Sunday, September 2, 2012

Grad School Granny: Update #1

My online class at McDaniel College in Reading the Romance Novel includes 11 other women (you didn't really think there'd be guys taking this class?) of various backgrounds.

A couple already have advanced degrees in English. One is a published author who served on the board of RWA (Romance Writers of America) at the time they were crafting their mission statement. One lives in Japan, one in London, another in the Florida Keys (where she works with dolphins) others in South Dakota, Wisconsin, Boston. Ages seem to range from twenty-somethings to yours truly.

So we have diversity, at least of age and geography.

Right now, I'm feeling overwhelmed and under-educated. My undergraduate degree, in case you didn't know, is in Management Information Systems. Not much literary going on there.

 As of this writing, I'm spending 2 or 3 hours a day on schoolwork and just barely keeping my head above water.

So far, I've read the assigned chapter on paragraphing in Reading Like a Writer by Francine Prose five times, and I still have no idea what the hell she's talking about.

So, lacking skill or any real aptitude, I'm going to fall back on the same trait I've relied on through most of my life: my complete and total unwillingness to admit that I might have screwed up, persistence.

After all, it's gotten me this far.

(BTW--Prose says using one-line paragraphs for emphasis is a "rhetorical device"--aka a cheap trick. Good to know.)

8 comments:

  1. So this is what you meant by your MFA work! BTW, Margie Lawson doesn't consider rhetorical devices a bad thing. In fact, she recommends them!

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  2. Cheap tricks are okay as long as they're not your only tricks ;-)

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  4. I think you will do just fine and i don't think you are undereducated at all.

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  5. Thanks for the photo of the book you are using. I will look for it on-line. This course will be enlightening with such a diverse group of classmates. Like Connie says, "Take a deep breath...it will be okay."

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  6. Your post reminds me of when my grad school advisor recommended I read Six Walks in the Fictional Woods by Umberto Eco. To be frank, I had NO f**ing clue what I was reading. But I muddled through. I am so excited for you!

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  7. Hi Jeanne, I had been on and off blogging but I am taking in my blog into private to take a real break :) Hope to see you again soon.

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