Today I got one of the most important phone calls of my life (so far). An admissions counselor from Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado called to let me know that I’ve been accepted into the low-residency Master of Fine Arts (MFA) program in Creative Writing. Attending Naropa has been a dream of mine since about 1991, when I was a senior in college, researching grad schools. Life conspired to keep me far from Boulder, so I never even applied, until I discovered a little over a year ago that Naropa now offers the low-residency version of the MFA program I always wanted to be part of. I could have rushed and applied right then, but I chose to wait a year, so that I could put the appropriate amount of time and energy into my application, which eventually included over 40 pages of writing. (That’s what happens when you apply to a writing program!) That effort paid off with today’s phone call, and I’ll start grad school in the fall.
I believe the delay in the fulfillment of this dream is actually going to make it an even better experience. I am not only 16 years older, but more mature, more well-rounded, and much more self-aware. I am not, in fact, the same person I was 16 years ago, in many ways. (Who really is the same at almost 36 as they were at 20? Who would even want to be?) I bring a lot more to the graduate school experience, which I believe means I am going to get much more out of it. I also have a sense of where it is that I’m headed, at least in general terms…and in my senior year of college, all I knew about my path was that I thought graduate school should be the next step on it. After all, a Bachelor’s degree in English doesn’t really do much for you out in the real world, so a graduate degree is the natural next step. Life took me in other directions, and now I’m so glad that it did.
In the process of compiling my grad school application for Naropa, I saw for the first time how pieces of my life, things I did as far back as grade school and as recently as the week before I submitted my application, were all steps on the path I am on now. Things that seemed to be unrelated, isolated events at the time are now clearly the seeds of the work I’m called to do now, combining writing, spirituality, and activism.
I know that I still have an incomplete vision of where this path will take me next, but I see enough of it to know that I am going in the right direction, and that I’m going to have an incredible time along the way.