First up, the degree. Do you have any idea how many chumps who want to get an MFA in creative writing enroll in a creative writing MFA program? Like, all of them. Idiots. If you really want to wow the prof. with your creativity, you need some misdirection. You ever notice how all magicians have really hot lady assistants with tremendous racks? Of course you did. What you didn't notice was the magician inserting a tiny plastic barrier into the tank to keep his face separated from the piranhas and the wolf eels. Misdirection.If you really want to blow away your MFA thesis advisor, walk into the room looking confused. Sheepishly answer every question he asks with something non-committal and awkward, if not self-contradictory. Try to exude befuddlement and incompetence. Then, when you're locked into the coursework and the DROP/ADD period has passed, hit him with Big Reveal #1: you're actually a Ph.D candidate in geography, specializing in hydrography and in particular undersea mountain ridges; you just walked into the creative writing classroom by accident and were too mortified by your mistake to leave. With any luck, he'll be so moved by your crippling lack of self-confidence and your determination to succeed in a field you don't even like that he'll go bonkers over your tediously workmanlike story of a man on the verge of 30 going back to school, suddenly feeling old and learning the lesson that, while creative writing is easy, the more difficult and rewarding task is creative living.
Now here's the tricky part. After he's already raved about the thesis, make sure you have his evaluation and the thesis in your hands. Then you hit him with Big Reveal #2: you really are a creative writing master's candidate, and this was all an elaborate lie. See? This is actually creative. Any twit who wants a degree in P.E. can show up in gym shorts and do calisthenics in a P.E. program. You think that makes for an interesting story? It takes real stones and wit to show up to a P.E. program in a wheelchair in order to get a master's in non-Euclidean geometry. If your professor applauds your dynamism, guile and, above all, creativity, then let him grade the thesis again and up your evaluation. If he flips out, you've already got all the papers you'll need in your hands. Don't look back—RUN!But, of course, he didn't do that. Cory took the totally obvious route. Then he wrote a blog post about it. This was mistake number two. Read that title. Go ahead, read it. What's it say? "I Hope All the Other Kids Like My Trapper Keeper." Now read that blog entry. Six-hundred ninety-two words. That's right; I counted. So where's this mistake?
Look, Cory, I got a free tip for you, Mr. Creative Writer. If you start out a story by mentioning a Trapper Keeper and then finish it without saying shit about the Trapper Keeper, your story frickin' blows.Seriously, I clicked on these six paragraphs of "whaaaaah do I really have what it takes to ROCK IT???" navel-gazing blueballs for one reason and one reason only: to find out what was on the goddamn Trapper Keeper, and I get to the end, and there isn't a thing said about it.
Well you know what? Forget it. Anyone who would do that kind of thing to a dude reading his story is someone whose Trapper Keeper I don't want to see. Besides, I already know what kind of Trapper Keeper you'd have. You'd have the lamest one possible. It would fall apart and it wouldn't even hold your official Mary-Kate & Ashley stationery, and the velcro wouldn't even shut. In fact, I'm so convinced that you would, even accidentally, have the gayest-ass Trapper Keeper possible that I can guess with 100% accuracy exactly what style Trapper Keeper you would have for each TV show.
Do you see what this is? Do you see this, Cory? This is me creatively throwing down. There are cattle out there who've been accidentally branded twice whose asses haven't been burned and owned this hard. Seriously, save your money and drop out of that MFA program, because you just got schooled, son.
