Goals: For Personal Reference and Emerson College's Statement of Professional Goals

My fondest memories of high school involve a group of about nine artistically-inclined folks sitting in my basement and singing to each other. Literal singing did take up much of our time, but we frequently had other projects we didn't mind sharing with one another. We created for the sake of creating and most of us went on to get college degrees in liberal and fine arts.

I'm not actually sure if the proximity to Philadelphia helped our cause, but it certainly gave us a place to escape to. I may be able to fondly reminisce about the support network I had formed now, but back then, we all hated Pottstown. Our town didn't have much to offer us, and that was the glue that held some of those friendships together. Some of us looked to something stronger-- ears, eyes, a desire to have an audience for our perspectives. These are the friendships that have lasted and maintained me through an education 2700 miles from what was familiar.

I moved to Idaho because of its energy. I have made the error of assuming that Idaho is new, though its heavily-blanked underlying heritage is just as deep as Pennsylvania's. While I am curious about the pre-manifest destiny cultures that thrived in Idaho, the kind of constructed creative force that I had become accustom to is young compared the one in Philadelphia, or even the one brewing in my basement. I wanted to grow with something. I wanted to form a movement using my high school friendships as a model for artistic living.

This is difficult to achieve when there are few others who share your goals. I have spent three years trying to pump an artistic pulse into my Idaho experience, and while I had a partner who shared my passion for creativity, as well as friendships that have sustained me, nothing really resembled what I came here for. This has simultaneously been a blessing and a curse: a blessing because it has forced me to reevaluate how I function artistically, and a curse because I started creating for reasons that were not, for me, spiritually sound.

To be fair, I didn't realize the following until about a month ago. If I would have realized this sooner, I might have been compelled to change things. Here, at The College of Idaho, not many people share what they create because they love to create, and I fell into this pattern. Writing is confined to the workshop, and I have always felt a very strong sense of fear about stepping out of those bounds-- that if I were to find a venue through which I could share my poetry, I would be immodest or implying something untrue about my talent. The idea of improving talent quickly began to trump passion. This also invaded music. It seems that musicians I know here aren't really passionate about becoming better musicians-- we in the music department settle for the bare minimum and don't like to practice or perform, which makes no sense because it is what we are getting our degrees in. Why be a music major if you don't love to practice, don't love how it feels to sing, how it feels to share it with others? Why be a creative writing major if you hoard all of your poetry and stories for yourself? This is what I did for three years. I shared in class. I practiced, but alone, and avoided performance because I felt mediocre.

How did I not see this happening? Did I bury myself too far into my work? Now that I've noticed this, I feel things shifting. For instance, Brianne and I have been singing to one another in both Langroise and Jewett. We provide objective criticism, but mostly we are there because we love to sing and to listen. These experiences have made me truly want to work beyond the bare minimum, to aim to sound passionate, practiced, and polished rather than just aim to pass my jury.

I would like to start an underground reading series at the C of I this winter. It probably isn't wise of me to admit this on a forum that may or may not be read by some pretty official folks at the school, but there are some wonderful spaces on this campus that are easily accessed late at night. In my last 18 weeks here, I want to foster an environment that would encourage writers to share with one another and others interested on campus in an informal environment. I like to think that there are plenty of us craving this, craving community and support, and I'm not sure what is stopping me from doing this besides fear of it not catching on. So I'm going to do it. I'm going to send the email out to other writers, start a buzz. I'm jazzed for it.

The lack of community among artists here has fed my goal of wanting to start an arts' collective soon. Collectives are vogue in Philadelphia, but I don't want mine to be too "traditional." Ryan, Molly, and I talk about this a lot; we want to create a space that is a library and a studio, where primarily students (high school students) can come and create. We also want it to be a venue for our own endeavors. I want to pursue my MFA in Creative Writing mostly because I want to continue developing my queer brand of poetics that focuses illustrating the spaces between demarcated identity categories and re-signifying what we may think is familiar, but I also want to gain the skills that would help me become a stronger workshop leader. I want to run workshops that encourage everyone to find their own voice in a supportive community. I want to be able to share my poems in a way that will re-spark the arts, make readings and screenings and throwing bottles of paint on the floor just as important as watching television or consuming the internet. I want to have the space my friends and I didn't have the resources to create for ourselves in high school and that I didn't have the drive or foresight to create in college. This is my goal: to live a life that is focused on art and sharing within a community of artists.

Will getting my MFA really feed this goal? I think so. If nothing else, it gives me time and an excuse to focus on my writing without the worry of required classes or hopefully (fingers-crossed!) a job. It will put me in a community of writers who probably aren't at all interested in settling for poems that are "good enough." It will give me new teaching skills, new ways to approach art and writing, examples of those who make their living off of creating beautiful things. It will move me to a location that isn't Idaho or Pennsylvania. Overall, I hope I get in somewhere, but if I don't, I can always dive into renting a Victorian in South Philadelphia with some of my homies and start creating anyway.

Plan Post 12/4-12/8

Plan for tonight (the single biggest chunk of time I have to work until this Saturday, possibly?):

Finish online portion of University of Washington application

Work on Philadelphia essay (well, mostly try not to cry while re-typing a two-drafts-old version of Philadelphia essay as a result of my flash drive breaking in half...)

Go to Langroise. Print out Arizona paper elements to application. Print out newest draft of Philadelphia essay. Print out all of history reading for the second six weeks, plus the final study guide.

Do history reading.

I have to mail my writing sample to Michigan and I'm missing an LOR for Arizona, but otherwise Cornell, Brown, NYU, UArizona and UMichigan are all completed. The amount of work I have to do for finals looks relatively small, but feels terrifying because I've been running in auto-pilot and I'm not sure if I've actually retained anything from my history class. Luckily, I can spend most of the weekend wrapped in that, as my Philadelphia essay isn't due until Friday at 5.

Plan for tomorrow:

Mail writing sample to Michigan

Get forgotten UWashington cover form to recommenders

Another revision of Philadelphia essay

Project Runway night(!!)

Plan for Thursday:

FINAL revision of Philadelphia essay.

Apply to Iowa

Organize and start studying for History exam (AT LEAST two hours)

Plan for Friday:

Last edit of Philadelphia essay

Apply to Emerson

Study for History- 2-3 hours

Plan for Saturday:

Study for History. Basically all day.

If applications need to be bumped a day (for instance, if I don't finish Washington tonight...), apply to Emerson

Now that I think about it, it might be smart for me to wait to apply to Washington until after finals because I should really edit my critical writing sample...so I'll just do the online app tonight and save the rest for Wednesday/Thursday.

I want a milkshake.