. And certainly, what may be true in one window -- Sarah's utter disdain for her stepmother as a child -- may be fanciful, even false in another, when Sarah's relationship with her stepmother as an adult looking back on her youthful ways can be best described as warm, even loving. The truth, as it is in writing, is never just one thing, and constantly it shifts and moves throughout "I, the Divine."
While the varying perspectives, voices, and small views into the life of Sarah Nour El-Din is its greatest strength, it is also its greatest weakness. Like I briefly mentioned in my last post, "I, the Divine" reads less like a novel and more like a collection of non-linear, but connected short stories. The problem with this? The stories, while individually wonderful, and occasionally beautiful, lack the same tension and emotional punch that you'd get from reading the end of "Catcher in the Rye" or "The Road." That's not to say that nothing happens, quite the contrary, there are probably more unique things that occur in this novel than most -- we learn so much about Sarah and her father, her mother, her stepmother, her son, her two ex-husbands, and all her sisters in an incredibly short amount of time. The problem is, at least to me, is that the information, while plentiful, doesn't build the same way a linear novel would, doesn't layer its scenes on top of another with increasing emotional stakes. Instead, the reader gets one chapter with Sarah as a young girl in Lebanon, fighting her stepmother, and in the next chapter, Sarah as an adult in San Francisco sleeping with a new lover. At its best, this kind of skipping narrative is fascinating, but at its weakest, it's unfortunately jarring.
Next on my reading list is a little bit of "me" time. I'm going to re-read "Dune," one of my all time favorite science fiction books of my youth. Will it hold up? Approximately twenty pages in, I can already say both yes and no. Yes, because I'm already reinfatuated (is that even a word?) with the book. It really brings back so many memories of what I used to viscerally love about science fiction: ideas, technology, and an wonderfully richly crafted universe. Plus, things happen and things blow up! On the other hand, reading it as an adult and not a teenager, I can already see some of the "flaws" so stereotypically associated with genre fiction. Flat, utilitarian writing and an omniscient voice that occasionally verves into the obvious. Not necessarily poor writing, but certainly not the crackling, tight voices and narratives that I've become so accustomed to over the past few years. In short, it is writing that takes a back seat to story, and not the other way around.
While the varying perspectives, voices, and small views into the life of Sarah Nour El-Din is its greatest strength, it is also its greatest weakness. Like I briefly mentioned in my last post, "I, the Divine" reads less like a novel and more like a collection of non-linear, but connected short stories. The problem with this? The stories, while individually wonderful, and occasionally beautiful, lack the same tension and emotional punch that you'd get from reading the end of "Catcher in the Rye" or "The Road." That's not to say that nothing happens, quite the contrary, there are probably more unique things that occur in this novel than most -- we learn so much about Sarah and her father, her mother, her stepmother, her son, her two ex-husbands, and all her sisters in an incredibly short amount of time. The problem is, at least to me, is that the information, while plentiful, doesn't build the same way a linear novel would, doesn't layer its scenes on top of another with increasing emotional stakes. Instead, the reader gets one chapter with Sarah as a young girl in Lebanon, fighting her stepmother, and in the next chapter, Sarah as an adult in San Francisco sleeping with a new lover. At its best, this kind of skipping narrative is fascinating, but at its weakest, it's unfortunately jarring.
Next on my reading list is a little bit of "me" time. I'm going to re-read "Dune," one of my all time favorite science fiction books of my youth. Will it hold up? Approximately twenty pages in, I can already say both yes and no. Yes, because I'm already reinfatuated (is that even a word?) with the book. It really brings back so many memories of what I used to viscerally love about science fiction: ideas, technology, and an wonderfully richly crafted universe. Plus, things happen and things blow up! On the other hand, reading it as an adult and not a teenager, I can already see some of the "flaws" so stereotypically associated with genre fiction. Flat, utilitarian writing and an omniscient voice that occasionally verves into the obvious. Not necessarily poor writing, but certainly not the crackling, tight voices and narratives that I've become so accustomed to over the past few years. In short, it is writing that takes a back seat to story, and not the other way around.
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Work, etc.
The thing about work is that it sucks. Having to spend eight hours a day (plus one hour for lunch, one to two hours for commute) is a huge time drain, and typically only leaves me four-five hours of "free" time outside of work. This is a problem, a problem that is exacerbated by the fact that I have so much to prepare for in anticipation of moving and getting ready for grad school. That's my long-winded excuse for not tending to this blog more often in the past couple weeks. On the bright side, I'm quitting the old job in less than a month, and will have much more time to write interesting posts on storytelling in video games and the like. Boy do I know my audience.
Right now I'm reading I, the Divine by Rabih Alameddine for my upcoming craft class. The unique thing about this book is that it is a kind of aborted memoir written entirely in first chapters by the protagonist, Sarah Nour El-Din. About 50 pages in, I can immediately see the advantages to this technique. Since opening sections of novels typically rely more on summary and swaths of "telling" prose, Alameddine is able to convey a huge amount of information in relatively short amount of space. He also manages to cheat in actual scenes of dialogue and action by setting them up with very short, yet grand sweeping paragraphs of summary and general statements of fact. The character begins one chapter: "I realized when it came to men, I did not pick the beautiful or the correct. I picked the wrong one. I chose David," which then transitions wonderfully into a very specific scene. What I am curious about is how tension and pacing will be handled through 300 pages of this style. It is more akin to reading a collection of closely linked short stories than a linear book. Will the constant temporal jumping from random scene to random scene get old by page 250 without sufficient build up? I hope not. Right now it's a very good read, and I'm interested in how Alameddine will handle these problems later on.
Right now I'm reading I, the Divine by Rabih Alameddine for my upcoming craft class. The unique thing about this book is that it is a kind of aborted memoir written entirely in first chapters by the protagonist, Sarah Nour El-Din. About 50 pages in, I can immediately see the advantages to this technique. Since opening sections of novels typically rely more on summary and swaths of "telling" prose, Alameddine is able to convey a huge amount of information in relatively short amount of space. He also manages to cheat in actual scenes of dialogue and action by setting them up with very short, yet grand sweeping paragraphs of summary and general statements of fact. The character begins one chapter: "I realized when it came to men, I did not pick the beautiful or the correct. I picked the wrong one. I chose David," which then transitions wonderfully into a very specific scene. What I am curious about is how tension and pacing will be handled through 300 pages of this style. It is more akin to reading a collection of closely linked short stories than a linear book. Will the constant temporal jumping from random scene to random scene get old by page 250 without sufficient build up? I hope not. Right now it's a very good read, and I'm interested in how Alameddine will handle these problems later on.
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
Amazon Kindle = Elitist?
In a previous post, I extolled the virtues of Amazon's Kindle and how it will affect the way people read, both positively and negatively. As a technophile, I generally find myself on the side of technology, and in the case of books and the book industry, I definitely do think that eBooks and the like are the way of the future if the book is expected to survive. Like other forms of media -- music, movies, video games -- the printed word has to change or die. Just look at the newspaper and magazine industries. For better or for worse, paper has to become digital.
Now, I'm not necessarily saying there has to be a wholesale change in the way books are distributed and consumed. Like all things, the transition should be slow and natural, and I don't truly believe that the physical format will ever die out; there will always be a market for physical books. Having spent the better part of my adolescence devouring books from the library, I have countless memories of reading anything under the sun, new and old, large and small, holding books smelling of paper and age, all of which make up my childhood. And frankly, I wouldn't have it any other way. Given the choice and the means, I'd buy books in paper form while trying out the Kindle. But those are my experiences and choices, shaped by my childhood. Who says that children are experiencing literature in the same way today; who are we to say: these are our memories and experiences, you must acquire them, cherish them, and love them too?
Also interesting are writer Sherman Alexie's comments a few weeks ago at New York's BookExpo in relation to the Kindle, specifically calling it elitist. He's right. Technology, especially high technology, is not readily accessible to the poor. My feelings on this matter are mixed; I definitely do agree with Sherman Alexie's charge of technological elitism. But to speak to that, let's face it, literature as us MFAers know it is consumed primarily by the well off, the academic elite, the upper and middle class. Outside of the handful of writers -- the Dan Browns, the Stephen Kings of the world -- books are already restricted by a form of social elitism.
