Wednesday, February 27, 2013

Am I ready for my MASTERS DEGREE?

I am in the process of writing my MFA proposal for USM and it seems the more I look into it the more I find I have to learn about it; just the proposal itself, format and all. It is interesting however now that i have rummage through all the sources including confiding with the various faculty members who are also my close friends one or two.Initially it was the question of can i do it? Then came the can I afford it? and followed by is it worth it.
I have a bachelor's degree from the University of Wisconsin at Green Bay, graduated in 1982. I graduated with a degree entitled "Personal Concentration major" because I designed my own degree through a program called "The University Without Walls" which was pioneered  by the University of Wisconsin at Madison. I was recommended this program by my mentor and art professor the Late Mr. William Prevetti at the University who thought that I was wasting my time in the studios and too smart to know better.
When I was asked to write my proposal for the program I called it 'Art in Quest of the Universality'. I wrote a lengthy ramblings of a little of this and little of that and somehow it got me through without the  followed by interview which others had to do. And thus began my actual college life which was mostly spent travelling all over the world till this date: I am still schooling. I still keep an ongoing journal of sketches and writings, with the last one being done in Rome and Dubai and I still am writing an ongoing blog which has numbered some 890 entries since i began blogging, I am still drawing and painting whenever my heart moves me to and I have an average of two solo exhibitions a year although am tired of it.
Yes I am still in school, making mistakes and trying hard to justify my ways knowing fully well i do not convince not even myself. They called me the perpetual student when I was at the University as it took me almost five years to complete my degree and hung out at the campus like it was my only home even after graduating; it was one of the most beautiful times of my life. I am still learning it is like an addiction, an obsession the need to fill my head and my time with knowledge and creativity. I have the feeling that if not for my zest for being a student i would have gone insane a long time ago; I found that life was one hell of a boring place to be and was on the verge or drinking myself to death at one point in my life after my divorce while living in Green Bay, however God's Grace came in the form of my apartment neighbor by the name of Allen Hautamaki and who happened to be one of the student councilors at the University in Green Bay (UWGB).
Allen talked me out of working as a boner in the meat packing plant in Green Bay and later in Milwaukee, Wisconsin where I spent a total of three years of my life hacking away at semi frozen beef quarters and hinds in a 45 degrees temperature slaughterhouses  so i can keep my wife and child alive. But it was not soon enough, it was not until I became like the cows i was boning and my mind was numb from the Wisconsin cold and the only escape was the booze. These were the darkest years of my life as i was put to the grind to test my spirit to the core: I was a Muslim in Green Bay, I buried my soul into the bottle, I ate anything an everything prohibited or otherwise; my sanity hung at the tip of the icicle. Along came Allen and he talked into me taking the SAT test to qualify myself for college.
When I started school I felt a sense of being free, I felt salvation from the the horrors I was doing to myself, the guilt i felt in loosing my wife and child, The hope i lost in everything I had dreamed of when I left Malaysia to raise a family in GB. The shame and loneliness of missing my own family and friends back home and I often had nightmares waking up with the terrified feeling that I cannot find my way back home.
UWGB these four letters stuck in my mind ever since i started school like they were my ultimate Mantra, they stood for my freedom from my own self created delusions.: no one was to blame I realized but myself as most of those who knew me in GB loved me sheltered me and gave me all the support i could ever needed.  One of whom was my late mother in law who never turned me away from her home even after I was divorced. I was fortunate in the fact that I had many hands that reached out to keep me upright and kept me straight till I graduated from UWGB. and left the State for good leaving behind bitter sweet memories.
Alhamdullilah!
  

1 comment:

Online College said...

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