writing for aliens

So, it’s official, I did go to Latvia and Norway which turned out to be great, but very wet. Since then, I moved to colorado and started teaching freshmen english and started graduate school, for the second time.

I’m pretty sure I’ve enrolled in one of the strangest graduate programs ever. People keep asking me how I ended up here, and I honestly can’t remember. I have this vague notion of a coin toss happening in my kitchen in chicago, and suddenly I was driving to wyoming.

Well, over the summer, Wyoming lost its only nonfiction professor (which I hear is actually a good thing—she was supossed to be somewhat terrifying. I guess this isn’t very nice to say, since I only met her once, but regardless, I’m glad.) Well, this said, Wyoming wasn’t able to find anyone in time to teach us nonfiction students, so they decided to fly this big-name really interesting writer in once-a-month (Terry Tempest Williams). Though Terry is fantastic, it’s been very strange taking class from her. The class is labeled, “Writing Workshop”, implying writing and a workshop of people’s work, but essentially we’ve been doing neither. Actually Terry has had to miss class twice, first because she was in prison for a speeding ticket (yes—they actually do that out here), and then last month, because she was coughing up blood. So, all this to say, so far I’ve only had three writing class periods in my whole first semester at Wyoming.

But, even though we didn’t have many writing/lit classes offered, we still had to take a minimum number of credits, so rather by default, I’ve ended up in the graduate economics department. Who knew? I’m at a writing program, but spend most of my time making graphs and learning formulas for economic computer programs. My current econ. class is called the “economics of poverty” which my uncle pointed out is quite a nonsenical title. Nonetheless, it’s surprisingly been quite fantastic, so much so, I might even get a minor in this.

Next semester—get this—the nonfiction workshop is called, “Writing for Extraterrestrials”…. our nonfiction class is writing for aliens. The verdict is still out whether I will take this class, or continue my string of economics, in hopes that another semester very soon, a bit more normal nonfiction class will be offered. Something about aliens just doesn’t seem nonfiction-al to me.