On the other hand, it's important to know that no one reads the way they used to, ten, twenty, thirty years ago. Attention is being siphoned by other media such as video games, movie, and television. If books wish to remain competitive as a form of entertainment, and even more importantly, if it wishes to widen its audience so that it isn't just a medium and art form for the elite, it must change. Whether this is in the form of Kindle books or PDF files easily accessed online by all, I don't know. At any rate, Sherman Alexie is interviewed in the following link, and clarifies his stance of the "elitist Kindle." It's a great read, and encapsulates a lot of important points and ideas on the complex subject. Find it here.
Now, I'm not necessarily saying there has to be a wholesale change in the way books are distributed and consumed. Like all things, the transition should be slow and natural, and I don't truly believe that the physical format will ever die out; there will always be a market for physical books. Having spent the better part of my adolescence devouring books from the library, I have countless memories of reading anything under the sun, new and old, large and small, holding books smelling of paper and age, all of which make up my childhood. And frankly, I wouldn't have it any other way. Given the choice and the means, I'd buy books in paper form while trying out the Kindle. But those are my experiences and choices, shaped by my childhood. Who says that children are experiencing literature in the same way today; who are we to say: these are our memories and experiences, you must acquire them, cherish them, and love them too?
Also interesting are writer Sherman Alexie's comments a few weeks ago at New York's BookExpo in relation to the Kindle, specifically calling it elitist. He's right. Technology, especially high technology, is not readily accessible to the poor. My feelings on this matter are mixed; I definitely do agree with Sherman Alexie's charge of technological elitism. But to speak to that, let's face it, literature as us MFAers know it is consumed primarily by the well off, the academic elite, the upper and middle class. Outside of the handful of writers -- the Dan Browns, the Stephen Kings of the world -- books are already restricted by a form of social elitism.
On the other hand, it's important to know that no one reads the way they used to, ten, twenty, thirty years ago. Attention is being siphoned by other media such as video games, movie, and television. If books wish to remain competitive as a form of entertainment, and even more importantly, if it wishes to widen its audience so that it isn't just a medium and art form for the elite, it must change. Whether this is in the form of Kindle books or PDF files easily accessed online by all, I don't know. At any rate, Sherman Alexie is interviewed in the following link, and clarifies his stance of the "elitist Kindle." It's a great read, and encapsulates a lot of important points and ideas on the complex subject. Find it here.
Monday, June 1, 2009
Storytelling and Video Games, Part 2
In this second post of a three part series, I continue to wax nostalgically about my love affair with video games and story in video games. You can find the first post of this ridiculous subject here. Below, I continue my list of my top seven examples of outstanding use of story and narrative in video games.
Also, I'd like to briefly note an article that a kind poster, David, pointed out in my last post, which explores the eloquence (or relative lack thereof) of story and storytelling in video games, written by Junot Diaz! Junot brings up some excellent points in his article, in my opinion, very much in line with one of the persisting fundamental problems with the video game business today; it's still such an immature industry, a medium where the voices and talent have had only thirty years to develop. Imagine how sophisticated the written word or the movie industry was thirty years after its inception. Find it on the Wall Street Journal website here: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121460385251911957.html
5. Half-Life (PC, 1998)
The premise of this game (as is the case for most First Person Shooters, FPSs) is hideously simple. You play in first person perspective with nothing but a gun and a cross hair, and are charged with shooting anything that moves. In reality, Half-Life is no different from the hundreds of other FPS that have come before or after it. You shoot things. You shoot a lot of things.
Half-Life makes its money in its departure from the video game standard of storytelling, rather than a reinvention of the FPS genre. One of the time-honored traditions of video games is the implementation of "levels" as an indicator of progress. This can be anything from the level your character attains when he/she gains enough experience points to the levels you complete with a tiny red, jumping Mario. Levels are great for video game designers because they make creating games easy (easier). Want to make a snow-based level with lots of monsters? Great. Done. What about a lava world with lots of jumping and dexterity-based puzzles? Easy. The discrete nature of leveling and level creation makes a game more diverse and interesting for the player. Where level design fails, in my opinion, is in the immersion of the player to the game. Simply, it's incredibly jarring to suddenly and arbitrarily end a scene, a situation, or a level just so you can move on to a different environment. It takes the player out of the game, and has a curious effect of "tearing down the fourth wall," to borrow a term from theater, which is something that would rarely be done (or done only with great intent) in other mediums, yet is done all the time in video games. And why would any self respecting story do that? Imagine getting to the castle where you're about to face the big bad boss to save the princess when the game suddenly pauses to essentially tell you: save here, perhaps. Drink a couple of strength potions. Enjoy this little movie cut-scene about how bad the big bad boss is. It doesn't make sense, and it removes one of the strongest qualities a video game has to offer -- interactivity.
So where does this leave Half-Life? Half-Life throws all old video game convention out the window, by giving you nothing to begin the game with except a character to control in first person perspective, and later, a gun and cross hairs. And that's it. There are no "levels" to speak of, no interruptions in the game where control of the game is taken from the player, and from the beginning credits until the the end, there is nothing except the survival of your character. You could conceivably play the game from beginning to end (all 20-30 hours) without stopping; every significant event is experienced real time, whether it is being attacked by an Apache helicopter to destroying a gigantic tentacled alien inside a nuclear reactor to eavesdropping on marines who are hunting you. The scenes of action are extremely exciting, and even better, they are defined by the player's reaction to what happens -- do I throw a grenade at the group of marines and then run in with guns a' blazing or do I snipe them from afar? -- which makes for great gameplay and even better stories.
4. Metal Gear Solid 2 (Playstation 2, 2001)
On the other end of the spectrum, we have one of the preeminent examples of video game interruption during gameplay -- Metal Gear Solid 2. Where you could call Half Life a minimalist exercise in storytelling, letting the player experience everything themselves, the Metal Gear franchise is perhaps most famously known for beating their players over the head with ridiculously long movie sequences, scenes of dialogue, and overt, heavy handed political commentary. To say that the last four or so Metal Gear games is almost akin to playing an interactive movie would not be so far from the truth. So why, especially after spending several paragraphs above deriding the problems with taking player control out of the hands of the player, would I nominate Metal Gear Solid 2? Because I love a good story, especially a story that can deliver with near Hollywood-like production values and effects. Check out the following intro movie to Metal Gear Solid 2:
So what's so important about Metal Gear Solid 2? For starters, it was one of the first games that truly attempted to bring a movie-like quality to the story it was telling. Metal Gear Solid (One) attempted to do this on the Playstation with its transition to 3D graphics, but at the time, the technology was limited and constrained in many ways. It wasn't until the sequel with MGS 2 debuting on the Playstation 2 do we get a game that fully exploits the technology of its day. To me, the above intro movie is something straight out of a Bond film or some spy thriller, complete with dramatic music and high-flying digital stunts. Even more tellingly, you can see how the series has evolved in terms of how the medium of video games (at least for this game) views itself in the intro of its sequel, Metal Gear Solid 3:
Credits? Theme music? If you were watching the above on the big screen, I bet you'd guess it was another Bond movie, for at least the first few minutes. While the gameplay was in general excellent and interesting, what most fascinated me about Metal Gear Solid 2 was its almost rigid adherence to making it seem like you were playing a movie, an extremely well made, well shot, and well financed movie.
Also, I'd like to briefly note an article that a kind poster, David, pointed out in my last post, which explores the eloquence (or relative lack thereof) of story and storytelling in video games, written by Junot Diaz! Junot brings up some excellent points in his article, in my opinion, very much in line with one of the persisting fundamental problems with the video game business today; it's still such an immature industry, a medium where the voices and talent have had only thirty years to develop. Imagine how sophisticated the written word or the movie industry was thirty years after its inception. Find it on the Wall Street Journal website here: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121460385251911957.html
5. Half-Life (PC, 1998)
The premise of this game (as is the case for most First Person Shooters, FPSs) is hideously simple. You play in first person perspective with nothing but a gun and a cross hair, and are charged with shooting anything that moves. In reality, Half-Life is no different from the hundreds of other FPS that have come before or after it. You shoot things. You shoot a lot of things.
