not the pretty columbia…

A short list of documentable facts—I’ll begin with the smaller issues and proceed to the larger ones—would include master’s theses that are routinely passed despite the fact that the level of writing exhibited in them is remedial at best and virtually illiterate at worst, tenure-track hires of close personal friends of the chair who have, quite literally, not a single publication credit to their names and who are hired over candidates with two and three books—resulting in a situation in which students often have more experience and more publications than their instructors, and an institutional culture in which those who have done nothing for 10 or 15 years hire others like themselves in order to make their own lack of accomplishment less visible and, for the same reason, discriminate against those who are active in their fields.
–Mark Slouka on the Columbia MFA program. Full article here, via bookslut.

my response: A – fucking – MEN. The comic highlight of my year? A letter from Columbia asking me to donate money to the MFA program and its students. Are you kidding me?! I wish I could have gotten some of my money back from some of the incompetent professors who i’ve suffered classes with (including a professor who told a whole dinner party of students about my cocaine “problem” and subsequent leave of absence almost two years before, because well, everyone knew about your little problem, felicia – REALLY? THAT’S NEWS TO ME. GREAT TO KNOW I’M THE TOPIC OF GOSSIP IN THE ADMINISTRATION), half the students who were straight out of ivy league colleges, brimming with attitude and felt they knew more about everything than everyone, meanwhile they spent their time ripping off Ben Marcus, so few teaching positions that you have to complete against PHD candidates for, scholarships that are laughable, and endless favoritism, networking events (i’ve only heard this because I refuse to go to one) that resemble awkward cattle calls, and boy, could i go on. I thought about shutting my mouth and saying nothing, but I’m sure the administration at Columbia couldn’t stand me anyway, so no matter.

the only positive highlights of columbia for me? binnie kirshenbaum (workshop), jonathan dee (seminar), colson whithead (seminar) nathan englander (workshop), patty o’toole (seminar) & richard locke (2 lectures): brilliant, astute teachers with actual book credits and actual teaching experience. And my friends Mia, Cris, Kelly, Scott, Kira, Lauren, Rob, Jane, and Elisa, and some other people I’m probably missing, who I’ve had the pleasure of meeting while in the program.

Sometimes I wish I had gone to the New School. Then I wouldn’t be grinding my teeth to the roots in my sleep, fretting over fucking student loans.

Agents? Editors? Authors? I met these fine people and friends MYSELF.

Update: I am not posting anonymous comments, AT ALL. This is my site and I can manage it how I please – if you don’t like it or me, I suggest you surf elsewhere instead of sending me obnoxious anonymous comments as if I’ve committed a sin in saying anything remotely negative about Columbia. If I had the courage to say that my experience at the program was not entirely positive, you should have the courage to post your real name and real email address. Especially when your comments to me include rude expletives, especially when the IP addresses come from various computers located at the SOA, especially when you tell me that my experience should have been amazing because yours was amazing – good for you, I wish my $75K+ was well spent, but it wasn’t. There were positive aspects of the program and there were negative ones as well. My opinion of the program has not and will not change. I’ve said all I had to say on this topic, so I suggest you folks move on.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 24th, 2006 at 1:07 pm and is filed under the writing life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.