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Show 197 The train work was a change of pace from teaching composition at the University of Utah, which I'd been doing the past two years. I was in the sun all day and scarring up my hands picking up railroad ties as well as whatever people discarded on the train tracks. This instead of preparing and delivering lectures, meeting with students, writing letters of recommendation. I was privileged to be teaching, and to be in the program in the first place, and I knew that. I really couldn't complain about anything to do with the University of Utah. I went into the program as by far the least mature one admitted and didn't mature tremendously during my time there. I worked hard and read everything, usually pretty well, but I still had basically the mentality of a seventeen year-old. Once, before workshop, graduate applications were being discussed, and word got around that someone from Utah County had her bishop write one of her letters of recommendation, which essentially said she was a perfectly nice girl. The response to this was alternately mocking and pitying, and it broke my heart for weeks. That girl was one of my people. I didn't want to be on the other end of that. With that, as well as what my mom said and kept saying, I felt a little bit of shame about not having a regular, hard-working job like the rest of the family. In addition to teaching I was a reader for Quarterly West, one of Utah's two literary journals. I read a lot of essays which, like this one, were about being in graduate school. In fact, every other essay seemed to be about either graduate school, or going/moving to New York. I had written essays about both, but was nevertheless getting tired of those topics. I knew a lot of people lived in and traveled to New York, but did that mean every visitor and resident had to publish |