Half-Life makes its money in its departure from the video game standard of storytelling, rather than a reinvention of the FPS genre. One of the time-honored traditions of video games is the implementation of "levels" as an indicator of progress. This can be anything from the level your character attains when he/she gains enough experience points to the levels you complete with a tiny red, jumping Mario. Levels are great for video game designers because they make creating games easy (easier). Want to make a snow-based level with lots of monsters? Great. Done. What about a lava world with lots of jumping and dexterity-based puzzles? Easy. The discrete nature of leveling and level creation makes a game more diverse and interesting for the player. Where level design fails, in my opinion, is in the immersion of the player to the game. Simply, it's incredibly jarring to suddenly and arbitrarily end a scene, a situation, or a level just so you can move on to a different environment. It takes the player out of the game, and has a curious effect of "tearing down the fourth wall," to borrow a term from theater, which is something that would rarely be done (or done only with great intent) in other mediums, yet is done all the time in video games. And why would any self respecting story do that? Imagine getting to the castle where you're about to face the big bad boss to save the princess when the game suddenly pauses to essentially tell you: save here, perhaps. Drink a couple of strength potions. Enjoy this little movie cut-scene about how bad the big bad boss is. It doesn't make sense, and it removes one of the strongest qualities a video game has to offer -- interactivity.
So where does this leave Half-Life? Half-Life throws all old video game convention out the window, by giving you nothing to begin the game with except a character to control in first person perspective, and later, a gun and cross hairs. And that's it. There are no "levels" to speak of, no interruptions in the game where control of the game is taken from the player, and from the beginning credits until the the end, there is nothing except the survival of your character. You could conceivably play the game from beginning to end (all 20-30 hours) without stopping; every significant event is experienced real time, whether it is being attacked by an Apache helicopter to destroying a gigantic tentacled alien inside a nuclear reactor to eavesdropping on marines who are hunting you. The scenes of action are extremely exciting, and even better, they are defined by the player's reaction to what happens -- do I throw a grenade at the group of marines and then run in with guns a' blazing or do I snipe them from afar? -- which makes for great gameplay and even better stories.
4. Metal Gear Solid 2 (Playstation 2, 2001)
On the other end of the spectrum, we have one of the preeminent examples of video game interruption during gameplay -- Metal Gear Solid 2. Where you could call Half Life a minimalist exercise in storytelling, letting the player experience everything themselves, the Metal Gear franchise is perhaps most famously known for beating their players over the head with ridiculously long movie sequences, scenes of dialogue, and overt, heavy handed political commentary. To say that the last four or so Metal Gear games is almost akin to playing an interactive movie would not be so far from the truth. So why, especially after spending several paragraphs above deriding the problems with taking player control out of the hands of the player, would I nominate Metal Gear Solid 2? Because I love a good story, especially a story that can deliver with near Hollywood-like production values and effects. Check out the following intro movie to Metal Gear Solid 2:
So what's so important about Metal Gear Solid 2? For starters, it was one of the first games that truly attempted to bring a movie-like quality to the story it was telling. Metal Gear Solid (One) attempted to do this on the Playstation with its transition to 3D graphics, but at the time, the technology was limited and constrained in many ways. It wasn't until the sequel with MGS 2 debuting on the Playstation 2 do we get a game that fully exploits the technology of its day. To me, the above intro movie is something straight out of a Bond film or some spy thriller, complete with dramatic music and high-flying digital stunts. Even more tellingly, you can see how the series has evolved in terms of how the medium of video games (at least for this game) views itself in the intro of its sequel, Metal Gear Solid 3:
Credits? Theme music? If you were watching the above on the big screen, I bet you'd guess it was another Bond movie, for at least the first few minutes. While the gameplay was in general excellent and interesting, what most fascinated me about Metal Gear Solid 2 was its almost rigid adherence to making it seem like you were playing a movie, an extremely well made, well shot, and well financed movie.
Friday, May 29, 2009
Chicago's Printers Row Lit Fest 2009
Live in Chicago? Love books? Great news! Next weekend, June 6-7, Chicago will be holding its 2009 Printers Row Lit Fest in the Printers Row neighborhood. This year's festival is particularly star-studded, featuring writers such as Neil Gaiman, Dave Eggers, Charles Baxter, Joe Meno, and Aleksandar Hemon. Unfortunately, and predictably, the tickets (which are free) for the events featuring both Neil Gaiman and Dave Eggers are all sold out as of the writing of this post. If I were a more studious person, I'd be able to tell you that I had had booked the tickets for both of those writers a long time ago, but that's sadly not the case. So while I will be attending the event, I unfortunately won't be seeing either of those authors. At any rate, if you live in Chicago or anywhere near Chicago, be sure to mark these dates in your calendar. It's in a beautiful part of downtown (although to be honest, all of downtown is beautiful), and the actual outdoor book fair portion of the festival -- wall to wall stands of every imaginable type of book and book-related product -- is simply stunning.
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Storytelling and Video Games
Yes, the title of this post is correct. I am, for better or for worse, an avid video gamer. While I don't game as much as I used to in previous years (I wasted the better part of my youth on the computer) I do still enjoy a good gaming fix every now and then. Besides the obvious fix generated from blasting baddies and buddies alike, as a storyteller, one of my favorite parts of playing video games is the incredible opportunity to not only spectate and experience fantastic narratives, but to have the chance to participate in them too. One of the huge advantages computer games have over their other media counterparts is their interactivity. Now, instead of reading or watching Superman save Lois Lane for the umpteenth time, you can actually do it. Needless to say, the potential for immersive storytelling in video games is incredibly rich, and experiencing story and plot is nothing like it is in a book or a movie.
Despite all this, the standard for storytelling in video games is still horribly low. A common (and frequently accurate) stereotype is that video games pander to graphical ability, violence, and sex with little to no regard to story or narrative in order to sell copies. If there is a story, it is often a cliched one, the most common being the hero's journey, a tale usually involving a busty female in need of saving from the clutches of a villain by a protagonist of superhero (or superhero-like) ability. But the industry is still relatively immature, and at almost thirty years old, the medium of video games is extremely new and has a long way to go. With this, I present to you my own personal top seven list of outstanding examples of story and storytelling in video games. This is by no means a complete list -- there are many other worthy candidates that I have not played that should grace this list -- but I hope to outline what the video game industry has to offer in terms of not only creating and developing moving narratives, but also forging new ground in what the medium can offer in the realm of interactive storytelling.
7. Chrono Trigger (SNES, 1995)
Chrono Trigger is an old school Super Nintendo Japanese console RPG. In it you control Crono, a silent protagonist, and his band of adventurers whom you pick up along the way throughout the course of game, a cast which includes a princess tomboy, a robot, an evil wizard, and Glenn, the sword wielding frog, to save the world from a creature named Lavos (a gigantic lava-like oval monster?) by jumping through various periods in time. Hence the time-themed title of the game, Chrono Trigger. If you've never played a video game (especially a Japanese-made console RPG), this may seem all very strange, but for the initiated, it's very much par for the course. And yes, Glenn is the frog displayed on the cover of the game above.
Despite of, and perhaps because of the story's obvious wackiness, there's a certain zeal and charm to Chrono Trigger's world and its characters. For example, in the game's future time period, the land you explore is drab and gray, with little to no human or animal life, instead populated with rocks, steel, and worn down machines. Yet this same world, except in the prehistoric time period, is conversely dominated by jungles of overgrowth and green. Animals are everywhere -- including dinosaurs -- and humans are the minority, struggling to survive in a land where they are prey to nearly everything. Chrono Tigger's ability to immerse you in a half a dozen deep and interesting worlds through its art and design is remarkable.
But what's most unique about Chrono Trigger is that it was one of the first of its kind to feature multiple endings (thirteen). Depending on what you do in the game, and how you did it, what happens when the credits start rolling will be wildly different. While the way you can acquire these different endings are somewhat arbitrary, depending mostly on when you decide to engage the end boss and with which characters, the idea behind "customizing" the way you can experience the close of the story was a remarkable idea for its time. That you deeply care for the characters and their situations made the ending that you finished with all the more important and, interestingly, it encouraged the gamer to play and replay the game to see all the possible endings. This kind of experience is really only something that can be found in the medium of video games, and as we'll see in my later picks, the ability to "choose" and carve out your character's unique story and ending is something that the industry had barely begun to scratch with Chrono Trigger.
6. Grim Fandango (PC, 1998)
Grim Fandango is what you could call one of the last "old school" adventure games, which mushroomed in popularity during the eighties and nineties. A game under the Adventure genre is one typically defined by perspective and action, where the character controlled by the player is on-screen at all times, interacting with the environment and other characters through dialogue and manipulation. An adventure game is rarely violent (by today's standards), and is one part puzzle game, one part movie. Dialogue is perhaps one of the most important features of an adventure game, and one of the unique mechanics the adventure game pioneered for the industry was the invention of the "dialogue tree." When interacting with another character, players are given choices on how they might want to respond or say, and thus makes subsequent choices until the conversation ends. Back in the day, this essentially meant choosing option "A," "B," or "C" to get a slightly emotionally varied, but essentially same informational response from Random Character D, but at the time, this choice typified the kind of freedom a video game offered to players. Want to be serious? Choose the straight-forward dialogue option. Want to be snarky? Tell the character to go suck a lemon. Even though dialogue trees were (and to a certain degree, still are) a very stripped down version of those "Choose Your Own Adventure" books, I really loved the unique opportunity to forward story, dialogue, and character development through non-violent means based on my own choices.
