Restraint and masculinity in writing and other vexations

Why does school application have to be such a nightmare? It's so frustrating, and so far I haven't had a very good impression of S.F State.(This is one of the schools I applied to, they seem like a so-so school with incompetent bureaucrats.
I am still waiting to hear from two more schools and honestly, I have been wondering about the whole thing. If I do go to school, I'll be in debt and it scares me to think that I will be taking a program that is far from practical and doesn't guarantee a career and that I will have to pay off a huge loan for. Besides, I don't really think that one has to go to school to learn how to write well. There are lots of mediocre writers out there and most of them have been at a M.F.A program, so really I don't know how much value two years at school would add. I mean, I am a mediocre writer too, but if going to school and going into a serious debt is not going to help me improve much, then why even do it? All I will be getting is debt.

Just finished Woolf's The Years. I felt that she was a tad too ambitious in wanting to capture lives throughout the years with little glimpses, but she never betrays her vision of life as made up of these moments--insignificant perhaps, but full. THe scope and demand of the novel was a little too much, but I think her glimpses gives this lovely surface quality--and a deep sense that life is fleeting. Towards the end, it had gotten slightly long and I know she struggled hard with the ending, because she talked about it in her diary, but I thought the last three pages beautiful and moving in the way simple moments are moving. So I guess she accomplishes it, but Woolf has a tendency to get too philosophical and there were moments when I really thought--all right move on with it--I get it, you're philosophizing about life, people and moments. One also gets a sense that it's her speaking through her characters so often that they sometimes become unconvincing. It's like seeing the thinness of the mask of the characters and starting to see Virigina's nose sticking out. But that is why I love Woolf--she is unapologetic, even when she philosophizes and she makes fun of her philosophizing characters. She is at heart sentimental but she never lets her sentimentality get in the way of her writing. I think the best writing is unsentimental, even if at heart the writer is.

I am reading the memoir by my creative writing teacher here at City College. It was just released this month. It seems interesting so far, but already there were a few awkward descriptions. (Why am i so critical) Damn, I don't quite like myself sometimes. But I think Louise's faults are the faults of a poet, she loves pretty language too much and she beautifies and sentimentalize too much. IT is from the point of view of a child, but I think that a writer always needs to restrain on prettifying proses. There is something too sentimental about the opening of the book so far. To be fair, it is her life story. But I think it is the writer's job not to force nostalgia or sentimentality on readers but to create a setting where such an emotion is possible for readers to offer up, but that process has to come from the reader. I think that is one of the biggest challenge of writing. All the writer can do is prompt, she can't state, or overdo the sentiments. In a way, I feel that she may have the language of a poet, very beautiful, but she lacks the instinct of a fiction writer who knows when not to make pretty and when to write with the dull thud. Sometimes I wonder if that is the reason why male writers are more recognized. Perhaps, it is because they practise that restraint in writing? Come to think of it, all my favorite female writers never sentimentalize, not in the writing. There is a nice strong masculine quality to Woolf's writing. I wonder if that kind of restraint and mystery is missing in Louise's work that is why I am less enthusiastic than I should be.