An Interesting Article

It speaks to themes I have addressed on and off in this blog. Potentially a little insulting for members of my generation, but, if nothing else, the graphics are highly entertaining. Recommended reading for anyone between the ages of 18 and 30.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/wait-but-why/generation-y-unhappy_b_3930620.html

Patience, Portfolios, and Piles of Mush

I like quantifiable things. I like things that can be counted, recorded, and later analyzed. For example, the number of miles I have run or biked each day. My grocery reciepts. The times my athletes run in each cross country meet and their splits per mile. The balance of my bank account. My budgets on Mint. I make to-do lists for fun, even when I’m not busy---perhaps especially when I’m not busy---and checking them off brings me pleasure.

So why on earth, I’m beginning to ask myself---why did I chose to pursue writing, of all the fields available to me? Why did I pick the most unquantifiable of endeavors, the most elusive, the most resistant to to-do lists and check marks? Shouldn’t I have gone into statistics or accounting or engineering maybe, rather than this right-brain frustration?

I’m feeling this way because I’m in the process of applying to Master of Fine Arts programs, and, if you couldn’t tell, the portfolio-producing process has not been progressing as smoothly as I hoped. The plan is to produce two flawless and imaginative short stories by November. So far, after nearly three months of sincere effort, my brain has birthed only one pile of mush that may be breathing its last breath. I’m trying not to panic.

Unfortunately for me, when it comes to MFA programs in creative writing, numbers don’t matter. Most schools don’t require a GRE score. The ones that do just want to make sure you’re not stupid. Undergraduate GPAs… well, as long you passed everything, it shouldn’t be a problem. According to a book I have about the MFA application process, 90% of your application rests on the 35-40 page writing sample in your portfolio. In other words, it all comes down to whether or not some professor decides he or she likes my story. One person could dash my hopes on a whim, no matter what my GRE or GPA is.

This is not good news for a person who likes to quantify things.

There is no way to quantify a story. There is no way to know for sure how I stack up against the hundreds of other applicants, each jostling for just a few spots. No average LSAT score, no comparable GPA or recommended extracurriculars. I can’t objectively rate my writing on a scale of 1 to 10 and use that to decide which programs to apply to. I also can’t force my writing to get better, to become more creative, to shape itself into something beautiful and poignant. Time spent does not necessarily translate into quality achieved.

That’s just how writing is, and I better get used to it because I haven’t exactly left myself room for other pursuits. Writing requires a lot of patience---also not one of my natural strengths. “Have patience with the process,” I typed on a sticky note on my laptop desktop after reading it in Story, Robert McKee’s famous book on writing and plot. I have to remind myself of this frequently. Patience. Patience. Patience.

Patience with the process is not an easy thing, in writing or in any other area of life. I like quick results and check marks, and now that I’m a year out of college, I feel like the clock is ticking for me to start producing great things. After all, F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote This Side of Paradise when he was only 23 and W.H. Auden had his first book of poetry published at the same age! It’s a bit ridiculous to be comparing myself to these luminaries, I know, and to be feeling the pressures of time when I’m still a baby in the eyes of a lot of people, but it’s hard not to be frustrated with the slow progression of my writing. It’s hard not to wish for an easy way to quantify my skill level and detail the exact steps I need to take in order to increase it and produce something amazing.

I guess that’s why I’m attempting to go back to school, ultimately. To get better and to find out how to do that. But first I need to get in, and that may very well be the hardest part.

Cooking for One

I improvised a pear crisp today out of three pears, some oatmeal, butter, brown sugar, and a bit of cinnamon. It was pretty good, despite the fact that I didn’t use a recipe or measure anything. Good enough that I decided to make it my dinner.

Cooking for one is a rather motley and scattershot activity. When no one else is eating your meals, you can feel free to eat whatever strange (or easy) food strikes your fancy. Like pear crisp for dinner. Or beans from a can heated in the microwave. Or the egg and broccoli and black beans and tomato scramble thing I made yesterday because that was what I had in the fridge (the eggs turned kind of gray from the black beans, but it actually tasted fine).