Out of all the adventure games I've played in my life, Grim Fandango is bar none, one of the finest games in terms of story, plot, and character that I've ever played. Grim Fandango takes place in The Land of the Dead, a world, heavily influenced by Mexico's "Day of the Dead" holiday, where recently deceased souls undergo a four year journey to their final resting place, the Ninth Underworld. It's all outlined in the game's starting intro below:
You play Manuel "Manny" Calavera (in the video above) who, through situations in the game, goes on his own four year journey to the Ninth Underworld while trying to save the soul of another character he falls in love with, Mercedes "Meche" Colomar (yes, it's the damsel in distress), and simultaneously foiling the plot of a crime syndicate. If it sounds like the game has heavy film noir influences, you'd be right. The art, the style, the story, and especially the music are all lifted from movies such as The Maltese Falcon and Casablanca. Simply, the game oozes personality with its unique blend of film noir and Mexican-influenced style, from the high-ceilinged and beautiful architecture to the calaca-inspired characters.
What does this have to do with story? Everything. Atmosphere is the video game's long paragraphs of description, music and dialogue its sense of pace and rhythm. A game is nothing without place, art, and style, which Grim Fandango has in the spades, and simply, it's easy to get absorbed in a narrative that provides a ready-made world rich with history. But my hands down favorite aspect of Grim Fandango are the characters and their personalities. The voice acting is Pixar-quality, and every main character -- Manny, Meche, and Glottis (an huge orange demon) -- is a fully fleshed "person." I fell in love with these characters while playing, and when the game ended and the credits started to roll, I felt a kind of loss that's so familiar to me when finishing a great book. I didn't want it to end, having journeyed so long and experiencing so much with Manny and Meche; I wanted to follow with those characters forever, which is, really, all you could ever ask of a great story.
I think I'll stop here. I still have another five games to go, but if I continued, this post would go on forever. Check in later, where I'll wax endlessly about more titles you've probably never heard of!
Despite all this, the standard for storytelling in video games is still horribly low. A common (and frequently accurate) stereotype is that video games pander to graphical ability, violence, and sex with little to no regard to story or narrative in order to sell copies. If there is a story, it is often a cliched one, the most common being the hero's journey, a tale usually involving a busty female in need of saving from the clutches of a villain by a protagonist of superhero (or superhero-like) ability. But the industry is still relatively immature, and at almost thirty years old, the medium of video games is extremely new and has a long way to go. With this, I present to you my own personal top seven list of outstanding examples of story and storytelling in video games. This is by no means a complete list -- there are many other worthy candidates that I have not played that should grace this list -- but I hope to outline what the video game industry has to offer in terms of not only creating and developing moving narratives, but also forging new ground in what the medium can offer in the realm of interactive storytelling.
7. Chrono Trigger (SNES, 1995)
Chrono Trigger is an old school Super Nintendo Japanese console RPG. In it you control Crono, a silent protagonist, and his band of adventurers whom you pick up along the way throughout the course of game, a cast which includes a princess tomboy, a robot, an evil wizard, and Glenn, the sword wielding frog, to save the world from a creature named Lavos (a gigantic lava-like oval monster?) by jumping through various periods in time. Hence the time-themed title of the game, Chrono Trigger. If you've never played a video game (especially a Japanese-made console RPG), this may seem all very strange, but for the initiated, it's very much par for the course. And yes, Glenn is the frog displayed on the cover of the game above.
Despite of, and perhaps because of the story's obvious wackiness, there's a certain zeal and charm to Chrono Trigger's world and its characters. For example, in the game's future time period, the land you explore is drab and gray, with little to no human or animal life, instead populated with rocks, steel, and worn down machines. Yet this same world, except in the prehistoric time period, is conversely dominated by jungles of overgrowth and green. Animals are everywhere -- including dinosaurs -- and humans are the minority, struggling to survive in a land where they are prey to nearly everything. Chrono Tigger's ability to immerse you in a half a dozen deep and interesting worlds through its art and design is remarkable.
But what's most unique about Chrono Trigger is that it was one of the first of its kind to feature multiple endings (thirteen). Depending on what you do in the game, and how you did it, what happens when the credits start rolling will be wildly different. While the way you can acquire these different endings are somewhat arbitrary, depending mostly on when you decide to engage the end boss and with which characters, the idea behind "customizing" the way you can experience the close of the story was a remarkable idea for its time. That you deeply care for the characters and their situations made the ending that you finished with all the more important and, interestingly, it encouraged the gamer to play and replay the game to see all the possible endings. This kind of experience is really only something that can be found in the medium of video games, and as we'll see in my later picks, the ability to "choose" and carve out your character's unique story and ending is something that the industry had barely begun to scratch with Chrono Trigger.
6. Grim Fandango (PC, 1998)
Grim Fandango is what you could call one of the last "old school" adventure games, which mushroomed in popularity during the eighties and nineties. A game under the Adventure genre is one typically defined by perspective and action, where the character controlled by the player is on-screen at all times, interacting with the environment and other characters through dialogue and manipulation. An adventure game is rarely violent (by today's standards), and is one part puzzle game, one part movie. Dialogue is perhaps one of the most important features of an adventure game, and one of the unique mechanics the adventure game pioneered for the industry was the invention of the "dialogue tree." When interacting with another character, players are given choices on how they might want to respond or say, and thus makes subsequent choices until the conversation ends. Back in the day, this essentially meant choosing option "A," "B," or "C" to get a slightly emotionally varied, but essentially same informational response from Random Character D, but at the time, this choice typified the kind of freedom a video game offered to players. Want to be serious? Choose the straight-forward dialogue option. Want to be snarky? Tell the character to go suck a lemon. Even though dialogue trees were (and to a certain degree, still are) a very stripped down version of those "Choose Your Own Adventure" books, I really loved the unique opportunity to forward story, dialogue, and character development through non-violent means based on my own choices.
Out of all the adventure games I've played in my life, Grim Fandango is bar none, one of the finest games in terms of story, plot, and character that I've ever played. Grim Fandango takes place in The Land of the Dead, a world, heavily influenced by Mexico's "Day of the Dead" holiday, where recently deceased souls undergo a four year journey to their final resting place, the Ninth Underworld. It's all outlined in the game's starting intro below:
You play Manuel "Manny" Calavera (in the video above) who, through situations in the game, goes on his own four year journey to the Ninth Underworld while trying to save the soul of another character he falls in love with, Mercedes "Meche" Colomar (yes, it's the damsel in distress), and simultaneously foiling the plot of a crime syndicate. If it sounds like the game has heavy film noir influences, you'd be right. The art, the style, the story, and especially the music are all lifted from movies such as The Maltese Falcon and Casablanca. Simply, the game oozes personality with its unique blend of film noir and Mexican-influenced style, from the high-ceilinged and beautiful architecture to the calaca-inspired characters.
What does this have to do with story? Everything. Atmosphere is the video game's long paragraphs of description, music and dialogue its sense of pace and rhythm. A game is nothing without place, art, and style, which Grim Fandango has in the spades, and simply, it's easy to get absorbed in a narrative that provides a ready-made world rich with history. But my hands down favorite aspect of Grim Fandango are the characters and their personalities. The voice acting is Pixar-quality, and every main character -- Manny, Meche, and Glottis (an huge orange demon) -- is a fully fleshed "person." I fell in love with these characters while playing, and when the game ended and the credits started to roll, I felt a kind of loss that's so familiar to me when finishing a great book. I didn't want it to end, having journeyed so long and experiencing so much with Manny and Meche; I wanted to follow with those characters forever, which is, really, all you could ever ask of a great story.
I think I'll stop here. I still have another five games to go, but if I continued, this post would go on forever. Check in later, where I'll wax endlessly about more titles you've probably never heard of!
