In July, I celebrated my graduation from Fairfield University’s Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing Program. Along with taking those last few workshops and seminars alongside others in the program at our nine-day residency, my fellow graduating students and I each delivered presentations and readings from our theses.
As I pursued a dual concentration in creative nonfiction and poetry, my thesis featured the entire manuscript of my debut memoir and several poems separate from the memoir. My book chronicles my childhood experiences living with Cerebral Palsy, using an AAC device, a motorized wheelchair, and walker, losing my father to cancer, and being raised by a single mother who enabled and encouraged my pursuit of regular education, athletics, and other extracurricular activities. It is currently in the early stages of the publication process. My poetry centers on a variety of themes, such as nature and faith, and it draws on stylistic elements inspired by famous poets like Mary Oliver and Elizabeth Bishop. Also included in the thesis are reflections on the craft elements and techniques that I studied and employed and a bibliography of every work of literature that I read during the two-year program.
The weeks preceding graduation were busy with preparing materials—and, in my case, with programming my Accent 1000 AAC device with what I needed to say in class and at graduation events. PRC-Saltillo’s Notebook feature was a key tool in this process. As a notebook can hold more text than the regular message window, I was able to easily program my device with what to say for each slide of my presentation, dedicating one or more notebooks to each slide and having the notebook end where my slide transition, discussion questions, and writing prompts for the audience were. The feature additionally allows me to take text from a document and input it into my speech software as a .txt file to have it read aloud—a capacity that came in handy when preparing my poetry and excerpts from my memoir—parts of my thesis—to share at my reading. I have also learned how to insert a shortcut to a specific notebook into a key, enabling me to bypass going through the full Notebook menu. To promote easy access to the notebooks even further, I created several pages in my speech software to store them based on the categories of graduation events and workshops.
My graduation residency was such a fun and phenomenal time of celebration, and I am glad my device has features that allowed me to efficiently prepare for and present at my events.
Margaret Moore, PRC-Saltillo Blogger
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