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.

January Blues

What a weekend. Finished my John Hopkins application, which is now in the mail. And in my infinite wisdom, I realized (while filling out the Hopkins application) that I had been answering a very important question on the previous applications as "No," which should have been "Yes." I won't bore you with the exact details, but I think it's sufficient to note that this incorrect answer could very well cost me an acceptance as far as the Graduate Schools are concerned. So I spent all of Sunday afternoon and evening poring over my previous 10 submitted applications to see which ones I gave incorrect information to and which ones I did not. As far as I can tell, only three schools have been impacted, which I frantically emailed last night, begging them to change the information. I have no idea if this can be done, as all three are well past their deadlines, but I don't know what other recourse I have. As of this post, I haven't heard anything back.

So you can imagine how much of a nervous wreck I am now. Three schools in limbo (one of which I'd give an arm and a leg to go to), all of which I still have no idea what to do with. Top it off with a horrible anger and disgust with myself that makes me want to punch a wall and tear my hair out.

Add to this, all the various resources and websites that will tease you unmercifully with thoughts and fantasies of school acceptances. We've entered the perilous "dead time" period where all we have to do in the month of January (and February) is wait, wait, wait. And what do we all do with this free time? We go to The Suburban Ecstasies and check out the Application Response Time list. We browse the Speakeasy Forum and read the ever popular Have you heard yet? thread from beginning to end. We do whatever we can to pour salt into our wounds and torture our fragile psyches. Why do we do this? I don't know. All I know is that as much as I had promised that I'd stay as far away as possible from these websites to preserve what little sanity I have left, I know that I'll probably be reading them daily. What can I say? I'm a glutton for punishment.

Mistakes

It had to happen sooner or later. With eight out of my 13 school portfolios currently in the mail, I finally found a typo in one of my stories. Even worse, the way in which I found the typo was especially excruciating. I was casually reading a random section -- the last two pages of my second portfolio story -- when I got the second to last sentence, and read: "She felt the weight of his head come against on her shoulder." Horrible. You read and reread your story a bajillion times to proof for these kinds of things, and when you're nearly free and clear, you find an error sitting there, poking you in the face, in a read-through that is entirely random. The worst part of it all was the randomness in how I found the error. If I had chosen any other section to read, then what? If I hadn't decided to review my story for fun, then what? I would've been oblivious, thinking that everything was okay, and the reviewers would've been reading my story, thinking that I couldn't even cobble a simple sentence together.

Okay. So I'm exaggerating. I know this error won't sink me. After a couple days of pulling my hair out, I've finally come to my senses, and certainly understand that in the entire scheme of things, this isn't a big deal. Of all the thousands of words we write for the dozens of applications and forms we fill out, this is but a drop in the bucket. And never mind the fact that we're talking about maybe a couple thousand other applicants with their thousands of words and dozens of forms. Errors happen. If a school likes your work, and as long as you're not making ten grammatical mistakes a page, then they'll give you a chance. I understand this. But to have an error come at the very last part of the second to last sentence of my last story... Man, does that suck. And as a matter of principle, I can't help but to be angry at myself. You work so hard for so long, planning and planning, just to have something like this happen -- and you really can't blame anyone but yourself. And that's probably the worst part.