I started taking my first courses for grad school, and although I was very, very excited to be in this program and to begin this stage of my life, the first assignment was a vague and dull self-introduction with mandatory comments on other student’s introductions. We were asked to share our favorite books, which is a pretty annoying prompt because I have about twenty favorite books for different reasons or to go with different moods. Maybe more than twenty. I was really hoping that a literary crowd would know that asking for one favorite book is a silly question.
We were also supposed to share what we write personally, and even when specifically asked in a creative writing classroom, I felt awkward listing my publication credits. I felt pretentious saying I’ve been writing and publishing consistently for about 10 years now, and AT THE VERY SAME TIME I felt like a hack who’s never been published anywhere that’s a recognized name and doesn’t require an explanation of what kind of outlet it is.
My honest introduction would probably be:
I wrote some stuff for games, some of them shipped. I wrote some stuff for magazines, some are still in business. I swear a lot in Chinese, and sometimes I have simple Mandarin conversations, too.
Probably shouldn’t write that, though.
