Looking back on my university days, I recall vaguely wanting to get my Master of Fine Arts in creative writing, after I graduated from UCLA with a degree in English and an incomplete minor in creative writing. 

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It was 1991, there was a recession, and many of my fledgling writer friends were avoiding the job market and applying to programs. I procured a letter of recommendation from my mentor at the time: the poet, novelist and Native American scholar Paula Gunn Allen. She had so many requests for recommendations that she made us write our own, submit them to her, and she’d sign them. I felt dumb writing glowing things about myself and it was painfully obvious that it was a 21-year-old’s voice. She signed it anyway.

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I couldn’t bring myself to apply. The idea of two to three more years of intense schooling sounded depressing and lifeless, even if I'd be doing what I purported to love. Instead, I got a summer job at an advertising agency and saved enough money to get as far away from my parents as possible by flying with my best friend Karin to New Zealand. 

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We worked as WWOOFers (Willing Workers on Organic Farms, now named Worldwide Opportunities on Organic Farms) and lived mostly outside and barefoot in the wilds of forests with prehistoric ferns and mountains of unparalleled beauty. I learned more in six months there than I learned in all of my years at university, proving my point to myself that I didn’t need more school.

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Still, upon our return home, Karin and I decided to take the GRE just for kicks. We bought the prep manuals. She studied, I didn’t. When the time came to take the test, I might as well have created a surfboard or a dinosaur picture out of my filled Scantron bubbles. It was a total bust. My scores, delivered to me by mail, were abysmal. Karin, who also happens to be a genius, aced hers, and eventually went on to Bastyr to study acupuncture. 

Armed with my dunce-level GRE score, I could not apply to the MFA programs that I really desired, such as UC Irvine and the University of Iowa. Plus, these were the best programs in the country — was I even of that caliber? Not likely. I tucked away my half-dream and went on to work in communications, ending up in my late 20s, funnily enough, at UCI.

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I joined writers’ groups and took creative writing extension courses at UCI and UCLA. I got married and had two babies back to back. I quit my job in favor of full-time motherhood. I continued to write and submit my work sporadically, but after multiple rejections I gave up. The one thing I held on to was my fierce need to be a student. It saved me, and kept me from completely atrophying as a writer. 

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Several years later, my marriage began to unravel and I started spending summers at Esalen in Big Sur at author Cheryl Strayed’s Writer’s Camp with Pam Houston, Samantha (Sam) Dunn, Steve Almond and many others. I was encouraged by Sam to apply to Pam’s Writing by Writers Draft program. 

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I submitted a car crash of a manuscript, linked essays I’d written at Esalen detailing my life as a wife, mother, and the trauma and aftermath of my divorce. The stories were breathless and salacious and lacked clarity and white space, but there were a few sparks within the pages. 

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After two years of intense nurturing in the powerful Writing by Writers program, where I learned how to write and edit on a deeper and more polished level, I became fixated on the idea of applying to an MFA program — at 49 years old. My string of essays was growing into a memoir. This time around, there were more MFA programs to choose from, including low-residency ones intended for adults with jobs and/or families that were still highly respected and boasted impressive faculty rosters.

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I landed on Sierra Nevada University (now University of Nevada, Reno at Lake Tahoe) largely because of faculty such as Alan Heathcock, who also taught at Esalen and had recommended SNU, and the highly esteemed author Lidia Yuknavitch, whose magical Corporeal Writing workshops in Portland, Oregon, transformed my understanding of what it meant to be a writer. At SNU, there were five total nine-day residencies over two-and-a-half years, and the rest would be remote with an assigned faculty mentor. It felt doable; I knew I would be in good hands. 

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Once I was in, I’ll be honest — I was terrified. My first semester was the summer of smoke and fire in Lake Tahoe, and I arrived to find I’d be sleeping in a dorm room just as I would have as an 18-year-old undergrad. There were no special accommodations for “adult” students. That first residency, I had a hard, jail-type mattress and a stiff pillow. The carpet was crunchy in places. My view of the fragrant tall pines outside softened the blow, but not much. 

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We had a welcome dinner with a lovely, friendly group of faculty and new and returning students, but Lidia and Alan were not on campus that semester. I didn’t know a soul. The director of the program, the poet Brian Turner, saw me sitting by myself and forced me to join another new student introvert, Jamie, who was also solo at her own table. We made small talk, to the best of our ability, and met with our creative nonfiction teacher for the upcoming residency. As the teacher talked to us about craft and expectations for the class, I felt a growing sense of panic. When I got back to my room, I called my 76-year-old mother and told her I’d made a mistake.

“I can’t do this,” I sobbed. “I think I need to come home.” 

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Suddenly, I was a child again, wanting to be picked up early from the slumber party.

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“No,” my mom replied. “You were born to do this. Just get through the next few days, and then reassess.”

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“I’ll try one day,” I said.

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I tossed and turned on my prison mattress that night, hitting my head on the scuffed wooden headboard, convinced I’d fail before I even started. I didn’t know what I was doing. Were people going to think this was a midlife crisis? How would I ever fit in with all of these accomplished people? Who was I, this aging manic pixie dream girl/crone walking around campus with my space buns and backpack and 1.5-strength reading glasses and stiff ankles?