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This week I was thinking about how much I love teaching college. My students are great (for the most part!), and they really teach me so much. In one of my classes, my students write narrative essays. Last week I received a handful of essays and the majority of them brought tears to my eyes. I had a woman who had been raped; an older woman who spent her childhood moving from place to place, not knowing where she was going to live next; a woman who had lost her first child; and a guy who had fought in Desert Storm. All of these stories touched me, many of them breaking my heart.

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Often we don’t realize what people have been through in their lives. We come and go, and sometimes we are too busy to care. All of us, though, have stories to tell. Things that have happened to us and have shaped us. We should take more time to listen.

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I’d like to start posting some of those stories. They’re too important not to share. So hopefully, that will be something I can blog more often.

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This blog is for my students. Thank you for the inspiration you are to me. Not only have you been through highs and lows in your lives, but now you’re taking a challenging journey to reach your goals of a college degree, and you have dreams before you that you hope to accomplish.

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Keep pressing on. The journey is worth it.

Sandi

I feel my blogging (and lack thereof) is like my journal writing. About once every six months I pick up my journal and know I need to write in it more . But that doesn’t happen. I’ve come to terms that I’m an occasional blogger for now. Maybe someday I’ll get better at it.

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I was (pleasantly) surprised to see that I semi-finaled in the #YALitChat and Sourcebooks contest (http://georgiamcbridebooks.wordpress.com/ — See the March 3^rd post). I won’t find out until the end of March if I finaled, but it was nice to get that far.

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Soooooo that leads me to plug the YALitChat ning. It’s an awesome community, full of a wealth of information for YA writers. If you’re writing YA, I would highly recommend you join it. Here’s the link: http://yalitchat.ning.com/

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Happy week!
Sandi

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The world of publishing has got me super depressed right now. Nothing was happening with my novel, so my agent and I parted ways. It’s hard when you’ve worked for over a year with someone, feeling like it’s going to get you to that next step and then it doesn’t work out. I went into writing with the misconception that once you get an agent your career will take off. It isn’t so. (And I appreciate all the people I’ve met online the last few months who have been happy to share their several agent experiences with me so I won’t feel so alone…I’ve only had one…some have racked up several).

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So now here I am again, trying to find another agent in a market that is super competitive and is especially prone to take on anything that walks and breathes paranormal (which I don’t write).

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Any advice on how to keep pushing along even through these times of rejection that I seem to attract these days would be greatly appreciated.

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In more positive news about me… (BTW, I usually don’t go on and on about myself, so you’ll have to forgive my one self-indulgent blog)…I am considering applying to a PhD program. I’ve always loved school and research, and I’ve talked for years about going all the way (HA! that sounded funny!). But I haven’t had the time, money, whatever, fill in the blank. But since my husband is a few months away from finishing his master’s, I’m thinking about it again. In another week I’m going to a seminar on taking the GRE, and I’m ordering some GRE study books. I’m a horrible test-taker, so I most fear the GRE.

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The goal would be to take the dreaded test, and then apply to programs. But the two top programs I am interested in are a little ways away from home. One is the PhD in Creative Writing at Texas Tech, and the other is a PhD in Children’s Literature at the University of Florida. I’ve looked at a few general English ones in Arizona and California, and also online, but they don’t interest me as much. But I’m not sure if I want to up and move my family across the country for three to four years.

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Anyone know any pros/cons to getting such a degree (besides being able to teach full time at the university level)?

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So much to think about.

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Hope you have created some of your own goals this year, especially for reading and writing. I’d love to hear them. I don’t get a lot of comments on my blog, but I love hearing from you all, including my students (and now you know your teacher does not have a perfect life!).

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Have a great weekend!

Sandi