Not going back to Maine Media MFA and might not attend anymore workshops there. One student canidate offended me by saying the program wasn’t for me. I protested, the program, at least the program described in the materials, was for me; the one which I audited, which the person attended, without, of course, presenting any work, wasn’t. Bummer.
The last night, the members of the program went out to celebrate at a bar. Seemed like more of a ritual than a festivity. Word got back that three members of the faculty had quit. Not a good thing to happen while you await accreditation. Who remains on the teaching staff, I don’t know, but the three who left seemed to be among the most accomplished.
I waited around too long. Should have left after the academic discussion during which it became apparent few had read the assignment and, if anyone did, they weren’t, except for one or two, among the people who spoke. I am not sure the faculty member who led the discussion understood the writing; he was more interested in talking about himself and the poetry part or the reading, which we never got to because he didn’t facilitate much. Only reason I stayed was to touch the faculty. Not worth the effort.
So, Arno quit. I met with him. Asked what he would bring to me if I attended, he said, “I would give you honesty.” He didn’t tell me he would be leaving. I met with Elizabeth. She told me she didn’t see the things I saw in my pictures. She cut off the interview in mid image, a serious dis, to talk to someone else. She didn’t want to download a study I had done into her Lightroom. She was completely dismissive and negative. I posited a few ideas for academic study which I didn’t have properly translated into MFA speak. Those are undergraduate subjects, not MFA topics.” This is after a discussion during a defense of a master’s dissertation the day before where the faculty got into a discussion about whether the requirements for the paper should be relaxed, eased enough to allow for the substitution of poetry for paragraphs. And it was after people presented papers and then discussed them, asking for questions without providing copies for the group to read ahead of time, as if anyone would have read them. Elizabeth said it was because the papers were not received in time to copy.
Jan seemed interested, for a second or two. He asked me to bring some graphic design work, then never asked for it. Jan liked my work, at least some of it. He suggested that I didn’t fit into an MFA program mentality. How did he know? Never looked at my resume or asked any probing questions.
Can you write another post about this subject due to the fact that this article was a bit tricky to fully grasp?
Not sure what I said that wasn’t clear. I came back disappointed with the experience. In theory, the program has great goals. No other limited residency like it for photography. Thought that the faculty carried some gravitas. Thought group dynamic would heighten experience. In reality, faculty not up to the level experienced at workshops and neither was the group. Works much too centered on quests to find oneself; critical analysis aimed more at keeping the candidates enrolled than enhancing their work. No way to know what academic pieces contained because none of the works had been distributed before hand. Works were shown which were not completed, parts of aborted projects, and others were incomplete, not to mention not done.
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