October, Already?

Oh, how time flies when you only have one semester left of your MFA. It's hard to believe that in just five weeks, I'll be defending my thesis. I think there are still some holes I need to plug, which has gotten me thinking about order. I have been avoiding chronology...although I'm really not sure why...but today I plan to put my poems into a timeline to see what's missing. Maybe they'll stay in that order, maybe not. But I think it's an exercise I can't finish my thesis without.

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Yesterday, I got really, really mad at my students. But for some reason, I always feel silly and a little embarrassed when I get angry. Maybe it's because I'm conflict averse. At any rate, they asked for more time on their rough drafts last Friday, and I didn't have a problem with that, except that it threw off my plan for the week. So, I told them that if they wanted more time, they needed to bring drafts and questions to class on Monday. But they didn't bring questions, so all I could do was give them quiet writing time. I wanted to slap them on the wrists and send them home, but that would have seemed more like a reward, so I held them hostage.

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I'm hemming and hawing about going to see Michael Dumanis read at John Carroll tonight. I would really really love to hear Michael read, and to show my support because I think he is such a wonderful addition to the MFA faculty, but I just found out about the reading yesterday, and I really have a lot to do today. (Plus Phil Brady is reading in Youngstown tonight and I had kind of planned that if I got caught up, I would go there. But I've heard Phil read before...) I suppose I could try to be super productive for the rest of the morning and afternoon and reevaluate my level of swampedness later. We'll see.

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New American Writing rejected me less than a week after I mailed them my stuff. I'm all for quick response times, but I can't help feeling like the girl who goes to the audition and gets kicked out before she reads her lines.

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You know what's not on my to do list for today? Updating my blog.
Maybe I should go do something that is.