http://victoriamixon.com/2010/02/08/embracing-your-writerliness/ Wed, 08 Sep 2010 14:51:17 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 hourly 1 http://victoriamixon.com/2010/02/08/embracing-your-writerliness/comment-page-1/#comment-2887 Campy « She Started It Mon, 08 Feb 2010 20:42:17 +0000 http://victoriamixon.com/?p=4224#comment-2887 [...] Victoria Mixon’s link to this article doesn’t tell me anything I don’t already know, but it depresses me just the same even though I’ve no interest in getting an MFA. I have taught in MFA programs for many years now, and I begin my first class of each semester by looking around the workshop table at my students’ eager faces and then telling them they are pursuing a degree that will entitle them to nothing. I don’t do this to be sadistic or because I want to be an unpopular professor; I tell them this because it’s the truth. They are embarking on a life in which apprenticeship doesn’t mean a cushy summer internship in an air-conditioned office but rather a solitary, poverty-inducing, soul-scorching voyage whose destination is unknown and unknowable. [...] [...] Victoria Mixon’s link to this article doesn’t tell me anything I don’t already know, but it depresses me just the same even though I’ve no interest in getting an MFA. I have taught in MFA programs for many years now, and I begin my first class of each semester by looking around the workshop table at my students’ eager faces and then telling them they are pursuing a degree that will entitle them to nothing. I don’t do this to be sadistic or because I want to be an unpopular professor; I tell them this because it’s the truth. They are embarking on a life in which apprenticeship doesn’t mean a cushy summer internship in an air-conditioned office but rather a solitary, poverty-inducing, soul-scorching voyage whose destination is unknown and unknowable. [...]

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