A Quote by John D'Agata
As frustrating as my time in grad school felt, it also helped tremendously because it challenged me to figure out what it was I thought I wanted.
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I remember getting out of grad school and coming to New York and not wanting to get a teaching job because I wanted to work on my own, to develop my own ideas. There isn't that time now. Artists are exhibiting while they are still in grad school. There isn't that safety cushion.
I had a tough time fitting in, as I guess most kids do. I felt like school was kind of a grand opportunity to figure yourself out and to figure out what you wanted.
I think my parents wanted me to be whatever I wanted to be. But I do remember them - when I first moved out to L.A. - sending me applications to grad school for teaching.
When I was younger, I never wanted to rehearse because I thought that someone would figure out I don't know what I'm doing. Now I like to really spend the time and figure it out, and rehearsal is to try something that doesn't work.
I was about 14 and I was having a lot of problems with my mom at home, and she really wanted me to focus on school and basketball. But music was all I wanted to do. I felt out of time and out of step with everyone, because they were all into hip-hop and I was so into Sly Stone and Prince.
I started school because I felt like, as a songwriter, I was operating solely on instinct, and I was having a hard time deciding exactly what words I wanted to use. I felt like I wanted to be a writer, and being a curious person, school felt like a way to solve the problems I was having with my own work.
Being in New York and having worked at Time Out New York and then being at Time, living in New York for a long time has helped because I know everybody. And they're the people who call me and give me jobs. So that kind of real networking, which is just living in a place and having jobs where people around you are extremely successful, has helped me tremendously.
I thought that I wasn't an essayist because I just didn't see myself in a lot of the essays that were popular at the time. That's why I joined the poetry program in grad school.
I graduated college in 2010, I thought I'd go to grad school then and I was accepted under a different program and I ended up moving away and pursuing fighting instead of graduate school, but I knew I always wanted to do it.
Going into a new school, you don't want to be the new kid and be quiet and shy. You want to stand out. You want people to know who you are in that school. I think that also helped me growing up. I always wanted people to know me throughout the school.
I'm incredibly flattered when people tell me that my books helped them through high school. Because of my own experience, the thought that something I wrote might help someone who felt the way I did when I was a teen...that's huge. It awes me.
One of the reasons why I went to the Yale School of Drama is because I felt that I was acting off of instinct, but sometimes that is not reliable. When you're not feeling it, what do you do? So, going to grad school was about getting the tools to just use my instrument to the best of my ability.
When I was growing up they didn't want me to do it because my mother was a teacher - they wanted me to go to school. But I love football and wanted to play - they wanted to stop me but couldn't. They wouldn't allow me to play out after school but I went out anyway. Maybe I lost a bit of focus on my studies.
I felt a little lost as a student. At Iowa, I felt as if I had gotten into this program that was going to save me, and so I moved myself across the country for grad school and yet still didn't have a home. It was upsetting. And I know that's a common feeling.
The editing process, for me, is both the most fun and the most frustrating. It's the most fun because you get to see it actually piece together. But if one thing is off, it can be frustrating trying to figure out exactly what it is that's bumping you, so you try a hundred different things.
When I got out of high school, I thought, 'I'll take a year or two off and play the clubs, get this out of my system, and then go to med school.' More than 40 years later, I figure it's finally time to write about this crazy journey that's taken me around the world and back.
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