justasmidge

Just talked to an author acquaintance who graduated from a school that I didn't get into and just got longlisted for a very prestigious prize so I really feel like I can trust her judgment on this. I'm in between two schools. One that will leave me about 16k in debt and another that would leave me 40k in debt. The open house for the 40k one isn't until Thursday. It's quite a substantial price difference but I also know that if I did choose the 40k one that there are fellowship opportunities in the second year that could take the price down. I was concerned that the 16k school doesn't have as much name recognition as the other one, but she assured me that the name of the program doesn't matter - it's whether if you think your writing will benefit from the program's resources and if there's support from faculty. She said that one can draw on faculty connections for letters of recommendation and blurbs. I definitely believe that the 16k school will give me a tremendous amount of guidance from all of my interactions with them so far. I do think I would be very happy there. We'll see what happens with the 40k school.

You are right - they told me that they were waiting for my FAFSA info to come in before they awarded funding. Let this be a lesson not to get down on yourself if you don't get a funding offer immediately. I honestly thought, despite my other acceptances, that I wasn't good enough because I didn't get funding at first, when really, it turns out it was a matter of paperwork.

This...was an interesting afternoon. So I decided to decline my spot at SLC because of lack of funding and wrote them a really nice letter saying that it wasn't feasible financially and wished them all the best. Then I got an e-mail to check my portal and they sent me another acceptance letter, this time with the 12k a year scholarship. I'm wondering if maybe they forgot to give me the award in the first place? It just seems weird that they would accept me again after I declined. I wrote to the grad admissions staff asking if they could explain what happened because it is a little disappointing that, because of the lack of funding, I decided that I wasn't going to entertain the accepted students events...but if I knew I had funding, it would have been a different story.

Ohhhhh myyyyy gosh, that is soooo fucking cool! I would dieeeee

In at SLC but without funding. I'm going to email with my other offers and see if that moves the needle. If it doesn't, I will decline. The acceptance letter was personalized, which was a nice touch though, so brownie points to them for that.

Oh, that's awesome!!! My father is from Sicily but grew up around Milan after an earthquake devastated his hometown of Partanna. We are going to Milan first and then we will be flying down to Sicily Thank you so much for the tips - I was wondering how the waiting game was going to sort out with being 6 hours ahead The best of luck to you

About to leave for Italy in a few hours - Sarah Lawrence and Columbia, it would be nice to get some good news before airplane mode goes on! Also, for those of you who are local to NYC, I asked TNS if I could meet with a faculty member to discuss the program and see if it's a fit and they have been really accommodating. They're going to set me up with a faculty member and a student after Spring Break, which I thought was really nice of them. I think it's worth asking for

I miss the old days where I was confident that a strange number calling me was spam. Now it's like...is it spam...or is it a SCHOOL??!?!

It feels way too quiet today.

There's always a waitlist If I'm not mistaken, didn't they say the class size was 30 for all concentrations? Also, I don't know if this counts for anything but I had a heart attack the other day when I checked the portal and it said my application was incomplete. I emailed them and they said not to worry and my application is with the department so we shall see!

I just found out that I received a 50% scholarship to The New School! Ah, after receiving some frustrating news today about one of my brothers, I realllllllly needed this. I still have yet to run the numbers to see if it's affordable but I will take the win right now.

Ah, Rixor, I am so sorry about the car - my car was stolen in 2012 and I will never forget how violating that felt. DMs are open if you need someone to lend an ear.

I don't think NYU is done - we haven't heard anything about the waitlists.

I'm also waiting on Sarah Lawrence! Hopefully this week, we'll here something. I think we're going to hear of a lot of news this week.

Whew, I can feeeeeeel the anxiety already for these next couple of weeks. I did have breakfast with a professor from Stony Brook which was really nice since she's a friend of my colleague's. I really enjoyed it! Still trying to figure out if going to Italy is a good or a bad thing with being six hours ahead of all of this, but at the very least, it will be a distraction. I'm an amateur photographer, so I'll probably be busy taking photos. Anyone else here shoot film? It's my favorite medium. I'm taking 3 rolls of Ektar 100, 1 roll of Portra 160, and 1 roll of Lomography Purple.

I'm coming up on the 4th anniversary of my brother's overdose. If you need someone to lend an ear, my DMs are open. I am truly, so sorry for your loss.

