Category: My Life

Man (Temporarily) Down

It happened quickly. I had just finished digging around in my toolbox out in the garage when I turned, attempted to step over the lawnmower, and felt my right shoe catch on something. I was already stepping forward, so staying in place was not an option. As I felt myself begin to fall, I yanked my right leg in an attempt to free it from whatever it was snagged on and save myself from crashing to the ground. It didn’t work. My knees were the first thing to hit the concrete, followed by everything else. The next thing I knew… (read more)

RobOHara1 Comment

Good News from the Doctor

While sitting in my doctor’s waiting room the morning my birthday, I asked myself, “Why am I doing this again?” Every year on her birthday, Susan takes the day off and schedules her yearly physical. That makes it easy to remember (kind of like changing the batteries on your smoke detectors when you change your clocks for daylight savings time), so I decided to try the same thing this year. Between fasting (so I could do blood work) and not being able to celebrate with my friends at work, it didn’t take me long to realize that the doctor’s office… (read more)

RobOHara2 Comments

A Long Journey Ends

When I get really stressed out, the pressure manifests itself in the form of back pain. Cramps form in both my lower and upper back, and spread until they meet somewhere in the middle. By 8 a.m. last Saturday, I had already taken one round of Ibuprofen, and had a second round of pills stashed in my pocket for later. I’ve never been one to count my chickens before they hatch. Even though I had already successfully defended my graduate project the week before and seen my grades posted online, I refused to admit I had graduated until I had… (read more)

RobOHara3 Comments

Winning Two Jackpots

In the fall of 2017 I began work on my grad project, a novel titled The Human Library. On April 19, I delivered copies to the three members of my graduate committee. Two weeks later on May 4, I returned to the University of Oklahoma to defend my work. I spent those two weeks preparing. I wrote an outline of my novel. I made lists of all my characters. I noted every problem with my novel, and came up with ways to improve it. I went through the hundreds of handouts I’ve received and notes I’d taken over the past… (read more)

RobOHara6 Comments

Graduating with Honors: Kappa Tau Alpha

In the fall of 1991, three months after graduating high school, I walked into Redlands Community College. I walked out two years later with no degree and a 3.25 grade point average. After another year at Southwestern Oklahoma State University, I still hadn’t graduated and my GPA had dropped to 3.10 after pulling a 2.75 there. As much as I enjoyed journalism, there was zero chance of me being nominated for any sort of honor society based on my academic achievements (or lack thereof). It took me a few years to get my head on straight. In the fall of… (read more)

RobOHara3 Comments

A $69.50 Robe

I left work a couple hours early Thursday afternoon to visit the University of Oklahoma and submit the final paperwork required for graduation. Perhaps its from years of dealing with computers, but I prefer things to be linear and, if at all possible, chronological. Purchasing a cap and gown two months before I defend my final project almost seems presumptuous on my part. I realize graduation is a massive undertaking that involves hundreds (thousands?) of students and must take a long time to coordinate, but preparing for graduation before turning my final project in almost feels like showing up to… (read more)

RobOHara

The Purple Star

This semester, along with two other classes, I began work on my senior project — a fiction novel. Each week, I write a new chapter for my novel and present it to the head of my committee. During our weekly sessions, my professor reads the chapter and provides me with immediate feedback. Project is the intersection where form meets art. For two years I’ve been reading and learning about story structure, plotting, character development, and pacing. Project is where students write their own stories, applying the structures lessons we’ve (hopefully) learned. Next semester, after my novel is finished, I’ll present… (read more)

RobOHara

A Rough Semester Comes to an End

Wednesday, January 18, 2017, was the day I realized I had made a mistake. It was 9 p.m., and my third class of the evening had just ended. I was exhausted, and I still hadn’t eaten dinner. That day, and every Wednesday for the next four months, I woke up at 5 a.m., started work at 6 a.m., worked eight hours, left work and drove directly to Norman, ran to make my 3 p.m. class, sat through three back-to-back-to-back classes until 9 p.m., and then made the hour-long drive back home. As I stepped out into the cold January wind… (read more)

RobOHara3 Comments

Another Semester Down

At 5 p.m. on Thursday, I left the University of Oklahoma seven credit hours closer to a graduate degree in Professional Writing. Fourteen credit hours down, eighteen to go. This semester I took Tutorial and Creative Nonfiction. In Creative Nonfiction we developed nonfiction book proposals. Throughout the semester we wrote query letters, researched markets, developed chapter summaries, penned a synopsis of our books, and even wrote sample chapters. I didn’t realize how much work we had done until the end of the semester, when we assembled all of those components into a single proposal. In addition to that project, we… (read more)

RobOHara2 Comments

Thankful for School

I am thankful for all the obvious things one should be thankful for (life, health, work), but one thing that hit me this week was how thankful I am for the graduate writing program I’m enrolled in. I’ve attended college for lots of reasons over the years — because I wanted to start something, because I needed to finish something, because I didn’t know what else to do — but right now, I’m going to school because I want to. We are paying for my classes out of pocket, and it’s not cheap. That’s not any kind of badge of… (read more)

RobOHara1 Comment