Thursday, May 21, 2009
Goodreads
My previous post got me thinking: all my "What I'm Reading" list really is, is but a stripped down version of what Goodreads offers. What's Goodreads? I'm glad you asked. It's yet another social networking site, but with a literary twist. It focuses on books and the people who read books. Users maintain and update lists of books they've read, want to read ("to-read"), are currently reading, and any other kind of custom list. They can also rate books, write reviews, and comment on other people's book selections, reviews, comments, etc. Personally, I find it's an indispensable resource for keeping track of what I've read, when I've read it, and what I plan to read sometime down the line. On top of that, it's also a great way to generate book discussions with friends (the few that I have who read!).
Want to be my friend on Goodreads? Click here. Happy reading!
Want to be my friend on Goodreads? Click here. Happy reading!
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
Reading for Fun and Profit
I've ploughed through two books of my reading list for my craft class in the fall so far: Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris, and Shining at the Bottom of the Sea by Stephen Marche. With this, I'd like to unveil a fancy right-hand sidebar addition to the blog, the "What I'm Reading" list. Yes, it's a very creative title. But for those of you who are interested, it's a simple listing of what I'm currently reading. Right now, it's Alone With All That Could Happen: Rethinking Conventional Wisdom About the Craft of Fiction by David Jauss, a craft book on fiction.
As for the other two books I've finished, "Then We Came to the End" and "Shining at the Bottom of the Sea," I'm glad to say they were both great reads. The Stephen Marche book is less my kind of reading material, as I quickly came to realize it was more metafiction than anything else. "Shining at the Bottom of the Sea" is an anthology of works derived from a made up country (Sanjania) and its culture. Craft-wise, it's a pretty brilliant book. Marche creates a whole population with its own customs, practices, value systems, dialects, and histories from the bottom up. Reading through the anthology of short stories, I really came to appreciate the breadth of Marche's writing prowess; he manages to write over a dozen stories, "authored" by over a dozen different writers, all of which have their own unique voices and stylistic tics. It's both amazing and intimidating.
However, for all of Marche's technical virtuosity, I found myself fundamentally enjoying Ferris' "Then We Came to the End" on a much more viseral level. Everyone reads for different purposes. Myself, I read to be moved, to laugh, to cry. Metafiction, unfortunately, does not do this for me. Joshua Ferris' book does. Written entirely in first person plural, "Then We Came to the End" follows an advertising agency office struggling to stay afloat during a time of layoffs and economic troubles. At first, I was dubious about the subject matter of the book; I didn't think I would care very much about the travails of a group of affluent upper-middle class people, but I was pleasantly surprised that the book became much more than that. Suffice to say, it manages to be a very emotionally satisfying read. Also, what's extraordinary about Ferris' book is that it, too, is technically remarkable -- writing a story that is almost entirely in first person plural ("we" and "our") is amazing. The fact is, a story such as this could have never been written without the first person plural point of view. The narrator, the "we" and "our," is an additional character, representing the crowd, with the kind of group think that occurs in an office of people whose backgrounds are all socioeconomically and culturally very similar. This group think is an important character, as they act and think as one, often with the maturity level of children, which leads to some very ridiculous decisions and situations, some of them more serious than others.
I can't even begin to imagine how Ferris managed to develop this voice, though I suspect it came from years and years of writing and rewriting. But that's an obvious answer, right? At any rate, I'm very glad to have finished two books on my list already. I'll be sure to share the remaining book titles as I tackle them in the weeks ahead.
As for the other two books I've finished, "Then We Came to the End" and "Shining at the Bottom of the Sea," I'm glad to say they were both great reads. The Stephen Marche book is less my kind of reading material, as I quickly came to realize it was more metafiction than anything else. "Shining at the Bottom of the Sea" is an anthology of works derived from a made up country (Sanjania) and its culture. Craft-wise, it's a pretty brilliant book. Marche creates a whole population with its own customs, practices, value systems, dialects, and histories from the bottom up. Reading through the anthology of short stories, I really came to appreciate the breadth of Marche's writing prowess; he manages to write over a dozen stories, "authored" by over a dozen different writers, all of which have their own unique voices and stylistic tics. It's both amazing and intimidating.
However, for all of Marche's technical virtuosity, I found myself fundamentally enjoying Ferris' "Then We Came to the End" on a much more viseral level. Everyone reads for different purposes. Myself, I read to be moved, to laugh, to cry. Metafiction, unfortunately, does not do this for me. Joshua Ferris' book does. Written entirely in first person plural, "Then We Came to the End" follows an advertising agency office struggling to stay afloat during a time of layoffs and economic troubles. At first, I was dubious about the subject matter of the book; I didn't think I would care very much about the travails of a group of affluent upper-middle class people, but I was pleasantly surprised that the book became much more than that. Suffice to say, it manages to be a very emotionally satisfying read. Also, what's extraordinary about Ferris' book is that it, too, is technically remarkable -- writing a story that is almost entirely in first person plural ("we" and "our") is amazing. The fact is, a story such as this could have never been written without the first person plural point of view. The narrator, the "we" and "our," is an additional character, representing the crowd, with the kind of group think that occurs in an office of people whose backgrounds are all socioeconomically and culturally very similar. This group think is an important character, as they act and think as one, often with the maturity level of children, which leads to some very ridiculous decisions and situations, some of them more serious than others.
I can't even begin to imagine how Ferris managed to develop this voice, though I suspect it came from years and years of writing and rewriting. But that's an obvious answer, right? At any rate, I'm very glad to have finished two books on my list already. I'll be sure to share the remaining book titles as I tackle them in the weeks ahead.
Friday, May 15, 2009
Work, etc.
How busy has your summer been so far? If it has been anything like mine, then the answer would probably be "very." Yet as early as a month ago, I was patting myself on the back for a job well done applying to all those schools last fall, thinking I'd take it easy over the summer, maybe read a few books, write a lot, and relax. Nope.
Not if you want to hit the ground running in your first year of grad school. Relatively speaking, of course. All the preparation in the world can't replace actually going to grad school. But you can do is prepare for the worst, and hope for the best. And preparing for the worst, I've found, is a lot of work. This summer, I have to:
Not if you want to hit the ground running in your first year of grad school. Relatively speaking, of course. All the preparation in the world can't replace actually going to grad school. But you can do is prepare for the worst, and hope for the best. And preparing for the worst, I've found, is a lot of work. This summer, I have to:
- Move from one city to another.
- Write -- New, sparkly stories that will validate my program's confidence in me!
- Read -- Read what, you may ask? A ton of stuff:
- My professors' works.
- Works for my upcoming craft class.
- Textbooks for my TAship.
- Anything else that I would normally read for fun. A low priority, considering what's listed above.
- Prepare for my TAship.
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Amazon's Kindle
Check it, the new Kindle DX. Discalimer: I do not represent or am affiliated with Amazon in any way. I am, however, a humongous technophile and a reading geek. So, you can imagine how great this new Kindle is to me. In addition to holding thousands of pounds of books in a light, easy to carry little tablet, the thing also supports magazines, textbooks, and newspapers, all downloadable at your fingertips. Hooray for an alternative financial model for the dying newspapers! It also supports PDF files, and has nifty graphics in black and white. No color, but I imagine that it'll be something that Amazon will be unveiling sometime down the road.
Now. Let's be honest. At $489, this item is not cheap. And if you want your New York Times or subscription to The Atlantic or any books at all, those are all additional fees on top of the extraordinarily expensive Kindle. Older versions will cost you about $350, which is (relatively) reasonable, but honestly, what writer (unless you're Stephen King) has that kind of change to spare? What's intriguing about the whole concept of downloadable content and media (in book and text form) is the way it could potentially change the way books are consumed and read. An electronic version of a book, one that can be bought and downloaded in the matter of minutes, anywhere, very much supports the kind of impulsive and "on-demand" buying pattern that the Internet currently feeds for things like video games and software. Want it? Have a credit card? It's yours, right now. A good thing for books, I think, if they are advertised and supported properly. At the same time, the electronic format (and the linked Wall Street Journal article above touches on this) also promotes a different type of reading pattern that a good old fashioned piece of paper does not. It makes reading more fractious, promotes skimming rather than an attention to detail. You can see it in the way media online is currently consumed. When was the last time you've read something you were only half interested in line by line in an online article? My reading habits and strategies massively shift depending on what medium it is in. Online, I tend to read more quickly, skimming articles, websites, and pages for key phrases and nuggets. When I find something that interests me, or that requires deeper attention, do I finally stop and give a deeper reading. Otherwise, if it doesn't attract me, I pass it over, and ignore it. This, I imagine, will be exacerbated with cheap, on-demand e-media. If a book -- bought relatively cheaply -- is easily gotten, easily downloaded, and easily loaded, how much attention will it be given if it doesn't grab a reader from the first page? The first paragraph? Easily gotten, also easily abandoned and forgotten. I've always considered buying books from the store as entering into a kind of agreement: no matter how long it takes me to get to the book or how long to read, I'll eventually finish it. More than it being 10-15 dollars in price, a physical book is a kind of reminder, sitting on your desk or bookshelf or whatever, until you go and read it, where it then transforms into a different kind of reminder, a reminder of how good (or bad) your memories of that book were everytime you see it. An e-book cannot do this. An e-book, if you don't like it, can be closed and filed away electronically. It disappears, and there is no physical reminder of your book, unless you actively go and look for it again in the file menu.
