glowingbrightly

yayyy congrats!!! i know how long you’ve been waiting, it took me at least a week to calm down and may take you longer. davis sounds really lovely, i talked to someone else about the program—cute, quiet college town close to the bay. im no expert but it is one of the most bikeable cities in the country if you are into that!

i also told myself this was dumb until i got into a program in california lol a good weed market is important tbh

lol how poetic—reading is getting rid of creative writing

if anyone is waiting on boulder, i just got an email today indicating that they are still making decisions. not sure if ill even reply to the email since im already committed to irvine but they are asking me to clarify something about my application, which indicates either a waitlist or acceptance.

@P i e r r o t comment on draft waitlist post saying irvine fiction all accepted

I’m not normally one to advocate avoiding tenuous political climates but someone on draft who teaches in Idaho mentioned some state laws that restrict speech in regard to things like abortion and gender identity. I could exist in a red state, and sometimes I think it’s even better to write from a more divided community, but I’m not sure I could teach with such threats to freedom of speech and the ability to basically care for young queer students.

yeah anyone who thinks life experience can be judged by age or “years out of undergrad” must not have been through much themselves or know many nontraditional students im 32, just finishing undergrad, and im only a decent poet because i also have a trunk full of baggage that anyone could have at any age

admitting to ageism on the phone is crazy but programs don’t usually say you have a good chance unless they mean it… the writing may be coming from a combination of aspiration and uncertainty so make use of this fertile period while you can!

im about to decline my spot. i bet there is a lot of movement. its a good program, but gets a bad rep for being unfunded. still i bet waitlist means you dont get much funding which makes it mighty expensive. its not big on mentorship, and tends to pick favorites and engender competition. but that works for some people. its more focused on in department coursework than most other programs. depends on genre but poetry isn’t as massive as fiction cohorts and has dorothea lasky and timothy donnelly

boulder is the only school still yet to communicate for me… however, don’t consider anything a rejection just yet—someone on draft just got a waitlist call from UCI 6 weeks after mine. you never know when they’ll have to pull from the reserves!

Yeah these are all great questions. I think the biggest thing to keep in mind is that no amount of prestige or agents or publishers can write for you and isn’t it all about the writing end of day? Even if Cornell (or Michigan or Brown or Iowa) could get you a fellowship or agent or teaching appointment, it’s still about your work and your ability to sustain your practice over time. I’ve heard Brown grads say their program is too short and stuffy to get much done, even though it can result in better job opportunities. My primary mentor is a former Brown grad who told me that your first book can open more doors than any name on your degree. Think about who/what will help you best accomplish that.

Yeah this made me regret not applying to UIUC but it also reminded me of how Columbia acted when they really wanted me. These programs are far from desperate but may act this way because they know we have better options and this is what they can provide above and beyond others. If you really trust it then yeah, why go to Cornell? I think the answer is obviously that the perception of prestige influences trust. And this all speaks to my choice to go to Irvine. The vibes are wonderful but I’ve also worried about what could happen in such a small cohort with only 2 faculty. However, I’d rather have 2 mentors whose work I love than a larger department with less mentorship or more poets whose work speaks to me less, which goes back to why I didn’t apply to UIUC in the first place.

ahhh so sorry to hear you are still waiting! hoping your spot opens up soon!

twas me. i thought it was nice that the coordinator sent out early Rs but i did not need a second one to make it official/rub it in 😪

Northwestern, Pitt, Iowa International Writer’s Program, and Hamline make 4. I also know Irvine and Brown took 1 less student per genre this year. As it stands, we are lucky to be relatively unscathed but fields like biomed are having PhD offers rescinded left and right. And making—or not making—decisions based on imagined waitlist movement is silly—if you are on a waitlist with an open offer this late in the game then that’s just the way it is and you shouldn’t blame yourself or others for taking the offers available to you.