MFA

Alright, so here's the thing...I've thrown my whole life in the trash -well that is what the ex told me. And I've always subscribed to the Pretty Woman mentality that it's easier to believe the bad things. Well, he hasn't been the only one. Last year, my father informed me that my elementary school wanted to put me straight from sixth grade to college and by not doing that he thinks he may have ruined my life. Instead, of going straight to college I have attended five, yes, five undergrads.

I have always wondered how/why my high potential route has brought me to working at a tanning salon.I am thirty-four and sling tans for a living. I have to say this, I am good at it, maybe the best, but that's like being the best the toilet cleaner -it does not require much. The only answer that I have, may be that things came too easily for me when I was young and by the time I needed study skills, I didn't have them. Then, I took the easy way out.

But I'm back in! Okay, minus the exclamation point. I am applying to MFA programs in creative writing from Brown to Long Beach ~I have a slightly inflated ego/highly insecure; it's makes for an interesting mix.This application process is absolutely jarring, daunting, and any and every other synonym for intimidating. I have decided upon applying to "lucky number" thirteen programs, as the odds are against me, so why not taunt the gods. The programs only accept six to twenty-five students per year. Seems to suggest, why even apply? That has been my suggestion many a days, especially with the upward cost of two grand. But for someone reason I keep writing those damn essays and submitting my short stories and cringe all the way to slam of the mailbox. I feel like when I pack for vacation and I am absolutely positive that I forgotten something, I check, double and triple check, and I haven't, but it sure feels like it.

The essay that I am working on this weekend is for Johns Hopkins, I am to write a critique of my own work. I have known this for three months, it is due on Friday and yet I have waited because for the life of me I don't know what the hell to write. I have been offered, sometimes bulldozed with opinions of my more educated friends on ways to accomplish this. Bottom line, the whole I threw my life in the trash keeps coming up and I think why would Hopkins even want me, come on, I just learned that it was Johns Hopkins not John Hopkins.