mrvisser

Welcome! You ever been to Moscow, Idaho? Not much out there but it's a cool little town and the area is gorgeous.

Seriously. If I get into another program, great, but I don't want to be waiting that long for a final nail in the coffin.

Someone on Draft said they were on the phone with Iowa admissions for something and they were told that Iowa wouldn't be sending out acceptances until mid-March because of COVID.

I think I picked Bukowski because of a humorous Vice article called "The A to Z of Softbois." Here's the entry on him: "Fun activity: Spend a particularly disappointing night of candle-lit fingering on a softboi’s floor mattress and wonder how he’s got this far in life without seemingly ever satisfying a sexual partner. Then spot a well-thumbed copy of Charles Bukowski’s Women on the floor next to said mattress and let the hollowing despair wash over you." Just to be clear, I've never read Bukowski and don't think badly of people who read him. I don't really think badly of anybody that's a fan of a particular author, unless it's Ayn Rand. I also don't think badly of Cormac McCarthy, who I also mentioned. I actually like McCarthy a lot. I just kind of pulled examples out randomly, regarding who I thought bro-types might obsess over. David Foster Wallace is definitely a typical example, but I think he's pretty cool as well. I guess I kind of opened a can of worms with my argument.

Whoa really? Shit; better get myself in order.

I cringe every time I go back and read the part of my SOP where I mentioned influences. Even with all the edits I made to it, I can't believe I didn't make it sound less contrived when I talk about writers I like.

I think, just to provide a range of who I tried to draw from, I mentioned Woolf, Vonnegut, Steinbeck, and maybe Norman Maclean.

For the record, addressing @Boomer not Ok and @Downtozero, I'm definitely not shitting on Bukowski or Cormac or Kafka themselves, and I was worried it would look that way. It's one of those things where I'm criticizing the fandom rather than the artists, kind of like Rick and Morty. I used them as examples of just the writers that those bro types can be obsessed with. Most of my favorite writers are dead white men, so I wasn't picking on them for political reasons. And @JPReinhold makes a good point about other mediums that I hadn't considered.

Sorry for getting heated. I thought you might have been a previous troll revisiting our forum again. I get what you mean. I wasn't saying specifically that someone could tell that an applicant is narrowly influenced. I was more remarking that I'm surprised that close-minded writers would have a strong enough application to get in. I guess I would think that their writing samples and statements of purpose might not look appealing to adcoms. Of course, this is totally generalizing, and being an ignorant asshole doesn't mean one can't also be a good writer, and possibly they slip through the cracks anyways. I guess it's more that I'm surprised that these people are apparently prevalent enough to have created a stereotype.

Maybe. I'm not an English faculty member. Are you suggesting that it doesn't benefit your application to read widely and be widely influenced? You gave enough of a shit to make an account to argue with me, so what's your point?

Click the dropdown bar next to your name in the top right of the site, then go to account settings, then signature.

I don't think it's a matter of identifying narrow influences, but rather whether someone with narrow influences is best suited to write a strong sample. That being said, I'm sure ADCOMs sometimes can tell when a sample is clearly derivative of a certain style.

I'm not hinging their candidacy on snobbiness. I'm extremely snobby myself. I was just vaguely alluding to jokes I've heard about "guy in your MFA" types who are obsessed with Bukowski or Kafka or Cormac McCarthy. I can't actually speak on whether there re a lot of these types in MFA programs, but if there are I would just kind of find it funny that writers of such narrow influences would be good enough to make it in.

There are definitely stereotypes about the kind of snobby people that are in MFAs, and I do wonder how some of those people make it in.

Having a friend would be a big relief! Especially since South Bend isn't all that big. And English accents are always a plus. Haven't officially heard from WashU or Vandy yet, but I imagine I'll get the axe pretty soon. And that's okay! Still have my #1 choice in Michener, my alma mater, and then Iowa and ND. Ole Miss wasn't the only school I had mixed feelings about, and they're ruled out now, so all I have left are schools I'm certain about.

It's so enticing! Vanderbilt was the first school I did a lot of research on, and I was very vividly imagining living in Nashville, so it hurt to lose that one, but I'm still really excited my other applications. I'm glad you're finding so many good things about Notre Dame; it makes me feel a lot better about applying there and I'd be thrilled to end up in South Bend.

Brains are strange creatures. Out of high school I had a job at a gas station, and it was far and away the worst job I've ever had. Sometimes I have dreams in which I've found myself forced to return there for work, and I'm so miserable.

Yeah, I trust that it's real. Apparently Northern Arizona reached out to somebody this morning, 24 hours after they sent an acceptance to someone else, so it's possible that schools split up their acceptance calls, but I'm not going to kid myself that much.

Haven't seen any other acceptances to Vandy. Seems odd, but I guess it's entirely possible that the other five writers accepted don't use Gradcafe or Draft.

The first one is definitely more brutal than I thought it would be.

It takes several weeks to get in.

I've been rejected from almost half of my schools in five days! What a week haha.

That post matches the one on Draft.

Fuck. Someone at Vanderbilt just got an acceptance call for fiction. I really want to go there.

Congrats! That's so exciting!