I suppose normal people would have just gone and found a creative writing program if they wanted to write a story.
But I had to do things the hard way, and write a story through a science grad program instead of an arts program.
Yeah, I don't think normal people would decide to go through this, since it means I have to jump through a lot of strange hoops.
I'm not doing the normal route for a grad program (which is a research project). I'm doing something called a "plan B project." It involves some extra stuff, to make sure my odd case isn't affecting my ability to learn the usual stuff from a grad program. Or something.
I haven't run into too much of that yet. But I have run into some other strange circumstances.
For example, I've been meeting with teachers a lot to figure out what I'm supposed to do. And they've been talking about me too, trying to figure out what to do with me. Since I'm the first person (at least the first person in a veeerrrry long time) to do the project route.
It took half a year before I could get a serious consideration to do this. My first request was met with "we don't really do that kind of thing, even though the option is technically available."
I think the most frustrating part is a decision they made just before I went to Portland. A methods course is required for this program, and this methods course is specifically geared towards designing a scientific research project. Except I'm not doing one of those. So for the first half of the semester, I was trying to treat my methods as "the process of designing and researching for a book, and also making it 'educational.'" Then they said that I should pretend like I'm going to do a research project, so I can design something for my methods class. I'm not going to do this experiment, but I have to pretend like I'm going to. So I've been trying to design that now, except I didn't take very detailed notes on some of this stuff because I didn't think I needed it (well, I already had almost identical notes from an earlier class). I probably should have taken better notes though. Sigh.
So, yeah. Strange hoops to jump through. I think once I finish my proposal and my methods, it will start to go smoother because then I'll (theoretically) have a lot more time to work on my actual story. I still haven't finished fixing the beginning of it yet, though I did part of it.
I don't regret this strange situation though. I'm glad to be back. I've already taken a bunch of the prerequisites required for the grad program, I already know the place, and the teachers. If I didn't know the teachers well, I probably never would have been allowed to do this, actually.
Before I was officially accepted, one of my old teachers said to me "we'd never turn you away, Tara." Heh. I guess since both my parents are teachers, that helps me get along well with my teachers.
And another thing. The teachers have started meeting about opening these projects up to more people. I don't know if this is true, but I almost feel like I opened a door for the program to get a little bigger.
And just to prove that point, the paragraph before this is where I stopped writing yesterday morning. And yesterday evening during class, my teacher said I was the poster child for a potential new masters of arts program in environmental studies. So, no pressure, right? @__@
The fact that writing my proposal takes time away from writing my actual story makes it seem like this grad program isn't really helping my writing. But I'm sure in the long run, this will help me get further in everything.
So, I gotta keep working! Open up a bunch of stuff for the future so I can do what I love.
Whoo!
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