designing_fate
tender square “the creative writing mfa handbook” advises that those who are interested in getting into a creative writing program cast their net on eight to twelve schools to keep their acceptance rates high.

i ignored this advice.

i only applied to one school.

i got in on my first try.

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anecdotally, i have heard that some/most fully-funded mfa programs can be harder to get into than harvard law school.

“programs receive around 100 to 400 applications each year, and they accept around 5% to 15% of those applications,” according to the handbook. the year i applied to bowling green state university i heard they received upwards of 100 applicants for their fiction and poetry programs. the school accepts 10 students to fund each year; 5 for each genre. at best, that’s a 10% shot of getting in with those numbers.

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even though i live in a city that has one of the best mfa programs in the country (in terms of funding and published writers that graduate), i did not want to send my application there.

first of all, i didn’t think i would get in. second, i didn’t think that it was the right environment for me even if i did. university of michigan’s campus is enormous, as the english department is massive as well. i wanted a smaller campus experience that was similar to what i had in undergrad. third, and most importantly, i knew u of m’s environment would be so competitive that it would poison my writing process if i’d gone there. my former writing mentor attended u of m over a decade ago as a mature student; she had terrible things to say about her experience.

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i would have cast a wider net had michael and i been willing to move across the country, but we both thought it was too much upheaval for two years of work. neither one of us was up for that. i would’ve loved to apply to ole miss, where michael completed his undergrad and grad degrees in sociology, but he was adamant that he was never living in the south again.

that left me with bgsu.

the school’s campus is an hour from ann arbor. michael and i had visited the city several times; he had a friend from the coast who was living there. michael had stayed with him during the polar vortex before the start of his lease for his first apartment in michigan. michael was the one who told me the school had an mfa program, one of the oldest in the country. their campus was small—just what i was looking for.

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technically, i didn’t meet the criteria for applying. one of the prerequisites states that you have a 3.2 from any undergraduate classes you’ve taken in english. on my transcript, i had a failing grade in one of my 300-level english courses. that left me with an overall english gpa of 1.85.

halfway through my undergraduate degree, i decided i want to minor in english since i had already taken a few courses as part of my drama requirements. but i psyched myself out. i didn’t feel like i had the analytical skills necessary to drill into the material and understand what the writers doing when i sat through the upper-level classes. i failed that particular english course because i didn’t submit the final take-home exam. i procrastinated for weeks and talked myself out of doing it, figuring i wouldn’t have passed anyway. i sabotaged myself and imploded my goal of getting a minor in one fell swoop.

when i reached out to bgsu about their mfa, i fudged a bit and told them i was taking a full-course load and working at the same time which is why i wasn’t able to manage the class ten years prior. which was true. i just conveniently left out the part about not taking the final exam.

the director of the program got back to me in august of 2018 to say that there was flexibility with the gpa, that my circumstances sounded extenuating, and that they were happy to waive that requirement for me so i could apply.

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i needed some kind of external signal from the universe that writing was a worthwhile pursuit. i knew i would never be one of those writers to apply for, and receive, a grant. i would never be a poet working in the ivory tower (which is pretty much the only way to make a living in this field). the way i saw it, the only way to get the message was to gain acceptance into a fully-funded mfa program.

i figured if i didn’t get in the first time, i would consider the low-residency route the following year. most, if not all, low-res programs don’t fund their students, you pay for your tuition, which can be costly. but the trade-off with those programs is you don’t have to teach and you don’t have to move cross-country, you do all your writing from home.

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bgsu’s stipend was paltry. it was not a program i could have undertaken without michael’s financial support. my tuition was fully paid for and i received $11,000 per year, but it was certainly not enough to live off of.

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mfa programs typically begin to send out acceptances in march. the cut-off date for acceptances is april 15. while it is highly possible that wait-listed students can be accepted into programs after this date, i figured if i hadn’t heard by the cut-off date, i wasn’t getting in.

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the application process itself was an inordinate amount of work. i had to take the gre when i had no experience with standardized tests in the us. i remember having several crying jags as i worked through the study guide for weeks, telling myself that i couldn’t do it. i had to create an academic writing sample of 8–15 pages from scratch. i struggled for three months drafting an essay i called “solids and stripes: metaphorical binaries at play in alistair macleod’s short story, ‘the golden gift of grey’” where i compared and contrasting the work through archetypal and post-structuralist perspectives.

michael was indispensable as i worked through both of these projects. he took the gre beside me because he was considering phd programs at the time; he applied his gift for abstract thought to my paper, showing me where my arguments could be strengthened.

of the ten poems i submitted for my writing portfolio, eight of them are from my chapbook, “mayflies.” the book was not published at that time—i did not receive word that the manuscript was accepted until i had already been in the mfa program for a month. it was wild.

i left gre exam certain that i would have to take it again. the verbal and math scores are calculated immediately after the test, whereas the writing sample scores take a few weeks to be issued. i didn’t care about the math score, and neither did bgsu. as i paced the parking lot waiting for michael to finish his test, i checked my phone and saw my results. for the verbal portion i scored in the 93rd percentile. i couldn’t fucking believe it.