I just got an e-mail from Stony Brook to check my portal and they gave me a $6,500 stipend and 25% tuition remission!!! I honestly wasn't expecting this but wow. I need to process all of this!

As someone who also lives with depression and anxiety, I see you. I will be 37 in May, which is wild to think of, but I'm here, but I do believe that my age has contributed to me being a better writer because of what I've experienced and what I will continue to experience. If I don't get in anywhere, I'm absolutely trying again. Granted, living in NYC does give one a bit of what I like to call "Peter Pan syndrome" because it seems like we never grow up but there are so many cool people doing cool things in their late 30s, 40s, and 50s and beyond.

Yeah, all the schools I applied to are in NYC and not getting the email was a downer because I had my workshop instructor, who is an alum of the NYU Creative Writing Program, write my letter of recommendation and I went to a couple of the readings last fall to get a feel for the program and really felt it would be somewhere I'd thrive. But I'm giving myself some grace. I only made the decision to apply to MFA programs last April after taking a couple of workshops in the beginning of 2023. Before then, I never considered this as a path for me. If it takes another year to polish off my pieces, then that makes sense. Also, framing it this way has really helped me and maybe it may help someone else: I'm willing to bet that we all applied because someone believed in us and our work. Some of us may have had work that was extremely well-received in writing workshops. We're just up against people who are also very talented. Some of them may be applying for the first time, some of them may have gone through this process before and learned what they had to work on to get accepted for the next round. If it's a no or waiting list spot from NYU, there are six more schools to go. And if it's a no across the board, I'm going to regroup for next year and take heart in this passage by Mary Oliver in "A Poetry Handbook." "Many of my students would spend almost all of their time writing and very little of it reading the poems of other poets, if they and not I were setting the assignments. Sometimes I don't blame them. There are so many poets! But, to write well it is entirely necessary to read widely and deeply. Good poems are the best teachers. Perhaps they are the only teachers. I would go so far as to say that, if one must make the choice between reading or taking part in a workshop, one should read."

Granted, this is for NYC residents but in the case that I don't get in anywhere, I will be applying to this program and thought it would be good for others to consider as well. While my sample was very personal, I do see ways it could have been better and I'm going to start reworking it. I don't know why I'm even counting myself out of the race when it's likely I'm not hearing from anywhere until March anyway but yayyyyy anxiety lol. Anyway, here you go in case you're also interested in applying and want a head start getting your application ready for the next cycle that will probably open up soon. May the odds ever be in our favor. https://centerforfiction.org/grants-awards/nyc-emerging-writers-fellowship/apply-to-the-nyc-emerging-writer-fellowship/

I don't know if this will help people but I live and die by my planner so while I'm in NYC school limbo, I just decided to write down some inspirational quotes in my weekly section from now until April. They include: You will make it through this week, no matter what - hahahaha by me If you're going through hell, keep going - Winston Churchill (this is when I started consulting past Reddit threads about inspirational quotes) If the highest aim of a captain was to preserve his ship, he would keep it in port forever - Thomas Aquinas Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn't. They kept going. Because they were holding on to something - a verrryyyy abridged version of what Sam said to Frodo but there's only so much space in the weekly spread Dude, sucking at something is the first step to being sorta good at something - Jake the Dog from Adventure Time You miss 100% of the shots you don't take - I'm a hockey fan, so Gretzky did deserve some time in the planner The credit belongs to the one in the arena, whose face is marred by sweat and blood. If he fails, at least he fails by daring greatly - another very abridged quote by Teddy Roosevelt The brick walls are not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something - Randy Pausch

I would want it to be as close to fully funded as possible. Given my job, I qualify for Public Service Loan Forgiveness, and believe it or not - my loans from my undergrad and MPA are actually going to be forgiven later this year. I do enjoy my work (I'm a transportation planner) so if I do have to get loans again, I'll just put them through PSLF. However, I know that this is a bit of a special situation.

The other thing that makes me feel very suspicious about the NYU acceptance is that people would have talked about acceptances here or in the Draft forum too. If you were the first one called, I'd expect it's because you won a nice funding package as well, and you'd want to talk about it. I guess we'll see next week since last year, they let people know around the 23rd, which was a Thursday.

Yeah I'm not convinced that it's legitimate - it feels too early for them to reach out and given how many of us applied there, we would have seen more than one response. I just don't understand the trolling.

Gah. I saw an e-mail from The New School's Office of Admissions. It was just to remind me to make a budget.