Hello world!

[cmthecla]

I got so excited about the existence of a forum that I started posting without introducing myself!

My name is Lauren, and I'm an English grad student. Though I enjoyed my lit classes as an undergrad, my real love was the work I did in my university's writing center. I'm getting my M.A. in composition and rhetoric, and I'm still in the honeymoon phase of grad school where I'm positive about my future.

You can also catch a glimpse of my personality through what I've done/what I want to do this summer. The last novel I read was Middlesex, I'm attempting to write a YA novel, I want to learn Greek (and Latin and Old English and German) over the summer, and I spent Memorial Day weekend watching lectures of a New Testament history and literature course via Yale's online open courses (oyc.yale.edu/).

In other words, I have no life.

[onlyaworkingtitle]

Ooooo grad school. Where are you going? What's it like? TELL ME ALL.

PS: Nice to meed you. Desperate, jobless recent graduate here. You can call me Nora for short.

[Silva]

Yes, tell us everything about grad school please (even though I'm not even in college yet).

[cmthecla]

I've only completed one semester so far, but grad school is AWESOME.

I go to Central Michigan University, which is also where I got my BA. The English department has masters degrees in creative writing, language and literature, and composition and communication (which is often called composition and rhetoric at other universities). What I like about the degree is that it's more than just a concentration within a broad M.A. in English (so my actual degree will be a Master of Arts in English: Composition and Communication).

I love having the ability to tailor my program to fit my specific interests (which are first-year composition and writing center studies, though I have a few other interests on the side). It's also very intimidating, though, because you realize how much you still don't know about those areas of interest. There are a lot of moments where you feel extremely unoriginal and boring, but then you have spurts of feeling like you're on top of the world.

The English grad school crowd also makes life fun. It's like taking this forum, putting us in a classroom together, and multiplying the awesomeness by five.

My first semester went well, so I'm still riding the high from that. I might have a more realistic response by the end of this year after I experience my first semester of teaching freshman composition while trying to keep up with classes.