Job-Hunting Post-MFA

Fellow classmates,

To explain my recent consecutive absences, I've promised Rebecca to blog about where I've been, and how it's been going: the dreaded job hunt. In the past two weeks, I've spent 42 total hours in the car, traveling everywhere from upstate New York to the Black Belt in Alabama, interviewing for teaching positions in English departments as diverse as this campus, meeting with students, and generally putting my best face forward, which is exhausting.

(In Alabama, by the way, my "best face" was the fiance face. My boyfriend, also graduating this year from OSU's creative writing MFA program, took us to interview for positions at Judson College, a 192-student, all-girls' Southern Baptist College. We were warned by the head of the department--a hip thirty-something who wishes the campus who go co-ed--to pretend we were engaged, rather than "living in sin," as we do here in Columbus, where our progressive adviser refers to my boyfriend as my "partner." I donned my great-grandmother's engagement ring, which has a re-sizing device on it, and kept my mouth shut most of the time. We'll hear about the jobs in two weeks.)

It is impossible for me to discuss the job hunt without discussing MFA programs in general. First of all, I'm a big advocate. My three years here at OSU have been incredible, not only for the time they've given me to write, but for surrounding me with people who obsess about 'narrative intentionality' and 'point of view' as much as I do. MFA programs of all disciplines help students hone their gift of time with the self-motivation necessary to pursue fine arts, and introduce us to people in the field who can guide us in our future careers (is networking not one of the most important things we learn?). These programs also require of us final projects that translate into portfolios we can use on the job market.

But MFA programs have some downsides. The most major of these is that MFA programs produce a certain number of graduates per year with relatively comparable CV's, making it difficult for search committees at other universities to pick out the most worthy candidates. Now, I don't profess to be more experienced than my competitors. Most of my classmates in Denney Hall are excellent teachers and writers who deserve every opportunity to succeed. Some of my classmates are writing books I expect could redefine some of the genre lines of our MFA program (Caitlin and Sara are two of them). But when similar teaching credentials are placed side-by-side, the new criteria becomes publications.

I am twenty-five years old. I came to OSU immediately after my graduation from Ithaca College as an undergraduate. With a possible recession on the horizon, MFA programs are getting younger and younger; undergraduates look to the safety and experience a graduate program can provide. And I've gained invaluable teaching experience here in addition to writing. And I've even got a draft of my first book, which I expect to be completed by the fall. But that book is not published. Not yet. It is hard to convince a search committee of your potential--even more so that your potential is greater than another candidate's.

I try to tell myself that next year is not the end-all-be-all of my career. Most likely, my career and most of yours will continue to evolve for the next forty years. When I'm fifty, I'll probably have a hard time remembering that year I spent bumming around, doing odd jobs at twenty-five. But now, of course, I am panicked. Student loan repayments, health insurance, credit card payments--I can't remember the last time I slept through the night. I have to buy the expensive eye cream in order to combat the bags and dark circles that have made this one year look like ten. I wish I could set aside my penchant for instant gratification, and just be happy to have turned in my thesis on Monday, complete with a title I actually like and 200 pages of the most enjoyable prose I've ever written. I should be amazed that I wrote nonfiction based not in the depression I once anticipated, but in the joys I've discovered during my tenure here.

If I can offer any advice to third-year MFA students, it's this: don't spend your last year living between lives--the one you're in, and the one you want. It makes both of them feel muted. Remember that despite any successes around you, most of your peers aren't sure how they're going to make their degree translate into a career, and that we chose the fine arts field because we love it, not because it's necessarily secure. Learn, if possible, to embrace the decades ahead as uncertain, and to trust that your career--unlike that of say, an accountant--ages well. Our art gets better with age; this is practically inevitable if we never stop working. And though teaching provides a reliable paycheck, and though students provide energy for our own pursuits, we remain ultimately responsible for the growth of our work.

My apologies for what probably sounds so cliche. But this is stuff I've periodically forgotten this year. And the stuff I wish I could have channeled more when I was sitting in the interview seat. MFA students have already proven their dedication to work; that's how we've all gotten here in the first place. But it's easy to don your academic hat when going for a job. It's much harder to bring yourself into play.

I'm uneasy with the idea of saying I'm engaged when I'm not. I'm uneasy with the idea of required chapel on Tuesday mornings. I'm uneasy with how much I'll agree to when a job is dangled in front of me.