Some interesting things to think about -- both bad and good. Even though I believe the physical format will never go out of style, I do think the electronic format is the future. Just look at the music industry.
Now. Let's be honest. At $489, this item is not cheap. And if you want your New York Times or subscription to The Atlantic or any books at all, those are all additional fees on top of the extraordinarily expensive Kindle. Older versions will cost you about $350, which is (relatively) reasonable, but honestly, what writer (unless you're Stephen King) has that kind of change to spare? What's intriguing about the whole concept of downloadable content and media (in book and text form) is the way it could potentially change the way books are consumed and read. An electronic version of a book, one that can be bought and downloaded in the matter of minutes, anywhere, very much supports the kind of impulsive and "on-demand" buying pattern that the Internet currently feeds for things like video games and software. Want it? Have a credit card? It's yours, right now. A good thing for books, I think, if they are advertised and supported properly. At the same time, the electronic format (and the linked Wall Street Journal article above touches on this) also promotes a different type of reading pattern that a good old fashioned piece of paper does not. It makes reading more fractious, promotes skimming rather than an attention to detail. You can see it in the way media online is currently consumed. When was the last time you've read something you were only half interested in line by line in an online article? My reading habits and strategies massively shift depending on what medium it is in. Online, I tend to read more quickly, skimming articles, websites, and pages for key phrases and nuggets. When I find something that interests me, or that requires deeper attention, do I finally stop and give a deeper reading. Otherwise, if it doesn't attract me, I pass it over, and ignore it. This, I imagine, will be exacerbated with cheap, on-demand e-media. If a book -- bought relatively cheaply -- is easily gotten, easily downloaded, and easily loaded, how much attention will it be given if it doesn't grab a reader from the first page? The first paragraph? Easily gotten, also easily abandoned and forgotten. I've always considered buying books from the store as entering into a kind of agreement: no matter how long it takes me to get to the book or how long to read, I'll eventually finish it. More than it being 10-15 dollars in price, a physical book is a kind of reminder, sitting on your desk or bookshelf or whatever, until you go and read it, where it then transforms into a different kind of reminder, a reminder of how good (or bad) your memories of that book were everytime you see it. An e-book cannot do this. An e-book, if you don't like it, can be closed and filed away electronically. It disappears, and there is no physical reminder of your book, unless you actively go and look for it again in the file menu.
Some interesting things to think about -- both bad and good. Even though I believe the physical format will never go out of style, I do think the electronic format is the future. Just look at the music industry.
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Funding 101
Check it out: Seth Abramson's Funding Rankings on The Suburban Ecstasies. Fantastic stuff. I kind of wish I had this kind of resource when I was applying to schools last fall. Not that the knowledge would have changed my list (it wouldn't have), but rather, it would have provided a large measure of comfort for me in my decision making. To have a comprehensive list of schools, from one to fifty, documenting funding, length, and teaching load is nothing short of fantastic. It's a great read, regardless of whether you're currently (or will be) attending school or gearing up to apply for 2010.
As for the list itself, I am relatively unsurprised. To trumpet the University of Illinois' funding briefly, it comes as no shock to me that it ranks so highly at number three, as the University of Illinois manages to provide full funding for all its students through its incredibly tiny cohorts (three poets, three fiction writers a year) with many TA and internship opportunities. Every student teaches one section in their first year, and then two sections (or a combination of TAing and internships) in their remaining two years. TAing (based on previous years) gives an approximately $9,000 stipend. That totals ~$9K for the first year, and ~$18K for the remaining two. Combine that with the ridiculously low cost of living in Champaign-Urbana (single apartments go for $400-500, depending on how nice you want to go), and you have one of the best financial packages in the country. Surprised? I was too in my research of the program and subsequent acceptance. You'd figure that the University of Illinois would be a more widely regarded program based on the strength of its funding package alone. What most don't realize is that the University of Illinois is, relatively speaking, a very young program, established in just 2002.
Also unsurprising to me is the kind of footprint that Midwestern and Southern schools have on the list. Out of the top fifteen schools, seven are located in the Midwest -- University of Illinois, Indiana University, Ohio State University, Purdue University, Washington University at St. Louis, University of Michigan, and Southern Illinois University. In the top twenty, nine schools. The South, has six schools in the top fifteen, and nine in the top twenty. As I've intimated in previous posts, this kind of funding pattern is unsurprising. The major metropolitan areas in the United States -- the West Coast and East Coast, Chicago, etc. -- are replete with writers and writing communities by virtue of their large, concentrated populations. This is why so many schools located in these areas can sustain programs, some of them very prestigious, with little to no funding (Columbia, The New School, NYU, Northwestern). Simply, they don't need to offer their students funding; they have more than enough people living close by who are willing to pay full price. In contrast, the Midwest and the South, outside of the few major metropolitan areas, must provide aggressive funding packages to attract people out of necessity. To a writer living in Chicago or New York or Los Angeles, where many advantages of lifestyle and community are afforded to them, the prospect of moving to a town with a population of fifty thousand is made that much more appealing with the prospect of a fully funded program.
At any rate, Seth's list is an excellent jumping off point for anyone compiling a list of schools, especially if funding is one of your top priorities. It is important to note, however, that some schools, like the University of Minnesota, Syracuse, and Johns Hopkins, are all listed in the mid-thirties because of a lack of information in regards to their exact funding. I know all three programs fully fund their students, and probably quite well, however the lack of information unfortunately damages them in their standing -- how can you rank a school without any hard numbers? So I guess the lesson is, do your research. Regardless of Seth's wonderful funding list, I'd still apply to Syracuse and Johns Hopkins if I had to do it all over again.
As for the list itself, I am relatively unsurprised. To trumpet the University of Illinois' funding briefly, it comes as no shock to me that it ranks so highly at number three, as the University of Illinois manages to provide full funding for all its students through its incredibly tiny cohorts (three poets, three fiction writers a year) with many TA and internship opportunities. Every student teaches one section in their first year, and then two sections (or a combination of TAing and internships) in their remaining two years. TAing (based on previous years) gives an approximately $9,000 stipend. That totals ~$9K for the first year, and ~$18K for the remaining two. Combine that with the ridiculously low cost of living in Champaign-Urbana (single apartments go for $400-500, depending on how nice you want to go), and you have one of the best financial packages in the country. Surprised? I was too in my research of the program and subsequent acceptance. You'd figure that the University of Illinois would be a more widely regarded program based on the strength of its funding package alone. What most don't realize is that the University of Illinois is, relatively speaking, a very young program, established in just 2002.
Also unsurprising to me is the kind of footprint that Midwestern and Southern schools have on the list. Out of the top fifteen schools, seven are located in the Midwest -- University of Illinois, Indiana University, Ohio State University, Purdue University, Washington University at St. Louis, University of Michigan, and Southern Illinois University. In the top twenty, nine schools. The South, has six schools in the top fifteen, and nine in the top twenty. As I've intimated in previous posts, this kind of funding pattern is unsurprising. The major metropolitan areas in the United States -- the West Coast and East Coast, Chicago, etc. -- are replete with writers and writing communities by virtue of their large, concentrated populations. This is why so many schools located in these areas can sustain programs, some of them very prestigious, with little to no funding (Columbia, The New School, NYU, Northwestern). Simply, they don't need to offer their students funding; they have more than enough people living close by who are willing to pay full price. In contrast, the Midwest and the South, outside of the few major metropolitan areas, must provide aggressive funding packages to attract people out of necessity. To a writer living in Chicago or New York or Los Angeles, where many advantages of lifestyle and community are afforded to them, the prospect of moving to a town with a population of fifty thousand is made that much more appealing with the prospect of a fully funded program.
