Goddard G1 and G2 Residency

I recently completed my second residency in the Goddard College MFA Creative Writing program. The first residency was a bit of a disaster for me personally. I was overwhelmed and spent most of the residency wondering if I even wanted to do this program anymore. Everyone talked me out of dropping out, and I’m glad I stayed around because the second residency was somewhat easier.

Experience is Key

Over the course of my G1, many of my difficulties were simply the fact that the worlds of English and Political Science are quite unfamiliar (despite both being humanities) and I just didn’t know what I was doing. The reality is that I hadn’t been in any sort of formal education since 2011, so it’s been a solid 10 years out of school for me. It is no easy thing to go back to school in your 30s. There are people in the program older than me! I don’t know how they manage it.

There was much less to do in my second residency. I did not have the tedium of orientation and learning new systems. I arrived with much of the information I needed already in good order. There were required classes I had already taken, and so I was able to only go to the things that really mattered to me. I was fairly burnt out when I arrived at this residency. I was busy over the summer and needed to rest anyway. My energies were not prepared. There was much napping…