What Students Really Say About Farmington


Coming from Honolulu, how did find your way to Farmington, Maine?
I knew I wanted to be in New England and I knew I wanted to go to a writing school. And when I searched the Internet, UMF just kept popping up. All material Admission UMF sent me was so friendly and welcoming. Farmington was one of my top two choices and they ended up offering me the best deal. I also had a great experience when I came to look at the school in person.

So, what were your first impressions?
That it was cold and there was snow everywhere [laughs] still but the people here were just so nice and so welcoming — and so ready to show me what this campus was all about. During my campus visit I even got to sit in on a real class, a Creative Writing class, and I was so impressed. I remember being excited because we reviewed a story and the college students around me were making some of the same comments on the story that I would have and I was thrilled that I felt like I could fit in. I was also surprised the material wasn’t too over my head but at the same time it was challenging and thrilling to be around people who were doing something I’d love to be doing.

How did you come to realize you wanted to stay in New England?
Mostly I just wanted to be near my family but far enough away to feel like I was going away to college. I had never lived in New England for an extended period of time but I had lived in the Pacific and Maryland. I have a lot of family in Massachusetts so I knew I wanted to finally be close to them after living in Hawaii for so long.

Did you come to Farmington as Creative Writing major?
Yes.

What is the UMF Creative Writing program like, what do you like most about it?
I love that it’s based on our writing. It’s very difficult to teach the craft of writing but it works so well when other students bring in their writing and we talk about what works and what doesn’t in each individual piece. I love the workshop sessions and the fact that in almost every class I’m exposed to pieces of writing in progress. You can really see how they evolve and grow and I get feedback from my peers on what works in my pieces and what doesn’t work. It’s so helpful to have a community of editors in every class instead of people teaching us about sentences and metaphors. It is a hands-on experience. Most of the Creative Writing classes are done in a workshop format.

Do you have a favorite class?
At this point, I’m leaning toward Poetry and Nonfiction, not because the other classes haven’t been awesome but because I’m feeling my strengths are in poetry and non fiction essays.

Do you have a favorite professor?
All the professors here are awesome. Gretchen Legler [Professor of Creative Writing] and Pat O’Donnell [Professor of English] have been helpful and wonderful.

What would you like to do with your Creative Writing degree?
I would like to go onto grad school an get my Master’s of Fine Arts in writing but I think I’m going to go into publishing and editing or journalism, depending on how I feel when I start applying. I’d love to get a job at a magazine or at a big publishing company, doing some editing and then eventually working on my own writing work on the side. But a desk job for awhile will be OK.

Do you work on campus or off campus now?
Yes, I work at the campus Writing Center every day and I did work as a researcher last semester with Luanne Yetter [Lecturer in English].

What does she teach?
She teaches journalism, and right now a first year seminar on Bob Dylan.

What did you do as a researcher?
Well, Luanne writes a Maine History Column in the Sun Journal [Maine’s third largest daily newspaper] every two weeks. It was my job to go through the microfilm and microfiche in the library and find stories that would be interesting for her to rehash and rework later. I poured through old newspapers from the Farmington area and printed out whatever was interesting or what I thought could work as a story and tried to organize them in a story, which she could later use in her newspaper column.

Were you successful?
Yeah. In fact, so successful that I worked myself out of a job! [laughs] It was a lot of fun and I got to look at old newspapers — there’s a lot of interesting history in the area.

Did you learn anything interesting?
Yeah, a hundred years ago it seemed everyone had kidney problems and odd medical issues. So many of the old newspaper ads said, “Do you feel your kidneys are not working up to par? Take my elixir!” or “Do you feel your child’s croup is getting out of control?” People were so concerned with health problems, and they didn’t even have the technology to really know.

What do you do for fun here? I understand you’re on the air at WUMF
WUMF is our campus radio station and it is broadcasts within a radius that’s a little bigger than campus but you can tune in online. Anyone on campus can sign up for a weekly two-hour show and play pretty much whatever they want. It’s pretty much two hours of freedom on the air. The station also puts on campus events like live concerts.

What is your show called?
My show, which I do with my friend Emily, is called “Jive Turkey” and it airs live every Saturday, 10am to noon. We play a combo of hip-hop and light morning music.

Do you know if people listen?
Yeah, they do! We have one steady fan who calls in every show. My family listens online, too. Some days it feels nobody listens but sometimes we get 3 or 4 calls during our shift. It’s pretty rewarding.

What do you like about doing it, why give up two hours of your free time?
I like working with the radio station because I’m constantly exposed to new music. And doing a radio show with somebody else is fun. Emily is always bringing in music I’ve never heard of and I’m always bringing in music she has never heard of. It’s a community of sharing music that’s pretty much undiscovered. It’s an amazing forum for music and that’s what I like best about it. But it is kind of hard to get up some Saturday mornings [laughs].

What else about UMF do you like?
I like that it’s small. I know all my professors really well and I know people on campus fairly well. I feel like I’m never afraid to go and ask a professor if I have a question. And because it’s in a quiet area I’m not too distracted -- I can really focus on school work here. There are lots of fun things to do if you look for them, but it’s a nice academic escape up here, which I really like and appreciate. It has been really helpful to my writing to be up here. I can focus better.

That’s an interesting way to describe UMF — an academic escape. What else do you do for fun?
We play intramural floor hockey on the weekends, which is fun. I feel like the friendships I have are really close, we’re always getting together to watch a movie or have a study party. And in the fall you can climb Mount Blue, which is fun; go swimming in the Sandy River. And in the wintertime, we have snowball fights [laughs].

What has your residence hall experience been like?
I got really lucky with my roommate, Eiei. Amazingly, we were paired up randomly and we became really good friends. She is pretty much my best friend and my sister. The building itself, Mallett Hall, has a lot of character. It’s quiet and nice and the people who live there are mature and fun to be with.