A dear friend of mine, Kieran, is currently abroad in Kyrgyzstan. Clearly, he is much more adventurous than I am. He also has a questionable mustache. That was not entirely pertinent or necessary but I thought some direct characterization was in order. I also wanted to make fun of his mustache. Anyways, he is both a wonderful writer and person and is currently experiencing a world that for most of is literally unimaginable. Here's his first post:
Pre-departure
It didn’t set in until I did the laundry the night before. Five months of clothing: three jackets, four pants, twelve shirts, five sweaters, fifteen underwear and socks, hiking boots, running shoes, casual shoes, dress shoes, a scarf, a beanie, and a pair of gloves. Oh, and a “comfort item”, as my handbook suggested. What can bring comfort to me in a third-world, post-Soviet, virtually unknown country? My best guess was a set of pictures and a necklace my girlfriend made me. And of course my books.
The morning of departure was full of frantic movement streaked with tears, like drops of rain on an airplane window. Except I’m not a precision-welded metal machine, I’m a fleshy, sensitive young man hurtling across the planet to what could be a twenty-first century gulag, for all I know.
Transit
Sleep is hard to come by for me on an airplane, even on what I was told were two very smooth flights. The first, from New York to Istanbul was 8 hours and they had a fully-stocked, if a little dated, in-flight entertainment system. There were scores of films and I settled on Moneyball. Brad Pitt’s portrayal of Billy Beane, the cocky yet conflicted GM of the Oakland A’s who played baseball by numbers and very nearly succeeded, was captivating enough to distract me during the lengthy periods of turbulence over a stormy Atlantic. With some deep breaths, I was able to calm my neuroses enough to reach what everyone else around me knew so well: the stillness of sleep.
Arrival
So it turns out Bishkek isn’t a gulag after all. Upon landing, we failed our first Russian signage test and turned the wrong way out of the plane, only to be pointed in the right direction by a local Kyrgyz man. The visa process went smoothly thanks to our program coordinator, and we retrieved our luggage. To get outside, we walked through a gauntlet of hired taxi drivers with their Russian hats and unsmiling faces out to the parking lot, where our hired taxi driver was. Dina, our coordinator and guide, had her bag lost in transit and so we were told to wait in the van while she checked on its status. Without any Russian to save us, we were alone, helpless yet joking. The joking was only to cover up the deep and almost dormant fear that had been present since we boarded at JFK and that I don’t expect to leave for some time. I am unsettled, closer now to the characters of Kafka and Dostoevsky than I ever have been. I am in a modernist crisis, and I’m blogging my way through it. Join me.
Me again everybody.
Best of luck Kieran. While you're over there try to change the 'y' to 'ie': an eponymous country would be a nice souvenir.
The rest of you can join me in keeping up with Kieran's travels and thoughts at: http://kiergyzstan.tumblr.com/
Best, CL.
Saturday, January 21, 2012
Monday, January 16, 2012
Dear Administrative Committee,
My name is Curtis Fincher, I am a junior in the College of Arts and Sciences, and I hope to one day be a writer. I write to you now to petition to be allowed to take and receive credit for the graduate level course Literature and the Craft of Writing taught this semester by Professor Blank, the head of the creative writing department and my personal academic advisor. Typically, the College of Arts and Sciences reserves the privilege to enroll in graduate level courses exclusively for seniors, however I strongly believe that my situation merits your special consideration.
I have dreamed of being a writer ever since I was in high school and my sophomore year English teacher, Mrs. McManus, a small, funny, and stern Irish-American woman, wrote at the bottom of an essay four words in red ink that have since directed and consumed my life: “you should write books,” she said, and I still believe her. I am currently an English major with a concentration in Creative Writing. I have a 4.0 within my major and I hope to enroll in the English Honors program this spring and write a creative dissertation next year. After college (those two words seem far too near, these days), I plan on applying to various, fully funded, Creative Writing MFA programs. Admission into such a program is the next step towards my dream of becoming a writer, and as you can imagine, is extremely competitive-- the acceptance rates of top schools generally hover around slightly less than half of a percent. While there are many factors considered by MFA admissions committees, the two most important criteria are professor recommendations and the applicant’s creative portfolio. With these, we have now arrived at the two principle reasons why I need to take Literature and the Craft of Writing this semester.
