Antioch University - Los Angeles Summary

Southern California has the best weather. It's also close to the beach which is a fun place to go and study. There is barely ever rain, and summers are sunny and warm, not too hot.

It's a big city so it's easy to get housing, but there is a lot of traffic, and finding a nice area is difficult.

Public transportation is very accessible. Though, most people use cars.

Very few internships available for people in my major. This may different for people who are not attending Antioch for their MFA in Creative Writing, though. Once in a while a teacher or mentor, or an alum, will need help with a project and internships become available. On the whole, I am not familiar with any consistent internship availabilities, though.

I'm attending the Master's program in Creative Writing. It's a low-residency program, so the classes are set up differently from those in a traditional college. I love the mentor-student setup, where published authors serve as our instructors. I feel confident in their knowledge and have received excellent feedback and assistance. I appreciate, too, that the mentors I've encountered are there to guide, but do not come across as knowing the One True Way of Writing. What I miss about the low-residency setup is the interpersonal interactions with fellow students. I'm also a bit of a school nerd. When we go to the residencies, we can take as many seminars as we wish; generally they last 50 to 120 minutes and are frequently fascinating, either on some issue of writing or social justice, frequently on a combination of the two. However, once these seminars are over, they're over. This is the other thing I miss; I like ongoing classes that last for months, that allow me to explore, along with fellow students, the issues at hand. It's a bit disappointing that we don't get the chance to do that. The emphasis on social justice issues and creative writing, however, make up for that fairly well.