Nana Twumasi

I wasn't doing much with myself. My life was easily broken into parts: sleeping, bathing, working, television, repeat. At one moment I was freshly out of college, optimistic, and ready to obtain that high-paying, fulfilling job. The next moment it was three years later, and I was living with my grandmother while working a so-so job. Actually, it was a horrible job that paid next to nothing, and by the end I was losing sleep and breaking out in hives.

The hives were nothing new. Neither was the insomnia, for I am a creature of habit. Most of the major changes in my life were preceded by sleepless nights and breakouts of those monstrous, itchy welts. Still, a year after a failed attempt at acceptance into grad school and about six months after the second attempt, I hadn't changed much. I did most of my business while sitting on the couch, and that included the daily phone call to my father, who lived three miles away. One night he told me I got a call from some college in San Francisco, and before I could get a word in he asked, "You applied to school in San Francisco? Isn't that far?" I asked him repeatedly to shut up about that and tell me what the message said, and he told me he didn't really listen to it because it wasn't for him, and I asked, again, "What did it say? Who was it? What's wrong with you? This is important!" As per usual, he wouldn't yield and said he'd get my brother to take the message. My brother called back a few minutes later to tell me someone named Ann from someplace called California College of the Arts had called and said something about being accepted and a scholarship. He relayed it deadpan, a machine repeating a machine. I scribbled the number down and hung up on him.

I am that girl who calls the East Coast at 9 p.m. Pacific time and is offended to find the person she's trying to reach is asleep or otherwise occupied. When I got the message, it was something like eight o'clock Central time, and I could've called, but for some reason I thought it was later in California than it actually was, so I couldn't call; it was too late, so I'd have to wait until tomorrow. Oddly enough, I slept like a baby that evening.

Work the next day was teacake, and the subsequent hours at home watching reruns of Real World/Road Rules Challenge on MTV passed easily. I decided, quite arbitrarily, when the time was right to return the call I'd received the day before, and the rest, as they say, is history (which I say because I cannot remember the conversation verbatim and do not feel like improvising it).

Going to school at CCA has proven to be one of the best decisions I've ever made, and I frequently pat myself on the back for it.

I do not think I have ever been happier to embark on an uncertain journey. This is because I and my fellow students have all joined our metaphorical hands and are skipping merrily down a most uncertain path. It helps to have that company. I've met people here, friends whom I certainly would not have known otherwise, and they are from all walks of life, approach their art with different methods, and have different ideas, theories, beliefs about said art. These things make the program worth it. Who wants to be in a class full of people who all subscribe to the same ethos, who nod and smile when the prof makes a point?

I was so enthralled first semester while working with my mentor because I could not remember a time when such care and attention was given to my work. It was an hour of me, and no one else. Having that one-on-one time is invaluable.

The opportunity to hear classmates read their work is equally invaluable. Exposure to literature I was previously ignorant of is perhaps more invaluable than the aforementioned. It's difficult to speak on one moment, on a specific situation, or especially mind-blowing revelation because so many have been packed into this one year. And I have a tendency to be verbose. Suffice to say, I won (in part) the all-college honors and have a piece that will soon appear in Ballyhoo Stories' online 50 States Project. Both pieces were produced over the past year. If those aren't results, I don't know what is.

Nana plans to graduate in 2007.