The Carousel Never Stops Turning

     Lately, I can’t stop thinking about the following quote from my favorite guilty pleasure TV show, Grey’s Anatomy: “The carousel never stops turning. You can’t get off.” This line plays in the back of my head on repeat. We are in the middle of a pandemic and we have resumed our daily routines, or at least tried to do so. Some of us are working from home on a computer, while others have gone back to their workplace. While I find it comforting to keep busy with my work, I know that this has been difficult for a lot of people who have lost family members or gotten sick. It never stops. There is no time to heal. There is no time to pause. Keep writing. Keep working. Keep producing. One of my classmates wrote about this pressure to be productive in one of her pieces lately, and it struck me. My identity has always been so tied to productivity, and I do not know how to turn it off sometimes. Life just keeps going, and it doesn’t stop for anyone, which is simultaneously comforting and unnerving.

Starting an MFA program in the middle of COVID-19 has been quite the experience. As an instructor, I am teaching ENC 1101 fully remote, which frees up time to work and write from the comfort of my home, since I don’t have to commute. Unfortunately, it also means that most of the time I am teaching to blank squares on Zoom, which makes it hard to gauge if any of my students are even present. I can’t wait to teach a hybrid course in the spring and see some of my students in real life. Can you imagine?

As a student, I spend most of my days reading online articles, books, and discussion posts from a computer screen, which means that by the end of the day, my eyes are fried to a crisp. I find myself having to take walks every now and then to refresh my eyesight. I print as many articles as I can so that my eyes can enjoy the sight of real paper. I have also taken up the art of journaling once again. I cannot wait until we are taking creative writing classes in real life again, sitting in a circle and talking about literature and poetry with books in hand.

My main challenge as an MFA student right now stems from the question that haunts me every time I sit in front of the keyboard: what the fuck is the point of writing my stories when the world is going to shit? Well, the point is to tell our stories as best we can because they are now more important than ever, and we must demand that they are heard. This is only my first semester at FAU, and the program is already paying for itself; I have begun writing essays that I had been putting off for years. I have met classmates and staff that make me feel like I am home. I know, I know, it’s corny, but it’s true. If you are thinking about applying to the program, do it! You won’t regret it. I am hopeful that this MFA will help me become the kind of writer that can analyze some of life’s greatest questions. I’ll let you know how it goes.

  

-Elizabeth Diaz is pursuing an MFA in Creative Nonfiction at Florida Atlantic University. She graduated with her B.A. from Florida International University in 2017.