My ego knows no bounds

I don't know if anyone who might be reading this has had the exquisite pleasure of taking an undergraduate creative writing course, but I am here to tell you that the jump from the beginning class to the intermediate class is colossal. It's like trying to motocross over the Grand Canyon colossal.

First of all, Beginning Fiction Writing is normally taught by a grad student. Grad students, as we know, are very luck of the draw when it comes to teaching styles. If you're like me, you got someone who can write well enough himself but was not the most engaging instructor. I am positive this is a common phenomenon when you get grad students to teach things, because my freshman year I had a grad student for calculus II (the first time, anyway) and he suffered from a MASSIVE case of Not Giving A Shit. At the very least I can say that the student teaching my introductory writing course Gave A Shit.

In stark contrast to the instructor caring is the fact that more than half of the students will not. This is another issue with beginning creative writing classes - most people take it because it satisfies a humanities GER and they think it'll be easier than taking something in the rhetoric field. And yeah, it is gonna be easier, because undergrad 200-level creative writing is full of pansies. Not only did people not care, they seemed to have an aversion to giving useful criticism.

At least, until I gave constructive critique, and then everyone was all over my ass for no real reason. I don't think my stories were perfect, but "I'm Going To Write Crappy Dragon Stories" kid found the dumbest things to attack me for. Oh God, later on that kid. He deserves his own paragraph, if not his own blog entry.

The point here is that if you can make it through your 200-level creative writing course without attempting to use your manuscript to slice through your jugular, you shall find that the next level is much better.

In fact, it's almost too much better.

What you get is a room full of people who take themselves very seriously and are VERY SERIOUS WRITERS. Most haven't gotten out of undergrad yet, and the rest are grown-ass adults of lifelong education people who fancy themselves late bloomers in this great rate race of fiction writing.

Maybe I'm the only person in there who has no illusions about the likelihood of my fiction even getting read by someone higher up, much less published. I'm taking the class because I'm not entirely sane and want to get into a workshop setting for good critique. I'd add that I want to do this without paying extravagant amounts, but my tuition was in the range of $2000 for twelve credit hours, so I really am paying extravagant amounts for this education which will probably amount to less than a hill of beans when I'm done.

I'm remarkably disillusioned. Do I simply want to go to grad school to delay real life?