I have no answers. But it's good to be back. I look forward to seeing you all on Friday.

FRIDAY the 25th

We are going to start at Room 443 on the 4th Floor of Hopkins Hall, then move to nic and Scotts Studio just down the hall

To be more specific

Gemüsetotenmesse
Gemmüse- Vegetables
Totenmesse- Requiem
Vegetable Requiem or Requiem for Vegetables
-I don't know enough about the language used in music to know which would be a better translation.

ten words

love
loss
loneliness
emptiness
family
brevity
death
desire
image
sound

Directions to the Drake Union

Hello all! The Drake is located at 1849 Cannon Dr, which is directly between Morrill and Lincoln Towers and the Olentangy River. CABS Campus Loop North will take you to the towers, and Campus Loop South will take you directly to the Drake. We are going to start off in room 78. The easiest way to get there is to enter the building from the parking lot level (as opposed to the pedestrian over passes) on the East side of the building. You should use the entrance on the South end by the loading dock. Once you enter, room 78 is all the way down the hall on your left. See you there!

http://www.osu.edu/map/building.php?building=296

Directions to Hughes Hall

Hughes Hall is located right on College Rd, across the street from the Wexner Center. Enter the building from the north entrance off college rd, go down the stairs and head towards the west end of the building. I don't believe it has a room number. It is a medium size lecture hall.

http://www.osu.edu/map/building.php?building=042

Tuba Quartet, Tuba Solo mp3

The first audio clip is of a rectial of mine from last year. It is one movement of a Sonata by Telemann originally for flute. The second clip is a tuba quartet with the lead voice being played on Euphonium by my former teacher from Manhattan School of Music Toby Hanks. This recording has special meaning for me because the composition, Dances, was written by John Stevens, also one of my former teachers. This was composed and written in the late 1970's. I am sure you will hear the musical influence of that time. This is from Toby Hanks solo album, Sampler.

http://boxstr.com/files/1773726_eetkj/02%20Track%202.mp3

http://boxstr.com/files/1773678_yd9nb/01%20Dances.mp3

Corrected link to Brass Quintet

http://boxstr.com/files/1749443_oolh4/03%20Track%203.mp3

Brass Quintet- sound clip

This is my first attempt at linking to audio files on boxtr.com. This link (hopefully) will take you to a live recording in 1993 of the Manhattan Brass Quintet, of which I was a member, playing one movement (summer) from John Steven's Seasons. This represents one of the main types of ensembles I perform in regularly. The standared brass quintet consists of 2 trumpets, 1 horn, 1 trombone, and 1 tuba. Many Universities have professional brass quintets as part of the standard load for music faculty.

[url=http://boxstr.com/files/1749443_oolh4/03%20Track%203.mp3]03 Track 3.mp3[/url] [b] [url=http://boxstr.com]HOSTED FREE AT BOXSTR.COM[/url][/b]

form reconciles animus?

As a preview to my presentation... Many critics in the past few decades have manipulated the phase "form follows function" to reposition the relationship of architecture to its constituents. Though the phrase can be traced back to American sculptor Horatio Greenough, its architectural roots are with Louis Sullivan who triggered the careers of such architects as Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius, Alvar Aalto, Mies van der Rohe and Gerrit Rietveld to name a few. Function, or "program" as we refer to it, is a rather impossible thing to avoid, yet we can consider more contemporary issues to associate with form.

Attempting to frame my work in a more diachronic relationship with this issue, I've revised the statement to "form reconciles animus". The most prominent techniques with form today revolve around an issue of effects generated by form (a few of which I'll discuss in my presentation). The "thing" that generates the effect could be called its animus...the disposition or animating spirit about the architecture. It's no longer the idea of the Sublime mentioned countlessly through art and architectural history, but more of its antithesis.

Since I will be showing a lot of work this week I won't post a lot of images, but here is one of my first projects in grad school. It dealt with adapting a new wall system to a historical Usonian house in northern Ohio by Frank Lloyd Wright. I chose to work with light and form. Here's my "solar aperture wall".

