I wanted to go to grad school in philosophy... Nobody was like, 'You should!' You know, they were all like, 'you could?'
I wanted to go to grad school for philosophy, but I couldn't hack it in college, at least I couldn't at that level.
I think, overall, there is a lack of diversity in the arts. I'm thinking about when I was in grad school: I could probably count on one hand the number of minority students in the graduate school program.
My brother is an electrical engineer and went to computer science grad school at Stanford, and he'd tell me stories about the happy hours he'd organize.
When I started binge-watching TV, when that became a thing due to Netflix a few years ago, the first thing I watched was 'Lost.' It was summer break from grad school, and I watched it all in a row, like as many hours a day as I could, as though I were clocking in at a job.
I went to grad school in San Francisco, and then left for New York City with my eye on Broadway. I had saved $5000, which seemed like a lot of money in my mind... until I realized it was going to take $2500 to get to New York and then the first and last month's rent.
I spent many years in college studying English literature. I was on the verge of attending grad school to get a Ph.D. in Renaissance poetry - my lost careers were being a writer, artist, or academic. Do I regret spending all that time poring over Shakespeare when I could have been getting a jump start on the competition? Not at all.
When I was in grad school, I wrote one early story that was Vegas, and then I stayed away from it. I was trying to expand and do different things. I knew I would write about it, but I stayed away for as long as I could.
I grew up in Washington State and then eventually found my way back to Iowa City for grad school.
When I say that I went to grad school in Iowa City, people often assume that I went to the famed writers' workshop MFA program at the University of Iowa. I didn't. I got a master's in journalism.