As I am sure you are aware, faculty notoriety matters when it comes to recommendations: you are more likely to trust the words of somebody whose name you recognize, and even more likely to trust the words of somebody who you personally know. As such, I was extremely lucky to have a professor as widely known as Professor Blank teach my freshman year creative writing workshop. I was even luckier to be able to cultivate a personal relationship with him outside the classroom through his office hours, and I took my second workshop with him last spring. This spring, I am enrolled in another one of his workshops, and I would love the opportunity to take Literature and the Craft of Writing with him as well.
I had the pleasure of attending the class on Wednesday and it is entirely different from any undergraduate Creative Writing course I have taken here at Vanderbilt. The class is small and intimate and most importantly, every other person in it wants to be an author just like I do. The undergraduate creative writing courses are filled with students who think it would be fun to write; the MFA students in Literature and the Craft of Writing need to write, and the class, at its core, is about how to make a living while doing so.
We are currently home to the most selective MFA program in the country, and the six students who I interacted with on Wednesday absolutely blew me away. I have so much to learn from them and I think that being in a class with people who read, write, and digest literature in the way that they do would be an absolutely invaluable experience for me. Additionally, to return to the importance of professor recommendations in the MFA application process, being in a class with six older students who are better and more experienced at both reading and writing will push me tremendously (an additional side note here: I am interning this semester with the Nashville Review, a Literary Magazine published by our MFA students, and my boss, Rebecca Alsoblank, is in the class with me— so it would be an added benefit to be able to further immerse myself into that community and world as well). I think it is a good, good thing that I will be the weakest link in the class. It will force me to work as hard as I know how, and this work ethic, in the end, will be reflected in both my verbal commentary and written products. I believe that Professor Blank witnessing this—my absolute limits as both a writer and a reader—will solidify and strengthen the MFA recommendation I hope he will one day write for me. Further, while the class is offered next year when I will be a senior, Professor Blank will not be teaching it either semester. Thus, this semester is my only opportunity to take the class with him.
Another reason why I think it is important that I take the class this semester as opposed to next year is that it will inevitably improve the creative portfolio that I will be submitting to MFA programs. My creative dissertation next year as an English Honors student will form the bulk of this portfolio (as it will be the most substantial work that I will have done to date) and to have already seen how the students in an MFA program write and think will do a great service for my own writing and my own thinking. This will in turn be reflected in my creative dissertation--i.e. a large part of my creative portfolio--which will increase my odds of being admitted to a top flight program amidst a very competitive application process. Also, in the English Honors Program graduate level courses serve for Honors credit, so Literature and the Craft of Writing will help me achieve the six hours of Honors credit I will need for the Honors Program in the most productive and beneficial manner possible.
It is worth noting, also, that I went to speak with Professor Blank yesterday. I asked him if there was anything in particular that I should write or mention in my petition to increase my chances of being admitted into his class. He said that he could not think of anything, although he did wish that there were a magic phrase or sentence he could tell me (unfortunately, no such phrase, outside of 1,250 words of candid pleading in elegant Garamond typeface, exists). One thing he did say, however, was to make sure I mentioned that I have his full and total support in taking the course. He thinks that I can not only handle the workload and depth of thought which the class will entail, but that having that kind of exposure to such talented MFA students will serve me well in my development as a writer.
I will not hear back from your committee until after the add/drop period is over. I am currently registered for twelve hours in hopes of having these four hours approved, and if they are not, I will have to take courses here this summer in order to graduate on time. However, I feel that my reasons for wanting to take the course this semester are compelling enough to merit the risk; I want to take this course badly enough to merit the risk. I cannot thank all of you enough for your time and I hope that whatever this petition has lacked in brevity it has compensated for with thoroughness. Please know that my reasons for writing you have been pure and good: I want to learn to write as well as I can and I believe this is the best manner for me to do so while completing the requirements of a Vanderbilt Undergraduate College Arts and Sciences degree. Once again, thank you so much for your time.
Sincerely,
Curtis Lee
I have dreamed of being a writer ever since I was in high school and my sophomore year English teacher, Mrs. McManus, a small, funny, and stern Irish-American woman, wrote at the bottom of an essay four words in red ink that have since directed and consumed my life: “you should write books,” she said, and I still believe her. I am currently an English major with a concentration in Creative Writing. I have a 4.0 within my major and I hope to enroll in the English Honors program this spring and write a creative dissertation next year. After college (those two words seem far too near, these days), I plan on applying to various, fully funded, Creative Writing MFA programs. Admission into such a program is the next step towards my dream of becoming a writer, and as you can imagine, is extremely competitive-- the acceptance rates of top schools generally hover around slightly less than half of a percent. While there are many factors considered by MFA admissions committees, the two most important criteria are professor recommendations and the applicant’s creative portfolio. With these, we have now arrived at the two principle reasons why I need to take Literature and the Craft of Writing this semester.
