Margo Rabb’s “How to Tell a Story.”
Even though it’s not possible that Margo and I were in the same MFA program, this story feels so true to my experience (right down to the sentiment/sentimentality lecture) that I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find out that she was sitting right next to me all that time.
I discovered the story years ago, just before my third year in the program. I thought it was so dead on that I sent copies to classmates with the subject line, “OMG! Is she talking about us?!” In the years since, it has served as a reminder that I’m not the only person who had an F’ed up MFA experience. There are plenty more of us out there, and God Bless us all for surviving it.
Shellie Faught 
What a great find! I had similar experiences in a creative writing program at my local university. I was married, and I remember wondering at the time whether it was a requirement for writing students to have affairs with each other, regardless of marital status. What a distraction, and then the workshops! I could have used a bracer before a few of those. While most of the workshops provided good, constructive advice, the negative feedback is what always seems to lingered long after the semester was over. If I had to measure myself by the faculty at that time and my classmates, then I probably wouldn’t be writing now.
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@1writeway: Oh, yes. MFA programs are incestuous places. I think some of my classmates were looking to increase the amount of drama in their lives and so . . . affairs galore! It was amusing when the relationships would turn up as fiction pieces in the next workshop.
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