On the upswing

I met two of my professor for this semester at the reception held at the university club for all new graduate students and faculty. (Funny, now that I think of it, none of the new faculty seemed to be there). They were both warm and very excited to talk to me about their classes and my interests. They really quelled my fears about graduate school. I was afraid I wouldn't perform well in their classes, since one is on Renaissance tragedy and the other on Restoration poetry, neither of which would be my first choice of pleasure reading. After speaking with them, however, I'm more enthusiastic about digging into the stuff with both hands and getting really involved with new ideas and voices that will inform my future thesis project. Besides, I've never taken a single literature course I didn't take something I absolutely loved from. It's going to be a good semester.

I feel this unmitigated (right word?) pressure to declare an "emphasis" for my MA soon, though it seems to me that regardless of emphasis, master's students still basically take a lot of literature courses in order to secure a broader knowledge of all time periods and genres. After checking the Master's check sheet, I realized that to have an emphasis in one of the writing concentrations--either creative writing or rhetoric and composition--one must only take 9 hours of specialized writing courses. Well, I'd have done that much anyway to fill my elective requirements, so I've decided to declare a writing emphasis. It's the best of both worlds for me, really: I get to learn more about writing and teaching writing, which I'm passionate about, and still take literature courses, which I'm equally passionate about. God, I love it when things work out so smoothly!

I'm also going to begin training as an ESL tutor, though I've been one before, working as a private writing tutor for a student from Haiti at the Clinton School of Public Service last year. I'm really excited to work with the ESL faculty and the international students. In fact, they have encouraged me to enroll as a teaching assistant in and ESL comp class next semester so I can get a first-hand knowledge of ESL issues in the classroom. I never thought I'd be so interested in this kind of stuff, but, you know, I really am excited to broaden my cultural horizons. For so long my world has been small, spanning only that 180-mile stretch of Interstate highway between Horn Lake, MS and Conway, AR. It's time to branch out, and I'm lucky to have people here who will guide and support me.

I really am more optimistic about this whole grad school endeavor today than I have been yet.


Classes begin tomorrow, and though I'll regret these words soon, I can't wait to have homework again!