Write a Poem about it.

      I like to be general when people ask me what I do. "I'm a writer." I reply. "Have you published anything?" "That depends on what you mean by published."

     I never know what's apropos. Does my college literary journal count? The independent magazine my brother started? The little local writing contest I won? If I earned money for it, does that validate my claim? Should I then throw in my year of technical writing in LA? Some of that's published...but is probably not very interesting.

So I give the easiest answer, "I'm getting my Master's in Creative Writing." But that doesn't stop them.

"What kind of writing?"

Inside, I writhe. Isn't it enough to know I write? Now I have to classify myself further?

"Poetry, I guess, technically."

"Ah." Their heads bob, they nod appreciatively.

     However, poetry far from dominates my education here in San Diego. Sure, I write poems, read much more them than I did before, but I've also become addicted to Pintrest, had far too many conversations about Occupy Wall Street than I should care to, and visited most every dive bar within 10 miles of my apartment. My MFA has brought me the intellectual stimulation I was so afraid of losing after my return from my summer adventuring in Europe: after meeting so many people, perusing so many museums, reading so much, I was terrified of returning to mainstream American culture and losing that part of myself.
     What I've learned most about poetry since taking it up as my official course of study is how everything is a poem. And I learned this not from my classes, but from my fellow writers. The delightful part of attending a poetry program is the community. Oh we've our far share of weirdos...we're a writing program after all. And because we're all writers, so we're all alike in a few predictable ways. We all think that what we have to say really, really, really needs to be heard. First. Over everything else. Over everyone else. We delight in a little well-placed drama and dry wit and have penchants for clever anecdotes and absurd facts.
      But the best part of being an MFA student is that I'm no longer a writer, I'm one of many writers. We're a movement of poets, a literary gang, a Kardomah group, the Inklings, the Beats (we wish)...we sit around our beers and the bearded men smoke their cigarettes and we talk and laugh and if anything interesting gets said, someone inevitably responds,"You should write a poem about that."

The best part about getting my MFA is that my classmates and I all live on the same page.