A few weeks ago, I got an acceptance letter from The Center for Cartoon Studies. This fall, I will start their MFA program. I couldn’t be happier. Last summer I visited three different grad schools and browsed the websites of many more. The first two I toured I though had really cool programs and interesting ways of doing at things, and I remember going back to the house where we were staying and lamenting that all of them were interesting, but none of them was quite what I really wanted, and how in the world was I ever going to be able to make a decision?
Well. I visited The Center for Cartoon Studies a few days later. I wasn’t hugely excited going in because they were just one of many schools on my list and I was still unhappy that I hadn’t been blown away by the other perfectly awesome schools I’d visited. I felt unsure about what I wanted to do with my life and where I wanted to go. I was very grumpy about the prospect of graduating from college, because I loved college and I wasn’t ready to leave. I figured that this tour would continue to give me more options and difficult decisions, complicating without clarifying my choices. I was wrong.
I fell in love with that school then and there. It became the top choice, to the extent that I applied nowhere else. I spent months working on my application essay, debating what to put in my portfolio and pushing my drawing skills before embarking on the application comic. I tried not get my hopes too high while still expressing my excitement and enthusiasm to anyone who asked. They have a small class size, and who wouldn’t want to get their masters drawing cartoons at such an amazing school? I’ve been rejected before. I will be rejected again. But this time…
I was accepted.
I will be spending the next two years drawing cartoons, reading comics, reading about comics, talking about comics and storytelling and art and publication methods. I’m going to have classes on live drawing, on the language of comics, on print methods and internet publishing. I will listen to guest speakers, I will hone my craft, and I will continue to focus my life on storytelling.
In the meantime, I’ve got a summer job working at a small town shop/hangout, I’ve got website updates I plan to make, I’ve got stories I want to start on, at least one house to move, packing to do, an apartment to find, weddings to attend, books to read, games to play, guitar to practice, people to visit, a laptop to replace and more. It could be a busy summer. It will be an exciting fall.