My last year, or more precisely eight months, of graduate school has descended upon me like the shrieking harpy of DOOM! Naysayers, be warned!
For this semester, I've decided to take two courses--both creative writing--and I'm happy that I will focus strictly on craft. Working on poetry and fiction will reinforce my strongest talents and hopefully annihilate my weakest points--wordiness, for one. the instructors teaching me in each class couldn't be any different, so the dichotomy of instructional methods will prove most satisfactory, or so I hope. Dr. Waters, my poetry professor, is a bit of a hard-ass and doesn't care for anything I've written, which is a shame considering I put in 60% of my efforts last fall semester into his class (25% and 15% in the other two).
When I've completed my portfolios for these classes, my spring semester will be the one to truly test my patience and skill; my manuscript must be a minimum of 50 pages, and I must also included a 20-source annotated bibliography (oh fucking joy). I still haven't wrapped my head around what I want to focus on for my manuscript except that I want it to be an interesting short story. My primary idea feels good, interesting, but I can't quite think of all the things that will make it poignant. Luckily, there are a few sources that I intend on looking into; unfortunately, most of them are movies. It's doubtful I can use them for my annotated bibliography.
Finishing will be a great relief when it finally comes to an end. I have a few aspirations that I am extremely excited for, and all I need is to finish my education. I love learning, it is vital to do so everyday, but I'm damn sick of it at this point. I'll be my own teacher in eight "short" months.
