aiyamei
Mar 20, 2008, 3:46 PM
Post #328 of 793
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Re: [blarring] Help! Pick one!
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There's no question -- go with The New School. Agents and editors might be very abstract to you now, but later you're going to be glad you went to a school that put you in contact with lots of these very interesting people in the most unforced way possible. That's what New School, Columbia, and NYU can do for you, if you're halfway bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, by which I mean willing to go to readings and parties in the city and meet people and hang out. Why sequester yourself? I say this as someone who did NOT go to an MFA program in the city, but I have friends who did, and they have been my greatest resource in trying to navigate the world of agents and editors. And they are none the worse for living in the most fantastic city in the U.S. Of course, I say this as someone who is not convinced that an MFA program is necessary at all, except as a way of mitigating the unbearable loneliness and isolation that is the writer's lot, i.e. I am pretty convinced that what I'm going through with my novel right now for instance (I'm working with an agent who is a bloodhound for weaknesses in plot, style, characterization, freshness) could not possibly be more intense or the learning curve steeper if I were in a program, however I'm infinitely less well set-up socially than I would be if I had a bunch of classmates to turn to, etc.
Oh, but now I'm thinking that maybe you're poetry, not fiction. If you're poetry, then I don't know what to tell you, although I think the above might still partially apply.
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