It’s not that I don’t know how to cook. I do. At least, well enough not to totally embarrass myself in the kitchen. But sometimes I don’t always feel like putting in much effort or buying those non-essential things at the grocery store that would afford me a little more creativity. Maybe I’m just being lazy. Or cheap. I’ve definitely been accused of that one.

Living on my own again, I feel a little like I’m back in my college days, when I was on a ten-meal-a-week plan at the cafeteria and had about 15 additional dollars to spend on food. I was pretty good then at tracking down free meals---being on a sports team helped. But my non-cafeteria diet still consisted mainly of oatmeal, cheap wheat bread, peanut butter, and whatever cereal I stole from my parents’ house when I was home on break. I have a little more money than that to spend now, thank God, because I’ve only recently been able to bring myself to eat oatmeal again.

Still, it’s hard to summon up the motivation to make anything fancy when I know I’m the only one who is going to be eating it. And I sort of like having the freedom to make weird things and not have to subject anyone else to the risk or the malnutrition. Like improvised pear crisp for dinner.

On Changing the World

I read an article recently on theatlantic.com by Ron Fornier about the difference between my generation, the Millennials, and my parents’ generation, the Baby Boomers. The article focused mainly on the attitude of each generation toward politics and Washington, but a side comment caught my attention.

Fornier noted that Millennials---while often labeled as self-absorbed, egotistical, and entitled (and I’m not saying this isn’t true)---are actually more willing than previous generations to desire careers that further their community rather than their bank account. Millennials are more likely to volunteer, study abroad, and look beyond themselves when envisioning the ideal job. Growing up in a world that is more interconnected than ever, we are more likely to see global problems as our own.

As someone immersed in the culture of the Millennials, I have to say that I find this to be true, at least in my own circles of friends and acquaintances. I have no evidence to support that this desire to be world changers is more pronounced in my generation than in previous ones, as I have only been a 23-year-old in the year 2013 and not in 1973, but the words of my peers certainly suggest a longing for meaning and purpose in their career path.

While in college, we dream of working for non-profits and NGOs. We want to bring social justice to the red light districts of Bangkok, end hunger in Somalia, bring peace to Palestine, fight AIDS in South Africa. We want to be doctors, teachers, child-huggers, social workers, advocates for change. Our goals are lofty. So are our expectations.

The reason so many of us---us post-grad Millennials---are so frustrated, I think, is because there is almost always a lag after college graduation between intense passion and practical capacity. We want so badly to be doing something important and meaningful. But then we realize, to our dismay, that we aren’t actually helpful to anyone yet. We have a college degree but we have no skills, no experience.

We have only student loans and monotonous entry-level jobs (if we’re lucky). As we organize mind-numbing spreadsheets, file back-log data, and make coffee for our superiors, we wonder, how am I going to change the world doing this?

It is after this thought that many decide to go to grad school.

I don’t blame them.

Changing the world is a heck of a lot harder in practice than in theory, particularly, as I’m discovering, when you went to a liberal arts college and got a degree in English writing. I firmly believe that writing can change the world. I have less confidence now that my writing can do that. But I hold onto my passion to make a difference, to be a piece of the change, proudly, fiercely almost, because there is a part of me that worries I am one short step from apathy. One quick slide away from settling for something significantly less than my dreams.

It happens to people. I’ve seen it.

Somewhere along the way, life becomes about survival. We just need to put food in our mouths and a roof over our heads. We need an income. And let’s face it, most of us don’t have the luxury of being too picky about where that comes from. After a while, our dreams or passions fade. At first this bothers us. Then we don’t really care.

Somehow I---we, post-grads, everyone---need to find a new way of looking at what it means to “change the world” and how we can be a part of that. I purposefully won’t use the words “realistic middle ground” because all of them suggest to me compromise and an easy way out. But a little bit of reality and redefinition is required to prevent the majority of people from succombing to disappointment and defeat, I think. Me being one of them.

It is important to hold in tension a healthy fear of apathy and a passion for change with the humble understanding that I am just one person on this earth of 7 billion, living in a tiny window of time that will soon pass and be forgotten. As J.R.R. Tolkien wrote in his little book Leaf by Niggle, I’ll be lucky to paint even a single leaf in this giant tree of God’s.

That being said, I still want my one leaf to look amazing.