When you finally complete your thesis project, attending all the courses and pass them, pass your critical paper, you still need to have your thesis approved.

The thesis defenses are open or closed to the public depending on the student's wishes. If open, they present to an audience in one of the lecture halls. The audience is expected to be quiet and not ask questions. After the candidate finishes their twenty minute review of what they learned and how it changed or enriched their thesis, the three advisors each ask one or more questions that the candidate is expected to answer. Not all of the questions had easy answers. Some included, where do you think you will go now, after your degree is finished. Sometimes, the question meant, I really have more work to do. This often seemed to be a good answer because it meant the student intended to continue writing.

What I learned about the thesis defense sessions included:

• the thesis defense sessions aren't threatening
• the questions tended to dig into how the student might continue their work
• the questions sometimes tended to highlight a student's work, i.e. being asked to read a sample
• the questions showed how much organization is needed
• the questions often showed what we (new and continuing) students were likely to have to face in terms of revision, rethinking, clarifying our project, finding what connected the essays, finding what we really wanted to say.
• I expect I will learn a lot more

I have had to think through many of the above when writing my first novels. My first nonfiction book was more straightforward. My memoir will likely have the same need to have different mental frames, time spans, verb tense, and phase of learning in terms of my personal life.

On our way home from the Ashland Residency, my husband and I took a week to visit my sister and explore some of the East coast of the United States. I grew up on the West Coast and much of the East Coast is unfamiliar to me, so that translates as time for travel adventure. We also had the fun of running into old friends moving to the South on our trip, it was fun to have the chance to sit, discuss Boeing, old times and new times.

Even though I travel, I have learned to make use of the long empty interstate stretches and evenings to catch up on my reading for the MFA Program. Following the residency, I had a bunch of new poetry and memoir selections from guest speakers to read and a set of assigned readings for the upcoming semester. We're reading:

• The Situation and the Story: The Art of Personal Narrative by Vivian Gornick
• The Pat Boone Fan Club: My Life as a White Anglo-Saxon Jew by Sue William Silverman
• The Empathy Exams Essays by Leslie Jamison
• Full Body Burden : Growing Up in the Nuclear Shadow of Rocky Flats by Kristen Iversen
• Prairie Silence: A Memoir by Melanie Hoffert
• I selected Fourth Genre: Contemporary Writer's of/on Creative Nonfiction by Robert L. Root Jr. and Michael Steinberg as my optional book because I felt I wanted a better understanding of essay as opposed to memoir (we were told the percentage of narrative played a large part in the definition) as well as a look at some of the variations along the way.

I've completed a first reading of the above books except for the last. I like to reread along with the class curriculum because I find it makes me pay more careful attention and allows me to find the needed references to class discussion questions because I already have a familiarity with the book outline and don't have to rush to finish at the expense of the work.

Besides the reading and cleaning my house so that I now have my reading separated into genre piles and shelves, I have also taken on two new volunteer duties in addition to my upcoming aid to an Earthwatch.org project to help with a global warming study, one as a reader for a contest, the other as a teacher for my church catechism. 

I also have a good idea about how I am going to frame my memoir. Framing, I learned in the residency, is what they call the story line as it varies in time and perspective despite having a single narrator. Although the narration will be by me, the story alters during the twenty year time of events as I age, but also as a result of this project and as a result of lessons learned. Some of what alters when selecting a frame, is verb tense, maturity of voice, time, as well as what is driving the project.

I was given a bit of critique flak because of one scene written as a six-year-old, and one as a twenty year old without any framing. At six-years-old, I often just repeated what I had been told without understanding how it might be viewed, especially in modern times. Our family changed many things down the road of life including how my parents disciplined children, roles and responsibilities and diet.

Bonnie Rough very helpfully provided an introductory set of questions to be answered.

