Jesse Scott Owen

At times I consider returning to school for a graduate degree, the most popular idea heretofore has been to pursue an MFA in creative writing, poetry or something. There are two major camps of opinion on the MFA, the first being that they are a great opportunity to get to know one's contemporaries, to make invaluable connections, and to get through ten years of crappy work in two or three years. The opposing camp holds that MFA programs are assembly lines for the homogenization of taste, they kill any chance of authentic work, and they are out-and-out scams.

So I'm conflicted. The other path would be to pursue an MA in some tangential interest, so that my path as a writer is not defined by the program, but they might inform each other. The options there are English or French Lit, or, I don't know, I don't have a lot of interests, maybe whatever Barry Ahearn teaches at Tulane, if I could also ask him about knowing Hugh Kenner.

Or I could go to seminary, I guess.

A great appeal of college is the experience I had with one of my professors, Alissa Wilkinson, with whom I'm pretty sure I took a class every semester at King's but one. Because I am generally a bored ass, I tended to do two things with all my college papers: attend to the assignment, and also attempt some other conceit, like my paper on Vonnegut in which I listed every member of my family and admitted my fear of the dark. She was kind enough to grade me on both of these counts, and several times I got back my work with her note attached, "I get what you're trying to do, but this is lazy."

So now in civilian life, I have been writing still, except without external assignment and without some professor required to read my work and tell me about it. Nor do I have any particular threat of danger if I do not produce work, except the emotional wringer I will put myself through (note: I put myself through it either way, actually).

I have some things I'm working on, I'd like to put together another chapbook this year, and I have an ongoing project of unknown scope or size, it is scattered through iPhone notes, notebooks, and files on my laptop. But all in all, the stakes seem low, and it seems I have no one at present I risk disappointing.

There is a Christian joke that goes something like, if the people in your life don't know you're a Christian, golly, don't tell them! The idea being that if it is not obvious, then it is not true. Application: perhaps if my writing were enough to prompt unsolicited comments and suggestions, I'd be on the right track, and no one getting that feedback genuinely has to worry about asking for it. But I do. I am unable to be satisfied in my knowledge of myself, it is abysmal. So, I don't know. I could go to seminary, I guess.