At any rate, Seth's list is an excellent jumping off point for anyone compiling a list of schools, especially if funding is one of your top priorities. It is important to note, however, that some schools, like the University of Minnesota, Syracuse, and Johns Hopkins, are all listed in the mid-thirties because of a lack of information in regards to their exact funding. I know all three programs fully fund their students, and probably quite well, however the lack of information unfortunately damages them in their standing -- how can you rank a school without any hard numbers? So I guess the lesson is, do your research. Regardless of Seth's wonderful funding list, I'd still apply to Syracuse and Johns Hopkins if I had to do it all over again.
Friday, April 24, 2009
Title Change
You might notice the small change to the title of my blog up top: from "Applying to the MFA in Creative Writing" to simply "The MFA in Creative Writing."
While I'll definitely be monitoring the MFA application season closely come next fall, as I transition these next few months from applicant to student, I think the revised blog title will give a more accurate picture as to where I stand in the process.
And one last bit of obvious advice as we exit application season: always doublecheck the emails you send out to schools. In my emailed response to Columbia College's acceptance letter, I accidentally referenced Western Michigan instead of Columbia College. A horrible, horrible mistake. Thankfully, the person who responded to me was more than gracious amidst my embarrassment, and didn't grind it in my face. You'd think an editor like me would have the chops to read and reread the emails he sends out to schools.
While I'll definitely be monitoring the MFA application season closely come next fall, as I transition these next few months from applicant to student, I think the revised blog title will give a more accurate picture as to where I stand in the process.
And one last bit of obvious advice as we exit application season: always doublecheck the emails you send out to schools. In my emailed response to Columbia College's acceptance letter, I accidentally referenced Western Michigan instead of Columbia College. A horrible, horrible mistake. Thankfully, the person who responded to me was more than gracious amidst my embarrassment, and didn't grind it in my face. You'd think an editor like me would have the chops to read and reread the emails he sends out to schools.
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
The Last One
A letter was waiting in the mail for me today: an acceptance from Columbia College. Nothing much to say, as I've obviously already made my decision, but it's nice to get a final word on the final school. I immediately emailed them my "thanks, but no thanks."
Summer Reading
I've been neglecting the blog for the past week or so, trying to get my moving situation to Champaign straightened out. The good news: I have an apartment, so I won't be homeless come fall.
At any rate, I received an email from one of my professors a couple weeks ago letting me know what we'd be reading in our craft class for the fall. And I don't know about the rest of you, but this is the kind of stuff that geeks me out. Books. Craft stuff. The kinds of books that can and will be taken apart, page by page, word by word. It's interesting, because I didn't always use to be this way. In high school, I absolutely hated those English classes, the ones where you read The Scarlett Letter or Jane Austen and then dissect it to death in a sort of faux-democratic style of consensus on what we thought about the book... except they weren't really our thoughts or opinions; they were the thoughts and opinions of the teachers, as dictated by their syllabus. And realistically, who in the world would expect 15-year-olds to express critical thinking about books that are completely outside of their realm of knowledge and world experience? Much less books that all took place before the 1900s? Why should they care? I often look back on those high school years with disgust. Is it any wonder why the population of active readers and book buyers decrease year after year? It's as if we wanted to ruin an entire generation to the idea of reading for pleasure during their most formative years.
Okay. That was a huge tangent and rant. Back to summer reading. The list of books as provided by my professor is about 6-8 titles long, including two craft books. Now, no one would ever accuse me of being well prepared, but being the nerd that I am, I went out and ordered three of the books from Amazon to get a head start. They are Alone With All That Could Happen: Rethinking Conventional Wisdom About the Craft of Fiction by David Jauss, Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris, and Shining at the Bottom of the Sea by Stephen Marche. Interestingly, I had the David Jauss book already marked for purchase six months ago -- I'm a huge sucker for craft books. And I've heard about the Joshua Ferris book, written completely in first person plural, which should be a great study, but I'm most intrigued by the Stephen Marche book -- a completely fabricated anthology about the island of Sanjania. In it, he creates a country and its culture from the ground up, which, to me, is nothing short of fascinating. As a writer, such a concept sounds so incredibly large and imposing. I have a hard enough time fabricating the lives and histories of invididuals and their families, and I simply cannot fathom doing the same for a population, a country, an entire culture. Heady stuff. I can't wait to get started reading.
At any rate, I received an email from one of my professors a couple weeks ago letting me know what we'd be reading in our craft class for the fall. And I don't know about the rest of you, but this is the kind of stuff that geeks me out. Books. Craft stuff. The kinds of books that can and will be taken apart, page by page, word by word. It's interesting, because I didn't always use to be this way. In high school, I absolutely hated those English classes, the ones where you read The Scarlett Letter or Jane Austen and then dissect it to death in a sort of faux-democratic style of consensus on what we thought about the book... except they weren't really our thoughts or opinions; they were the thoughts and opinions of the teachers, as dictated by their syllabus. And realistically, who in the world would expect 15-year-olds to express critical thinking about books that are completely outside of their realm of knowledge and world experience? Much less books that all took place before the 1900s? Why should they care? I often look back on those high school years with disgust. Is it any wonder why the population of active readers and book buyers decrease year after year? It's as if we wanted to ruin an entire generation to the idea of reading for pleasure during their most formative years.
Okay. That was a huge tangent and rant. Back to summer reading. The list of books as provided by my professor is about 6-8 titles long, including two craft books. Now, no one would ever accuse me of being well prepared, but being the nerd that I am, I went out and ordered three of the books from Amazon to get a head start. They are Alone With All That Could Happen: Rethinking Conventional Wisdom About the Craft of Fiction by David Jauss, Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris, and Shining at the Bottom of the Sea by Stephen Marche. Interestingly, I had the David Jauss book already marked for purchase six months ago -- I'm a huge sucker for craft books. And I've heard about the Joshua Ferris book, written completely in first person plural, which should be a great study, but I'm most intrigued by the Stephen Marche book -- a completely fabricated anthology about the island of Sanjania. In it, he creates a country and its culture from the ground up, which, to me, is nothing short of fascinating. As a writer, such a concept sounds so incredibly large and imposing. I have a hard enough time fabricating the lives and histories of invididuals and their families, and I simply cannot fathom doing the same for a population, a country, an entire culture. Heady stuff. I can't wait to get started reading.
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Retrospective: The Statement of Purpose
In light of Graduate School Deadline Day™, I thought I'd share a copy of the Statement of Purpose I submitted to all the MFA programs I applied to:
My primary goals for pursuing an MFA degree are to significantly improve my writing and to become an integral part of a vibrant, close-knit writing community. To me, both of these goals are intertwined. It is difficult to improve as a writer without the feedback of peers, and similarly, one cannot be a successful member of a writing community without the rigorous application to craft. As such, I have been fortunate to be a part of the same close writing group for the past two years. Through my group’s honest and careful feedback, my writing has vastly improved, and as a result, I have had two of my short stories published: in the Concho River Review, Fall 2007 Issue, and in the Potomac Review, Fall 2008 Issue. I know that without their support, I would not be anywhere near the writer I am today.
By the same token, I understand I still have a great deal to learn. There are many aspects of craft that continue to elude me. For example, I would like to know how to effectively utilize an unreliable narrator, or how to transition from a third-person limited point of view to an omniscient point of view within a single scene. These techniques can only be improved through instruction, careful study, and access to knowledgeable professors. In essence, the intense academic environment provided by the University of Illinois’ MFA program is something that cannot be replicated. I would relish the opportunity to work with and be critiqued by fellow students and professors in such a setting.
In addition to writing, I have various professional and personal strengths to offer to the University of Illinois’ MFA program. Currently, I work as an editor in the newswire industry. In my three years in this position, I have not only been promoted from Associate to Senior Editor, but have also gained extensive experience in the areas of copy editing, professional writing, and documentation writing. Additionally, spending time in a professional environment has taught me the discipline necessary to complete large and small projects on a daily basis. I am more than confident that my real world experience has equipped me with the skills and habits needed to be a successful member of an MFA program.
I am interested in the University of Illinois’ MFA program because of its blend of writing workshops, literature classes, and elective courses on publishing, professional writing, and teaching. The emphasis on a practical range of topics related to creative writing is something that I value highly in a program. I also appreciate the three-year program the University of Illinois provides for its students. While I would savor any chance to study writing at an elite MFA program, a third year would provide more time to research and complete a full manuscript. Additionally, I believe I have much to offer to the University of Illinois. My years of professional experience in copy editing, combined with my personal experience as a contributing member of a close-knit writing community, provides me with a great understanding of what it takes to be a part of a successful program.