As I am sure you are aware, faculty notoriety matters when it comes to recommendations: you are more likely to trust the words of somebody whose name you recognize, and even more likely to trust the words of somebody who you personally know. As such, I was extremely lucky to have a professor as widely known as Professor Blank teach my freshman year creative writing workshop. I was even luckier to be able to cultivate a personal relationship with him outside the classroom through his office hours, and I took my second workshop with him last spring. This spring, I am enrolled in another one of his workshops, and I would love the opportunity to take Literature and the Craft of Writing with him as well.
I had the pleasure of attending the class on Wednesday and it is entirely different from any undergraduate Creative Writing course I have taken here at Vanderbilt. The class is small and intimate and most importantly, every other person in it wants to be an author just like I do. The undergraduate creative writing courses are filled with students who think it would be fun to write; the MFA students in Literature and the Craft of Writing need to write, and the class, at its core, is about how to make a living while doing so.
We are currently home to the most selective MFA program in the country, and the six students who I interacted with on Wednesday absolutely blew me away. I have so much to learn from them and I think that being in a class with people who read, write, and digest literature in the way that they do would be an absolutely invaluable experience for me. Additionally, to return to the importance of professor recommendations in the MFA application process, being in a class with six older students who are better and more experienced at both reading and writing will push me tremendously (an additional side note here: I am interning this semester with the Nashville Review, a Literary Magazine published by our MFA students, and my boss, Rebecca Alsoblank, is in the class with me— so it would be an added benefit to be able to further immerse myself into that community and world as well). I think it is a good, good thing that I will be the weakest link in the class. It will force me to work as hard as I know how, and this work ethic, in the end, will be reflected in both my verbal commentary and written products. I believe that Professor Blank witnessing this—my absolute limits as both a writer and a reader—will solidify and strengthen the MFA recommendation I hope he will one day write for me. Further, while the class is offered next year when I will be a senior, Professor Blank will not be teaching it either semester. Thus, this semester is my only opportunity to take the class with him.
Another reason why I think it is important that I take the class this semester as opposed to next year is that it will inevitably improve the creative portfolio that I will be submitting to MFA programs. My creative dissertation next year as an English Honors student will form the bulk of this portfolio (as it will be the most substantial work that I will have done to date) and to have already seen how the students in an MFA program write and think will do a great service for my own writing and my own thinking. This will in turn be reflected in my creative dissertation--i.e. a large part of my creative portfolio--which will increase my odds of being admitted to a top flight program amidst a very competitive application process. Also, in the English Honors Program graduate level courses serve for Honors credit, so Literature and the Craft of Writing will help me achieve the six hours of Honors credit I will need for the Honors Program in the most productive and beneficial manner possible.
It is worth noting, also, that I went to speak with Professor Blank yesterday. I asked him if there was anything in particular that I should write or mention in my petition to increase my chances of being admitted into his class. He said that he could not think of anything, although he did wish that there were a magic phrase or sentence he could tell me (unfortunately, no such phrase, outside of 1,250 words of candid pleading in elegant Garamond typeface, exists). One thing he did say, however, was to make sure I mentioned that I have his full and total support in taking the course. He thinks that I can not only handle the workload and depth of thought which the class will entail, but that having that kind of exposure to such talented MFA students will serve me well in my development as a writer.
I will not hear back from your committee until after the add/drop period is over. I am currently registered for twelve hours in hopes of having these four hours approved, and if they are not, I will have to take courses here this summer in order to graduate on time. However, I feel that my reasons for wanting to take the course this semester are compelling enough to merit the risk; I want to take this course badly enough to merit the risk. I cannot thank all of you enough for your time and I hope that whatever this petition has lacked in brevity it has compensated for with thoroughness. Please know that my reasons for writing you have been pure and good: I want to learn to write as well as I can and I believe this is the best manner for me to do so while completing the requirements of a Vanderbilt Undergraduate College Arts and Sciences degree. Once again, thank you so much for your time.
Sincerely,
Curtis Lee
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