I turned in my fourth packet last week.

Which means that I have until the 15th of this month to make any final changes/revisions to my creative thesis before turning it in to my mentor and M.F.A. director. From there, it will either be approved, or it will be sent back with some suggestions for further revision. If it’s approved, then that means I’m pretty much done and have only one more packet to send in to my mentor, which will probably be the entire thesis again, just with my letter, bibliography, and reading journal included. Then, I have to work on my sixth packet, and preparing for my final residency.

I am still, seriously, in shock. I feel like there’s so much more for me to learn, but at the same time, I can see how much better a writer I am now than I was at the beginning of this program. I actually went back and reread some of the work I did in my first semester, work that I genuinely believed was some of the best writing I had ever produced, and I was kind of cringing. Not because the writing was bad, because it wasn’t. But because I know I’m capable of so much better now.

I’ve been submitting my poetry to different contests and literary journals. This started around this time last year. I sent two long-form poems to the Frontier Poetry contest (I forget which specific contest now), and neither poem was accepted, which was what I expected to happen. Like usual, I sent out the poems more for the experience of having my work out there than to actually have them published. Although I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t secretly hoping for them to be published, too.

This year, I sent in three different poems to their New Voices contest. I had already sent in work to a different contest of theirs earlier this year (they have many revolving contests going throughout the year), and my submission was rejected. Surprisingly, this last submission, while ultimately rejected, made it high enough in the contest to receive specific notice in their response to me. They said about 10% of submissions receive such recognition, that my poems stood out to all the editors, and I was invited to submit again soon.

I have not recovered, ya’ll. Frontier Poetry is a renowned and prestigious publisher of poetry. To have my work gain specific notice from the editors of such a huge poetry publisher is just…it makes my brain swim. And those three poems are included in my creative thesis, so they’ve been pretty heavily revised since I sent them out. It’s this kind of experience that really gives me hope and makes me think that maybe I am meant to be a poet. I’ve mentioned before about how much I’ve struggled with poetry over the course of my life. I’ve talked about how much poetry means to me, how it’s saved my life more than once, and how it’s allowed me to really process some of the most painful experiences of my life. But there’s always been this fear deep down that my poetry is more for me than a wider audience.

This helps me see that, in fact, my poetry can reach an audience of more than myself. That I might actually be producing material that people want to read. And having this happen so close to the end of my M.F.A., too, is even more encouraging. My thesis will eventually become the manuscript of my first book of poems. All writers face anxiety around whether they will ever have a book published. This gives me hope. This encourages me. This tells me that yes, I have a good chance of having my work accepted for publication somewhere.

So, take heart and believe in yourself today. Write the thing(s) you want to write. Give yourself a real chance at thriving. You never know where it might lead you.