Obviously, this SOP varied from school to school. I didn't alter it too much, but I did apply some liberal editing to the last paragraph based on the school, and details specific to each school. I personally think my SOP is a bit wooden, and definitely on the professional side. But then, much of my formal writing experience is steeped in professional and business writing, and I'd be lying if I said that this style wasn't comfortable for me for the Statement of Purpose. Should everyone utilize this voice? Of course not. Being natural in voice and style is important; like writing stories, people can tell when you're faking it.
I should probably include another paragraph of text. Below is a snippet that I placed in some of my SOPs (usually appearing after the second paragraph of the above Statement of Purpose) to the schools that would allow over 500 words:
In regards to my writing, I am interested in exploring the issues of community and culture as it relates to the children of immigrants -- first generation immigrants -- in the United States. I was born and raised in the mostly Caucasian, middle class suburbs of Chicago, yet grew up in a primarily Chinese household. Like my parents, I was not only a minority in name and appearance, but also in culture and community. Most of our family friends were Chinese, I attended Chinese school every Sunday for five years, and we spent entire summers visiting family in Hong Kong. Yet, unlike my parents, being an American was also a far larger part of my identity than it was to them. First generation immigrants are embedded in both cultures, and often, embracing one comes at the expense of the other. To a child or a teenager, this dichotomy is made more complex with issues of identity as it pertains to adolescence and becoming an adult. I want my writing to occupy this space of tension, where to a child, their culture, community, and identity are multi-faceted, complex issues.
A dash of personal background and writing interest. Did it help? To be honest, probably not. It certainly didn't hurt, though. Of all the schools that either waitlisted or accepted me, two (Western Michigan University and Roosevelt) received the "personal" version, and two (the University of Illinois and Notre Dame) received the "vanilla" version. Purdue's case was special, as they asked for an additional written statement answering the questions: "Whose work do you admire? What collection of poetry and/or works of fiction read in the last year have been important to you, and why?" It was fairly simple for me to fold in that one paragraph with some immigrant fiction I had been reading and which were important to me.
In general, I think this is an interesting point, because I had readers who, in general, liked the additional paragraph in my SOP. It gave it a "personal" touch. I, however, was rather ambivalent about the extra paragraph. It felt a little out of place in terms of tone and content. And if a school has even gotten to your SOP, it stands to reason that they've already read and loved your manuscript, and are simply making sure you are a fairly driven, yet normal individual. You hear it over and over again: the manuscript comes first. Which is the reason why, given everything -- the dozens of drafts and the dozens of hours I spent on my SOP -- the Statement of Purpose seems to me both less important and as important as you think. It's fairly important that you try to convey an honest and interesting portrayal of yourself in the SOP. For me, this was utilizing a businesslike approach. Yet, at the same time, there's probably a fairly easy watermark to pass, kind of like a "you must be this sane to ride" type of deal.
But I don't want to dismiss the inherent value in the personal details expressed in the Statement of Purpose. When I first met the Director of the University of Illinois' program, the first few questions she asked me were related to the information and details in my SOP. I was struck by that. In a way, it was her first impression of me as a person, which is something you can never take too lightly.
My primary goals for pursuing an MFA degree are to significantly improve my writing and to become an integral part of a vibrant, close-knit writing community. To me, both of these goals are intertwined. It is difficult to improve as a writer without the feedback of peers, and similarly, one cannot be a successful member of a writing community without the rigorous application to craft. As such, I have been fortunate to be a part of the same close writing group for the past two years. Through my group’s honest and careful feedback, my writing has vastly improved, and as a result, I have had two of my short stories published: in the Concho River Review, Fall 2007 Issue, and in the Potomac Review, Fall 2008 Issue. I know that without their support, I would not be anywhere near the writer I am today.
By the same token, I understand I still have a great deal to learn. There are many aspects of craft that continue to elude me. For example, I would like to know how to effectively utilize an unreliable narrator, or how to transition from a third-person limited point of view to an omniscient point of view within a single scene. These techniques can only be improved through instruction, careful study, and access to knowledgeable professors. In essence, the intense academic environment provided by the University of Illinois’ MFA program is something that cannot be replicated. I would relish the opportunity to work with and be critiqued by fellow students and professors in such a setting.
In addition to writing, I have various professional and personal strengths to offer to the University of Illinois’ MFA program. Currently, I work as an editor in the newswire industry. In my three years in this position, I have not only been promoted from Associate to Senior Editor, but have also gained extensive experience in the areas of copy editing, professional writing, and documentation writing. Additionally, spending time in a professional environment has taught me the discipline necessary to complete large and small projects on a daily basis. I am more than confident that my real world experience has equipped me with the skills and habits needed to be a successful member of an MFA program.
I am interested in the University of Illinois’ MFA program because of its blend of writing workshops, literature classes, and elective courses on publishing, professional writing, and teaching. The emphasis on a practical range of topics related to creative writing is something that I value highly in a program. I also appreciate the three-year program the University of Illinois provides for its students. While I would savor any chance to study writing at an elite MFA program, a third year would provide more time to research and complete a full manuscript. Additionally, I believe I have much to offer to the University of Illinois. My years of professional experience in copy editing, combined with my personal experience as a contributing member of a close-knit writing community, provides me with a great understanding of what it takes to be a part of a successful program.
Obviously, this SOP varied from school to school. I didn't alter it too much, but I did apply some liberal editing to the last paragraph based on the school, and details specific to each school. I personally think my SOP is a bit wooden, and definitely on the professional side. But then, much of my formal writing experience is steeped in professional and business writing, and I'd be lying if I said that this style wasn't comfortable for me for the Statement of Purpose. Should everyone utilize this voice? Of course not. Being natural in voice and style is important; like writing stories, people can tell when you're faking it.
I should probably include another paragraph of text. Below is a snippet that I placed in some of my SOPs (usually appearing after the second paragraph of the above Statement of Purpose) to the schools that would allow over 500 words:
In regards to my writing, I am interested in exploring the issues of community and culture as it relates to the children of immigrants -- first generation immigrants -- in the United States. I was born and raised in the mostly Caucasian, middle class suburbs of Chicago, yet grew up in a primarily Chinese household. Like my parents, I was not only a minority in name and appearance, but also in culture and community. Most of our family friends were Chinese, I attended Chinese school every Sunday for five years, and we spent entire summers visiting family in Hong Kong. Yet, unlike my parents, being an American was also a far larger part of my identity than it was to them. First generation immigrants are embedded in both cultures, and often, embracing one comes at the expense of the other. To a child or a teenager, this dichotomy is made more complex with issues of identity as it pertains to adolescence and becoming an adult. I want my writing to occupy this space of tension, where to a child, their culture, community, and identity are multi-faceted, complex issues.
A dash of personal background and writing interest. Did it help? To be honest, probably not. It certainly didn't hurt, though. Of all the schools that either waitlisted or accepted me, two (Western Michigan University and Roosevelt) received the "personal" version, and two (the University of Illinois and Notre Dame) received the "vanilla" version. Purdue's case was special, as they asked for an additional written statement answering the questions: "Whose work do you admire? What collection of poetry and/or works of fiction read in the last year have been important to you, and why?" It was fairly simple for me to fold in that one paragraph with some immigrant fiction I had been reading and which were important to me.
In general, I think this is an interesting point, because I had readers who, in general, liked the additional paragraph in my SOP. It gave it a "personal" touch. I, however, was rather ambivalent about the extra paragraph. It felt a little out of place in terms of tone and content. And if a school has even gotten to your SOP, it stands to reason that they've already read and loved your manuscript, and are simply making sure you are a fairly driven, yet normal individual. You hear it over and over again: the manuscript comes first. Which is the reason why, given everything -- the dozens of drafts and the dozens of hours I spent on my SOP -- the Statement of Purpose seems to me both less important and as important as you think. It's fairly important that you try to convey an honest and interesting portrayal of yourself in the SOP. For me, this was utilizing a businesslike approach. Yet, at the same time, there's probably a fairly easy watermark to pass, kind of like a "you must be this sane to ride" type of deal.
But I don't want to dismiss the inherent value in the personal details expressed in the Statement of Purpose. When I first met the Director of the University of Illinois' program, the first few questions she asked me were related to the information and details in my SOP. I was struck by that. In a way, it was her first impression of me as a person, which is something you can never take too lightly.
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