Marilyn Nelson

I went to graduate school with zero expectation. I kind of backed into it. I wanted to go back to school because I felt gaps in my literary background. I studied mostly twentieth-century English literature in college, so I thought, 'Maybe I'll go back for my writing.'

There's something about the schedule of working in TV that's attractive. You know exactly what the next six months is going to be like: You'll work Monday through Friday and have the weekends off, and then there's going to be a hiatus here, so you can kind of plan a little bit.