Directions for tomorrow - West Campus

Hi all,

The Sherman Studio Art Center is on west campus. Here's the URL for it on the OSU website: http://www.osu.edu/map/building.php?building=358. If you are parking on main campus, it's pretty convenient to take either Campus Loop North or South, or North Express bus. All of them come out here. These buses take you down Woody Hayes, which then becomes Carmack. The bus will go under a footbridge, turn left, and circle a large parking lot, making a few stops along the way. You will pass ACCAD and Sherman on your right, and then the stop is on the far east end of the parking lot near large sports fields and the Jesse Owens West field house.

Otherwise, there are large (W)B and (W)C lots right by the building. I would assume B and C permits would work out here; does anyone know differently?

The building has a "blow glass" neon sign on the east end of the building. The sculpture section of the studios is on the west end of the building. Go in the west door that says "Art Show" on it. My studio is off the wood shop in about the center of that wing.

See you tomorrow!
Nicole
614-961-0790 cell

Between You and Me...and what we share and not share

What I do.
I move around and I arrange images of people moving around.
I am interested in looking at the dynamic of dance and the metaphor created through the image that contains moving bodies.
We (dance artists) are dealing with momentary images that are not possible to duplicate.
So, what happens during this moment that we share in this particular place and time?
What can remain with us and what has already gone by?

Rather than looking at the actually content of a dance I created,
I look at what was created in the room between different audience members and the dance.

My recent project, the one that premiered two weeks ago, dealt with manipulating the boundary of seeing. The audience were seated in one of the biggest studio space in an arena setting while the piece happens in and out of their sight, sometimes up close and sometimes blocked by other audience members. What I intended to highlight from this piece was that it is the act of watching that dictates how an event was remembered. Therefore, what the event "was."

My blog/website

Hey, I am developing a blog/gallery/website of sorts for another class and thought that now I have it up and running a little bit I'd share it. It is still under construction of sorts, but I thought you might like to check it out!

www.sx0t.com

Yet more words from the Theatre

evocative
contextual
dramatic
symbolic
communication
dynamic
translate
reinterpret
imaginative
collaborative

words schmerds!

domestic
ritual
hygienic
sanitary
surprise
residue
contamination
grotesque
repulsion
anxiety

This Tuba is is my main instrument. It is pitched in C and was designed by OSU professor of Tuba, Jim Akins. He based it on an old York tuba which was owned by the previous OSU tuba professor, Robert Leblanc. The York Band Instrument Company was one of the few American producers of tubas. The tubist of the Chicago Symphony, Arnold Jacobs, played on one for his 50 year career. His sound help define the "American" sound as "dark" and "warm".

Song
Wind
Vibration

Repeat
Emote
Explore

Ingenuity
Inspiration
Perseverance
Patience

wiggity words

photo by Christoph Turowski

dynamic
body
improvisation
intuitive
real
unreal
abstract
evocative
funny
idiosyncratic

words...

Repetition.
Accumulation.
Accretion.
Stacking.
Crocheting.
Tatting.
Texture.
Billowing.
Monochromatic.
Beige.

Tincture

sublimate
dissolve
evaporate
transmute
sinter
calcine
coagulate
putrefy
liquefy
digest

boundaries

space
wonder

this is

open
raw

maps
& mirrors

missing

Pictures, as promised

Untitled, After Rilke. Ink and acrylic on panel, 2007.

As yet untitled. Charcoal, graphite, and ink on calque, 2008.

Words

Please, don't leave
I need, want
Love still [though]
Already gone

Or:

search, tear, unearth, reflect, mirror, lose, discuss, dispose, refute, regain

Word

Ten 

words

that

describe 

who 

I 

am.

blank

blank

blank.

words

surface

kneading

expansive

attitude

residual

saturated

burst

force

steak

interstellar

rhymes with birds

ocular
homemade
olfactory
pattern
contradiction
trajectory
sensation
interruption
memory
transference

some words

accretion, landscape, infinite, cloud, surface, mark, figure, material, execution, time.

Words...

Edit
Blur
Fame
Celebrity
Conversation
Abstraction
Leo
Distraction
Obsession
Discovery

Words.

Absence.
Absurd.
Grotesque.
Miniature.
Magic.
Neo-real.
Non-sense.
Phantasmagoria.
Repetition.
Uncanny.

nicole's ten words

accumulation, evaporation, transparency, water, absence, distance, migration, subtlety, peripheral, aviaries

upcoming show

Adriana Durant's MFA project, Life Like Make Believe, will be performed this Thursday-Saturday at 8pm in the Sullivant Hall theater. Tix are $5 with buckID. Come if you can!