Notes for Fellow Travelers: Advice for Fordham English Majors
We asked our graduating Creative Writing Concentration seniors for their best advice for Fordham English Majors. Here are their wise words….
Write every day. Everyone says it, and we all hear it and get motivated for a couple of days and then forget, but seriously, just write something. Write about how much you hate writing. You'd be shocked at how productive and cathartic it can be to just admit that sometimes writing sucks and we don't want to do it. Do it anyway. Do not, under any circumstances, equate your worth with your writing on any given day. Sometimes you suck, and that's genuinely okay. It's kind of fun. Become friends with your bad writing. Find victory in writing word vomit so awful and crazy that literally no one but you could comprehend it. It feels like a weirdly exciting act of rebellion. If college has taught me nothing else, it's that writing something really bad is ten steps closer to writing something really good than the alternative-- writing nothing at all.
~ Kasey Carlton, https://www.kaseycarlton.com/
I wasted so much time doubting myself. When I'd create things, I'd worry I was too "weird" or waste time trying to stifle my voice so that it would turn out to be what I assumed was more palatable for or desired by a general audience. If you find that you do this too, snap out of it (I say kindly and jokingly... but seriously)! You are capable of so much more than you know, if only you trust yourself. This is vague, not to mention scary (and also I'm only just graduating college, so what do I know?). Well, what I lack in experience, I make up for in knowing myself and how I feel and how trusting and being true to myself has affected people around me. You can bring people so much joy by being open and honest and by not shying away from what may make you different. I feel happy when I make myself laugh, and if it makes other people laugh or feel happy, that's an added bonus. Whatever you do, whatever your goals are, do it for yourself, do what will bring you joy or make you proud, and do a lot of it. If other people like it along the way, then that's just icing on the cake.
~ Maddy Casale, https://www.maddycasale.com/
Connect with your professors.
Connect even more with your peers.
Have a side hustle you foster, grow and love: that you pour your energy into outside of class – so even if you’re not satisfied with your academic experience, you have something you’re proud of regardless.
INTERNSHIPS – get one. Get several. Not only do internships grow into jobs, much of the time – they will teach you what you do or do not like about the industry!
Buy ‘Designing Your Life’ as soon as possible and read it. Study informational interviewing get on LinkedIn and have at it. DO. NOT. WAIT. UNTIL. YOUR. GRADUATING. SEMESTER.
Don’t be afraid to network with strangers. If you can, allow yourself to be an extrovert when you need to be.
Learn to (really) love yourself regardless of where you are compared to others. Teach yourself to enjoy and appreciate the journey, the company you’re in, and your daily experiences. This will improve your work ethic and your creative expression.
You get what you put into it: that is, there’s no magic major or class that will guarantee you a job. It’s you and your ability to sell yourself. Experience is more important than grades – unless you’re focused on grad school – so not putting yourself out there ‘to focus on your studies’ is the stupidest thing you could do. Take ONE semester to adjust. 1 semester to loaf, be confused, and get your feet under you – then go get it!
~ Melanie Corinne, https://www.melaniecorinne.com/
Find your people. Find people who have the same niche interests as you -- both in real-life and through the screen! I started a Twitter group chat with a handful of bloggers that I met up with at BookExpo every year, and now we talk every day about everything from our writing to new book releases to Animal Crossing. There’s no better feeling than being with a group of people that just *get* you.
Find your community. Follow Twitter accounts, Instagram accounts, and Facebook pages for the things you’re passionate about. Get involved in those communities and participate often.
Pick up a passion project. I started my book review blog for fun just because talking about books was one of my favorite hobbies, and now it’s my career! You never know where passion projects can lead you.
Chase your dreams, and don’t ever stop going after them. It’s okay to also focus on your career -- my dream is to be a bestselling rom-com novelist, but I’m also really focused on my future publicist career. It’s okay to work hard at your career at the same time that you’re chasing your dreams -- just make sure to find a healthy balance!
Write every day, but don’t pressure yourself. You don’t have to worry about doing perfect writing every single day. Just get your words down on the page. Even if it’s only an extra sentence or two in your manuscript or screenplay. That’s more than enough to qualify for success for the day.
