What was your experience like as an Honors student at La Sierra? Did Honors help you with your graduate school applications or your career prospects?
My favorite thing about being an Honors student was having my own dorm room in South Hall! Just kidding. That perk really helped with my real favorite thing, which was the requirement to produce an Honors thesis. In that quiet, cozy dorm room, I wrote and revised that thesis, a middle grade novel entitled AND THE BLACKBIRDS MOCK. I used a portion of that manuscript to apply to the Master of Fine Arts in Writing for Children and Young Adults program at Vermont College of Fine Arts (VCFA). I got into that program and graduated in January of 2017, so I have the Honors Program, as well as the fantastic English department at La Sierra, to thank for that.
Another Honors highlight was the Changing Communities course, which gave me the reason and support to run a program called The Holbrook Sisters with Native girls at Holbrook Indian School in Holbrook, Arizona. Our Honors group traveled to the area several times to visit the Navajo Nation, run vespers and Sabbath programs for the girls of Holbrook, and spend time getting to know the kids and hearing their stories.
I think the neatest thing about the program is its focus on giving students a well-rounded and deep-thinking college experience—I learned about the nuances and technicalities of dance and music and painting in Dr. Rodriguez’s The Arts course and pondered the effects of human mistreatment of the environment in Dr. Kohlmeier and Dr. Wilson’s Science and the Future class. There’s a thread of the humanities and the arts running through all the Honors courses, and I think that’s a really important quality—humanity, empathy—that graduating students can take with them to any career.
What has your career experience been like since leaving La Sierra?
It’s been all over the place. First, I applied to grad schools and ended up getting into a low-residency program in Vermont, which meant that I was able to do most of my work at home and travel to Montpelier, VT, twice a year for ten-day residencies. (While at Vermont College of Fine Arts I had the very special experience of getting to hear Katherine Paterson read the end of Bridge to Terabithia out loud.) After each residency ended, a new semester began.
During my four semesters, I worked closely with four published authors—Susan Fletcher, Tim Wynne-Jones, Kekla Magoon, and An Na—and wrote one full new manuscript plus another manuscript that I ended up scrapping. But I learned so much in writing it! The MFA program requires both a creative and critical thesis, so the Honors Program thesis requirement helped me feel ready for those.
While in the second year of my MFA, I taught part-time at an Adventist school in Oklahoma. I taught everything from pre-K through 12th grade, in subjects ranging from PE and gymnastics to Spanish and English. I was waking up at 3:15 in the morning to do my work for my MFA and then leaving for work at the school by 8 am. It was crazy. And I decided it was too crazy to keep up, especially because I got pregnant during that year and made the decision to stay home the following year with my son. So I finished out the school year and then spent the summer getting ready for my baby. But I also decided that after the first months of his life, I would query literary agents in hopes of finally getting one to represent my work to editors and manage my writing career.
So I wrote a query letter that I would later adjust acording to each agent’s requirements. Then, after I recovered from birth and got my bearings again, I started sending letters out. I queried about 25 agents and was rejected 24 times. In December of 2016, I received a full manuscript request from agent Danielle Chiotti of Upstart Crow Literary for what had been my creative thesis at VCFA, a middle grade novel called LUCY RUNNING. She ultimately rejected that novel but invited me to send anything else I had. So I sent her AND THE BLACKBIRDS MOCK, and in March of 2017 she signed me on to be her client. I was actually teaching a high school English class by then, as well as working part-time as the secretary for my church—and my son came with me to both those jobs.
Let me just say this: as far as workplace environments go, there is nothing more stressful and difficult than trying to teach a class or run a church office while also attempting to keep a seven-month-old baby happy. I will never do it again! While I was doing that ridiculously hard juggling act, I found the agent, which has been a dream of mine for a while. I decided to pare down my responsibilities so that I was only focusing on the things close to my heart: writing and mothering. I quit the job as church secretary, finished out the school year, and then moved to Alaska for my husband’s new job. I am now able to stay home with my son full time, and I’m very grateful for the opportunity.
In the last ten months, I have rewritten AND THE BLACKBIRDS MOCK twice and revised it once. Danielle is an amazing editorial agent who sends me pages of notes and in-text comments each time I send her a version of my manuscript. She thinks we’re close to going out on submission with BLACKBIRD—hopefully just a round of line edits and we’ll be querying editors at publishing houses.
So right now, my career looks like caring for my energetic eighteen-month-old son all day and working on a new young adult project while he naps and after he goes to bed at night. Because I’m waiting to hear back from my agent right now, I have time to read. I had to read ten books a month in my MFA program, and while I can’t possibly keep up with that number right now, I do love to read when I’m not writing. I read a lot of middle grade and young adult books because I like to keep current in my field, but I also love to explore nonfiction and adult fiction titles. I just finished Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder by Caroline Fraser and it was amazing to see the historical, political, and personal background behind the Little House books.
How have your goals changed since you started college? Since you graduated college?
When I started at La Sierra in 2010, I wanted to be a speech therapist. I figured it combined my love of reading and English with a profitable career. But I chose to switch my major to English after realizing that I was the only student in Dr. Joseph’s Anatomy and Physiology class who couldn’t stand to be in the cadaver room and had to use plastic body parts on my exams. He asked me why I was in the class (in a nice way) and I said I didn’t know! I took a hard look at all the science and math classes I would have to take in order to be a speech therapist and decided to switch to a humanities major: English with an emphasis in literature.
I would probably be teaching high school English or Spanish at an SDA academy or teaching writing at a local community college if I weren’t caring for my son, but I’m so grateful that I get to stay home with him because I still have mental energy left to write at the end of the day. Like writing, teaching is also a creative profession and even though it’s a lot of fun, it drains creative energy.
Now my goal is to become a published author who has a long and happy writing career. I want to be able to stay home with my son and any future kids, and then by the time they’re in school be making enough as a writer that I can stay home and write all day and then pick them up from school and be present and involved as a mother from then until bedtime, after which I will cozy up on the couch with a cup of coffee and a book. I’d also love to have enough income to travel to places I want to use as settings in my books. Teaching might lurk somewhere in the future, too, but for now my focus is really on writing and mothering.
What advice would you give to current Honors students in arts and humanities?
Keep doing what you love. Study hard, and also make time for friends and music and baking or whatever else you enjoy. Know that it can be tempting to want to pursue a major that will bring you a higher income, but more money doesn’t mean you will love that career. Once you graduate, know that as an artist you might have to work a day job and make your art at night or early in the morning until you find your way in your field. Also, teaching is not the only option for a humanities major, but it’s a fun, challenging, and rewarding one that can bring you lots of strong relationships with coworkers and students.
One last thing: don’t overwork yourself. You might have to learn that lesson on your own because I apparently didn’t learn it the first time I burned out. It’s easy to get sucked into the idea that, because you’re a recent grad and a new hire, you need to give your whole self to your job. You don’t! If you do, you will burn out before the year is over. So make sure you do your best work but also form boundaries that keep your personal life and mental health intact.
What is the best advice that you received as a student?
To work my hardest in all my classes and not worry too much about letter grades. That’s pretty hard to do, especially if you’re an Honors student, but I valued that advice. It gave me the freedom to want to learn without stressing about earning straight A grades, and I ended up learning a ton. I read every single book and chapter of a textbook I was ever assigned, studied long before each exam I took, drafted research papers weeks before their due dates. The good grades came naturally as a result of all that, and ultimately I built lasting relationships with professors and did work of which I was proud.