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all through march of 2019 i was obsessed with whether or not i would get accepted to bgsu. i started to regret having only applied to one school; i felt so foolish for putting all my eggs in one basket. people who knew i was waiting for news started to look upon me with pity.

towards the end of the month, when i still hadn’t heard anything, i called the department secretary to find out if she could tell me if i was on the waiting list, and if so, what my spot was. she told me that there was no information to give. i hung up the phone and cried.

when april rolled around and the fifteenth of the month crept closer, i started to come to terms with the fact that i was going to get rejected from bgsu. and i made my peace with that.

bgsu contacted me through email on the morning of april 12 to notify me of my acceptance. i got the news while i was work and called michael, incredulous. “do i even accept this?” i asked him. i was stunned.

we talked more when i got home from work. how could i pass up what i had wanted when it was being given to me? i signed the acceptance letter and sent it off that afternoon. the next week we were looking for a house to rent in bowling green and we signed a lease.

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looking at the mfa roadmap for the program, i had no idea how i was going to rise to the occasion of meeting all the requirements after i’d been accepted. i had to write a thesis of creative work that was at least 40 pages (the program wanted a target of 60 pages); i had to write an annotated bibliography on at least 20 poetry books; and i had to write 4 book reviews, each one clocking in at 1,000 words.

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the first semester, i had to submit 17 new poems across two writing workshops. writing under those conditions, where i was teaching undergraduates for the first time and being in a graduate program i wasn’t sure i could handle, was challenging to say the least.

the second semester was a bit easier with 7 poems. but coronavirus struck and threw everything into chaos.

i did not really write over the summer between my first and second year, though i was supposed to. michael’s mom was sick and we suspected that she would reach remission. i didn’t begin writing because we both sensed that the worst was coming. when we were called in july to go to houston, neither of us were surprised by this news.

i didn’t start doing any major work around my thesis until late august of last year. i wrote many pastoral poems about loss during this time, poems about weeding and transplanting, poems about domestic duties.

in the first semester of my second year, i had “studio” time. this meant that i only had to attend one course and got to focus on my writing, which was a blessing. i didn’t touch my annotated bibliography though i had read a handful of books. i used the extra time to grieve, to get my strength back.

over the month i had for christmas break, i undertook the writing for my entire annotated bibliography. i skimmed one poetry book per a day and composed 300 words on what i took from the collection, identifying poetic techniques i wanted to try or was utilizing in my own work. the books that were most meaningful for me during that time? eavan boland’s “in a time of violence,” louise glück’s “the wild iris,” jane kenyon’s “the boat of quiet hours,” li-young lee’s “rose,” mary oliver’s “house of light,” and kevin young’s “book of hours.”

during my final semester, i composed my four book reviews on the “wellness days” they gave us in lieu of a march break. i still had to submit new poems for one of my workshops, but my other workshop was for refining the thesis, which was essential.

i defended my thesis successfully on march 12, 2021. it was one of the most nerve-wracking experiences of my life. my committee, sharona and larissa, posed “questions” to me such as “tell me why i like this poem” and “speak to the role that humor plays in your work.” i left the meeting so they could confer on the results and when i returned, they were laughing and smiling, telling me i had passed with “flying colors.”

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i am a first-generation college student.

my parents were high-school dropouts who returned to get their ged’s as adults.

my father’s mother, kay, completed high school before world war ii started and she was sent to work in liverpool.

my mother’s mother, grace, was pulled out of school at age 14 to care for her brothers and support her family in molinara.

i am the only member of my immediate family to possess a bachelor’s degree (my three sisters have associate degrees in nursing).

i am the only member of my immediate and extended family, that i’m aware of, who possesses a graduate degree.

i still can’t fucking believe i did it. 		210926
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tender square corrections: "we expected that she WOULDN'T reach remission"

"completed high school before world war ii started and she was sent to work in linconshire." 		210926
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tender square my goodness, there are so many other typos in this piece—I EMBRACE YOU ALL!

wanted to add that when i was growing up, my mother attended university for a year, studying psychology to prove to herself that she could do it. she would’ve continued on with her degree had my sister terri not been entering university at the same time of her second year; our family couldn’t afford for them both to go to school, so my mom stepped aside. terri flunked nearly all of her classes because of a relationship she started with someone. my parents had noticed she was struggling, that her attention wasn’t where it needed to be, and told her, repeatedly, that there was no shame in withdrawing from her classes so they could get some of their money back. terri pushed on anyway and dropped out after her first year. 		210926
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