There are a lot of people who have very strong feelings about MFA programs, but Blake Butler’s Vice piece “What I Remember from Getting an MFA in Creative Writing,” just sort of lays out the details and holds back on the judgment (not unlike good fiction, really).

It’s surprisingly beautiful in its ambivalence:

I remember getting the feeling [the professor] understood, even if my idea of how to do things was different than what she would do. I remember feeling like Lynne’s understanding right then was a kind of doorway.