~ Jessica Cozzi, http://www.jessicalcozzi.com
Don’t be afraid to be a bad writer. When you’re writing your first draft, be it of a novel, a poem, or an academic paper, make getting your thoughts and ideas on the paper the priority. You can always revise the style later. This is something that took me a long time to understand, and to be honest, I still have trouble with it! But focusing too much on how your writing comes across to your reader, on whether or not your writing is “good”, will strip your writing of the raw honesty that comes from just writing what you want to write, no holds barred. Once I started focusing on the content of my writing rather than the amount of literary devices I could fit into one sentence, my writing felt much more real. Something I’ve learned this semester in my capstone course is that you should write not only for the finished product, but especially for the act of writing itself. Keeping this in mind has helped my writing feel much more personal and liberating to me, and reminded me of why I fell in love with writing in the first place.
~ Gabby Curran, https://www.gabbycurran.com/
Sort of as an accident, I developed a deep appreciation for T.S. Eliot at the same time as I went through my time at Fordham. This is also the time when I decided that I’m a poet. Now I’m graduating during the coronapocalypse and set to begin an MFA program in the fall. I don’t really think I can wrap my head around my time at Fordham, but I can say that right now feels a lot like Eliot’s poem 'East Coker', which talks about waiting in darkness and the mind being conscious of nothingness. Trust your literary obsessions. They give voice to your inmost preoccupations, and those preoccupations will be with you in your moments of waiting and confusion and buried richness, like right now, and probably like the post-coronavirus future that awaits us, with its apocalyptic living memory. I love poetry, and I love it because I think it contains an abyss of meaning that we, as readers and writers, can experience, and I think that that makes life worthwhile. I am not the person I was when I was a freshman; I think that’s true for all seniors. Life is an odd journey, and our favorite writers can accompany us on that journey
~ Zachary Erickson, https://www.zakerickson.com/
You receive from this community what you put into it. I know that it isn’t always easy to give of yourself. Yet the opportunities I had to push myself to take on often became my most valuable experiences at Fordham. Trust the process of growth, because even if you feel unsure of yourself now, your commitment will change you for the better.
I advise you to immerse yourself in the life of the department and our community of writers: reply to that post, attend that event, launch that initiative. With Mighty Networks, it’s easier than ever to become an active member and even a leader in our community. Don’t be scared to engage with your fellow writers, because, as High School Musical taught us, we’re all in this together.
Finally, it’s in challenging times like these that we have the opportunity to make a real difference. Think about what you can do to build community, even through a computer screen. And I can’t stress this enough: go to as many Mighty Networks events as you can, because you never know what you might learn!
~ Hannah Gonzalez, https://www.hannahgonzalez.com/
Enjoy your time as a college student as much as you can and use all the university's resources to better understand what your skills are. Spend time with people who seem different from you, open yourself up to more people other than your close friends. Talk to your classmates and professors about their careers, a lot of them have lived interesting lives and can offer great advice. Get at least one internship in your field of interest. Figure out what you like to do, join clubs that catch or build on your interests. Use the school's clubs to express yourself as much as you can, figure out what you like to do: write for the RAM, act in a play at FET, get a job at the ram van, do something more than your homework
~ Daniel McBride, https://www.dannycharliemcbride.com
A lot of people worry about "what do people like" or "what's popular" or "who's my audience," and I've always found those questions to be incredibly draining. The way I see it, the best way to write is something that you're passionate about, that you enjoy. If you're writing because you think it'll be successful instead or writing something you love, it's going to be a chore, a drag, and an all around awful experience. Write something that you wish existed, or just a story that you've always loved thinking about it. If you care about the project, then the passion comes through, and the readers will feel it.
~ Ann Pekata, http://annpekata.com/
Go easy on yourself and allow yourself the space to make mistakes. If you can be anything to yourself, be forgiving and kind.
Grades are important but they also aren’t, in the grand scheme of things, and they certainly don’t determine your self-worth. Don’t let something that isn’t going to matter a couple months (or even a couple weeks) from now overwhelm you or change the way you think about yourself.
Take walks, go to museums, eat in restaurants by yourself. See/try everything that interests you and don’t wait for someone else to go with. Don’t wait, period. You never know when a global pandemic is going to happen.
Go to office hours and/or talk to your professors outside of class.
Study abroad! It’s the best thing I did at Fordham.
When things feel tough, listen to Frank Ocean. He will always understand.
~ Deirdre Reed, https://www.deirdrereed.com/