OMG, Graduate Programs

Just out of plain curiosity, this evening I went to my university’s webpage to look at graduate programs. I had a few ideas in mind, and at the top of the list was creative writing. My undergrad degree will be in journalism, but I’m not sure it’s what I want to do for the rest of my life. I’m actually not even sure I’m all that interested in the discipline at all. I like the writing aspect of it so I thought that maybe creative writing was a possibility. Not only do you need 48 credit hours to get your MFA (you’ll see why this is such a large number in a minute), you need to take an entire course on POETRY. I don’t mind poetry when it’s just a tiny section out of a semester-long course, but when it’s an ENTIRE course, I get a little nervous.

I decided to look into an MA in journalism, and get this: you only need 30 hours worth of credits to graduate from that program! I mean, hell, why waste another 18 hours and thousands of dollars of my precious money?! Oh, but wait… I’m not that fond of journalism in the first place. So now I’m back where I started. I decided to look at one final topic, public communication. To be quite honest, I don’t even know what it’s about but it’s also 30 credit hours for an MA, which seems a whole lot better than the 48 for creative writing that I had looked at earlier.

I think that creative writing is still what I’d most like to study. I mean, you get to turn in a manuscript of a BOOK as your thesis! But the prospect of being done in one year or less is extremely appealing. The less time the better, in my opinion. Except that I want to end up doing something I love, which might not happen if I end up in the journalism or public communications program. I think I’m actually more confused than when I started out…

In any event, I’m entirely freaked out by this whole experience. Just the thought of the GRE, applications, recommendation letters, and poetry is enough to make me reach for the Tums.