First MFA Residency, COVID-19, and Unreasonable(?) Expectations
When I arrived in Reno on a recent Friday, I was naturally exhausted. I’d flown all the way from the east coast that day, over six hours of time in the air. I had a headache all next day, which was the first day of my MFA residency; a time when I was supposed to meet new people—fellow writers—and make friends, perhaps some useful connections to get into a career that involves writing. Then the next day came, and my throat was a little sore. Everyone I told about my headache and sore throat chalked it up to the change in altitude, as I’d been used to sea level and now would spend nine days at over 6,000 feet.
Things didn’t seem right on Monday. My throat persisted in its soreness, and I woke up just generally feeling sick, knowing the day wasn’t going to be a good one. After my morning poetry workshop which was luckily spent outside, it was as if the acetaminophen I took wore off all at once. I was struck with body aches and a dissociative lightheadedness, asking where/how I could acquire stronger medicine. I sat at the lunch table and people began to surround me, and all I knew was that something was wrong. I don’t usually get sick. Was the altitude that bad?
Two positive COVID-19 tests deemed no, it wasn’t the altitude. That regardless of my vaccines and boosters and amazing immune system, I’d somehow caught COVID exactly three years after my first encounter with it. The funny thing is I noticed some of my peers had “colds,” as it were, coughing and sneezing; yet not a single person tested positive for COVID aside from myself, which doesn’t necessarily mean no one else had it. Because I was living in a dorm, I was forced to isolate for five days and continue wearing a mask around others after leaving isolation. And unfortunately, this really was the defining experience of my first residency.
I felt extremely lonely, spending much of my time in a hot dorm room, missing the free day we got to explore Tahoe. My most nourishing social interaction came from my poetry workshops since our group was small enough to sit outside together. When I was “allowed” to leave isolation and be around others, because the most contagious period of time had passed, some people would physically avoid me, afraid to sit next to me. Thankfully, my time there didn’t end on the worst note, as I was eventually able to hang out with people, and they didn’t seem so worried about being around me after I expressed how ostracized it made me feel.
After a 16 hour, overnight travel time to return home, the result of the cheapest roundtrip (still over $800), I realized just how difficult things were about to get. Soon to start grueling shifts at my new job—which is no office job, by the way—only able to do my grad work on my days off… and I broke down. Perhaps not everyone needs at least one day a week of doing nothing intellectually, but I do. No reading or writing. Just watching TV, or taking a walk, or hanging out with friends online. Throughout my life, academics have been all I’m praised for, all of where my value lies. The idea that if people aren’t a fan of my personality, at least I know I’m “smart” and “have a bright future.”
Life post undergrad is extremely jading for me. In a dying world where, like many people my age, I’m just trying to be happy. Anyone who knows me well enough to matter, knows that about me. Those same people never expect me to sugarcoat things. And I think that is a virtue in a society where only appearances matter and many turn a blind eye to the pressing issues of our existence.
I recently encountered feminist theorist and educator bell hooks, who is unfortunately no longer with us. I was assigned to read her Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope. Her words support many of my own political and social stances, and also present some relatively new and interesting ideas to me. She put something into words that I had not been able to— the idea that academia wants students to constantly create their own arguments about other people’s work, and that in itself is the basis for their own work. This, to me, is the most tiring part of academia. I’ve been there and done that, over and over and over. Indeed, I wasn’t aware of what exactly my mentorship coursework would entail in my MFA program; my hopes were that I could read poetry and write poetry and enjoy my time doing so outside of my warehouse work. Unfortunately for my expectations, it turns out part of what I am expected to do is what I’ve done for years now: write analytical / critical essays about others’ work.
Why? I suppose it’s to become a “better writer,” i.e. to understand aspects of craft and their effects and how I can employ that in my own creative work. Here’s an argument: It is not possible to enjoy someone’s work without pretense. I must underline and be on the hunt for evidence to support my looming essays. Yet, from what I understand from defending my own undergrad creative thesis, the MFA thesis defense does not include building arguments on the work of well-known writers as much as it asks that the defender justify their own craft choices. I can do that without referring to someone else’s work, can I not? Otherwise, what’s the point in creating? What’s the point in providing the world with something fresh?
These are rhetorical questions, of course. And I truly appreciate the people I’ve met so far who have been kind and interesting even during my sickness. I enjoy flying to a beautiful location to spend days focused on my writing. But I cannot say I was prepared for the expectations of this next part of my life.
