MFA personal statement

I’ve heard that the real world doesn’t begin until you graduate from college and start working.  I will be 23 when I finally graduate this December, but I have been working since I was 14 and have had a chance to dabble in many “unreal” occupations.  My first job was making slips and drives in my Dad’s duct shop for his Heating and AC business.  I can’t tell you what slips and drives do exactly, but I can tell you that I could punch the crap out of some sheet metal.  But my mom got sick of worrying that I would come home with nine fingers, so I moved into the more traditional route of babysitting.  This lasted about a year until I turned sixteen and was enticed by the lucrative profession of waiting tables. I became a waitress at Ponderosa steakhouse in Pleasant Hills, Pennsylvania.  Tips were sparse and I often came home smelling like beef tips and chicken wings.  After graduating and moving to North Carolina for college, I decided it was time to switch to the less pungent world of retail.  I folded sweaters and rang up shoes until I landed the highly coveted government paycheck known as work study.  For two years I monitored the computers, faculty, and students in UNC Charlotte’s language lab.  Everything was great until I became too rich from my $1800 annual salary and no longer qualified for the program.  Luckily for me, a position was open in the campus telefundraising center.  Nothing like jobless alumni in a hostile economy to brighten your day.  After that it was legal assisting and secretary work at two different law firms, including one that I still work at despite the all too common occurrence of lawyers in the office.  These experiences have taught me to be responsible, efficient, and self-reliant.  They have also taught me that I have to do something more with my life than send faxes and tell people that they can’t get to-go boxes for the buffet. 

Besides my extensive work experience, I’ve done a few other things worth mentioning.  I was the first person in my family to go to college.  I studied abroad in Russia, participated in a research internship, and was in several leadership roles in Sigma Kappa sorority.  Even though I majored in History instead of English, I read and write every day.  I have taken a few creative writing and literature classes undergrad and have done well.  Outside the confines of a resume, I survived a fiancées cheating and a friend’s suicide.  During my extended stay UNC Charlotte I’ve done a lot to show that I am serious, dedicated, and a tough.  I’m a hard worker and I’m passionate about everything I do. I have a solid GPA, plenty of extra-curriculars, and three very talented and helpful professors who agreed to write my recommendations.

         I don’t think any combination of those experiences necessarily qualifies me to study fiction writing at your University, but I do think that they have been wide enough to dispel the myth that I’ve spent too little time in the real world to have anything to write about. Five months of answering the phones for divorce attorneys would fix that for anyone.  My life, my job history and even my transcript, may at first glance seem scattered, but there’s been one important and notable constant: I’ve never put down my pen.  I’ve never faced a time when I didn’t feel like tapping my keyboard until 3am. The flow of characters and their stories, and the compulsion to make them into words on paper, have outlasted all my part time jobs and ill-fated career paths.           

Until recently I never thought writing could be more than a hobby.  I paid my way through college to make money, after all. However, full time employment has showed me that too much of life is spent working to not try to do what I really want.  And what I really want is to be a writer.  I want to live the writer’s life and I believe an M.F.A. is an important step in doing so.  Right now, my portfolio consists solely of short fiction.  In the program I would continue with a fiction focus, with the hope of developing a unifying theme across several short stories and ultimately creating a book length collection.  Eventually I would like to be at place in my writing where my many different characters and directions could be worked together into a novel.  I know I would benefit greatly from the interaction with other writers and the chance to participate in workshops.  Some of the best lessons I’ve learned about my writing came from comments on another classmate’s story in workshop.  I also look forward to relationships with faculty that can open me up to new ideas and directions.  But most importantly, I look forward to really taking the time to write. 

After graduation I would like to continue learning and writing in a PhD or Fellowship program.  Ultimately, I would like to teach creative writing while continuing to send out work for publication.  I don’t have unrealistic dreams of a lucrative book deal or tenure-track position after graduation (although I certainly wouldn’t be opposed to either).  What matters most to me is that I will leave the program a better writer than when I started.  It is important to me to do this so that writing becomes my craft, not my diversion. 

I can’t think of anything I’d rather do than spend the next three years writing at Your University.  I’m determined, serious about my work, and I’ve had enough jobs to know that money isn’t everything.  Writing is.