Before my idea about how to frame the memoir, I had developed a list of "situations" or "scenes" that I felt were important to cover in the overall story line. I've worked at drafting the situations and at writing attempts at the frames. I heard loudly what readers liked and disliked. I do stubbornly maintain my view of the style of memoir, one with a future look upon it which I have seen used in writing, and my need to have my perspective for the project grounded in research, although the style is something I am going to have to experiment with along the way. In the residency, I did my book report on Da Chen's "Colors of the Mountain" and just doing that based on my earlier reading assignments I found that I hadn't grounded the book in our family. I didn't really want to write about my family so much as the situation we were all involved in, but I can see that without doing a gossip columnist shark attack on all members of my family (I think this has to be the nightmare all writer's face when considering writing memoir), I could still introduce them in such a way that people could see the complexity of their personae and the dynamics within a family, all which had effects on the outcome of the situation.

I especially liked the rich style of essay/memory Steven Harvey used in one of his pieces we read about his mother. I am not quite certain I am up to that level of writing, but maybe. I do have a slightly different tangent because I very much want to write something helpful, useful, upbeat, even if the topic is quite sad and downbeat. I don't want a chirpy voice that says I've got rose-colored glasses.

I had already started many of my situations as essays and when I discussed it with Bonnie Rough and Kate Hopper, they both indicated that "situations" could be within short essays and reframed into our final project/memoir.

So that brings me back to the need to submit my work. I quit submitting until I was firmly into a writing program that I felt comfortable with, and now that I have done much of the spit and polish sort of requirements I should have the next two weeks for writing, editing and submitting. Wish me luck.

My first residency has ended at Ashland University. I am now recovering. Why? Were we overworked? No. Maybe overstimulated, the pace of the residency was busy but allowed for time for writing, reading, rest, exercise, fun, decompression and lots of learning.

I flew into Cleveland, Ohio airport, rented a car, drove to Ashland by way of the Cuyahoga River National Park in Cleveland (many portions of the area are shared with Cleveland Parks) and arrived just in time to check in. You could spend days in this park and still find things to do. My favorite was Deer Lick Cave (see the photograph).

Then I locked my key in my room requiring a call to security to let me back in. After repeating that stunt, I learned to carry my keys around my neck and never forget it.

I signed up for a room in Andrews Hall, a double person dorm room that I shared by myself. This room was perfectly fine, exactly as advertised and had a sole occupant, but I found it terribly claustrophobic despite the bouquet of flowers I bought to cheer the place up. My husband arrived after a week and used the time to rescue me to the Quality Inn and to visit his sister and see some of the sights.

Our residency schedule had us in workshops in the morning from 9-11:45, but I often woke up at 6 a.m. because for some reason I felt I could write at this time. The showers down the hall were perfectly fine, the young dormers fun to watch (once there were five young men nestled in sleeping bags in the tv room having a movie party). See below my morning breakfast in our workshop setting, pretty rough, huh?

Then we dashed to lunch (I bought the lunch meal ticket) which was often hectic due to the number of summer camp students also dining. We all got fed but it was tight. See the entrance to the dining room above.

After lunch, we had a craft session with the guest speaker from the night before. Afterwards, there were either student defense sessions we could attend, or I could retreat to the tables near the coke machine and quietly pay attention to my reading and writing  or to take a nap (needed during my first week since I felt terribly exhausted).

Before dinner, there were a couple of bar outings to have wine and relax--I usually skipped these since I don't imbibe much. Dinner was usually good but I often just ate salad and fruit or just skipped it or rushed out to Wendy's or Dairy Queen to top up my sugar level and belief that there was a world outside of me. 

At seven we returned to hear a guest reading that would last sometimes to 9 or later. Below is the smaller lecture hall where they held some of the thesis defense sessions.

I managed to attend all sessions but the Orientation which I forgot somehow and to get all my homework in on time and to contribute to the discussions.

My workshops were with Kate Hopper the first week and Bonnie Rough during the second week.

I loved the campus which was small, had really wonderfully comfortable facilities and beautiful gardens. I signed up for the athletic pass to use the huge swimming pool but felt overwhelmed enough to never feel I could slip away. I'll add photos to this when I get home.

The funny thing is, I was a Lindbergh Eagle in high school, now I am an Ashland Eagle: