New Mexico State University, Department of English

Reviewer's Name:

Jill Stuke

Review Date

April 22, 2009

Year of Graduation:

2004

Review Title:

learn to live the life

Full Review of the Program:

I’m going to admit that when an undergrad. prof first recommended the NMSU MFA program to me, I was excited about the writers who taught there but hesitant about what seemed to me to be the program’s nowhereness and lack of name. I wanted to write, but I was also worried about “where I would end up” with such a degree. (Oh—and so were my parents.) Since graduating from the NMSU program that thought was the last stupid one ever to pop into my head, if even briefly, on any subject. Really. Okay, not really.

After graduating, I stayed in Las Cruces for two more years, teaching at the community college, waiting tables in a wild-west-themed restaurant, attending the readings, taking more classes even though I’d finished the degree—oh, and writing. Now, five years out, I’m living in the Pacific Northwest, teaching community college writing classes (yes—as an adjunct, but with benefits, relative security, opportunities to teach creative writing and lit classes, and some possibility of someday turning “full-time”), participating in the local literary scene—and writing. My best friends are still those whom I met in the program; there are five of us who see each other regularly here in Portland. Two of us live together in our sunny (today) apartment, attending, with love, our biting cat.

Advice to Prospective Students:

live in Mesilla; get a passport for bus trips into Mexico; read for Puerto; get a bike and camping gear; swim in the amazing, Olympic-sized outdoor pool on campus, even in January; find Chopes and the Adobe Deli.