“To Be a Kansas State University Alum (MA 2006)”
By Dennis Etzel Jr
To look back at the brief two years, not just out of fondness and freedom, but transformation.
To be given the privilege of having a Graduate Teaching Assistantship. To realize how much I love teaching.
To be able to bond with other students like a summer camp not during summertime, to be in that same academic year together while the students who are in their second year offer advice and guidance. To feel that sense of wanting to help first-year students the next August.
To have professors who will take the time to sit down with you and talk about your work, what you do well and what to improve on without any sense of judgment.
To learn how to read with breadth and depth, to push into further research, to get lost in Hale, to take ideas then challenge them, to be witty and have others see it as cool.
For everyone to be invited to a night out to Auntie Mae’s or Rock-a-Belly, or to a holiday party at a professor’s house.
To be shocked at the amazing used books people sold to Dusty Bookshelf. To buy them without hesitation.
To be broke. To go over for Panda Express on payday like it was a feast.
To be called the Walt Whitman of Manhattan, Kansas.
To realize that I could earn a Graduate Certificate in Women’s and Gender Studies as I earned my Masters, to really dive into that real-world application of scholarly work as I was raised by two lesbian mothers in Topeka, Kansas.
To feel like I was getting a college experience that I had never had as I had worked full-time from when I was 16 until I attended Kansas State at 34. To know it was a massive privilege to begin again for a different career, to figure out how I could go to school and have the teaching assistantship full-time.
To hide from everyone until the second year that I had to move back and was living with said mothers in order to reclaim my life.
To accidentally say something inappropriate and to apologize. To make huge mistakes in judgment. To make mistakes and for it to be okay. To sometimes make mistakes and feel the consequences.
To feel a sense of belonging that needs to happen for education to happen.
To not fully realize how K-State prepared me for what would be coming up in my life so that I could make it through an MFA graduate program that was less welcoming.
To relish those studies and commitments inside and outside of the classroom and to continue with them almost two decades later.
To remember so many of the things people said and to hold on to them, like at the Take Back the Night rally where Dr. Michele Janette said, “Vulnerability is a strength.”
To remain vulnerable out of openness, curiosity, and love. To move through the world with deep appreciation for those professors and peers from Kansas State University.
To look back, go back to visit, and see how things change, how you’ve changed every year since, but still grab a sandwich from Rock-a-Belly.
Note: Thanks to you professors and old friends who helped me! You know who you are!
— Dennis Etzel Jr. (he/they) is a neuroqueer poet and writer who lives with their spouse Carrie and their boys in Topeka, Kansas, where he teaches English at Washburn University. My Secret Wars of 1984 (BlazeVOX 2015) was selected by The Kansas City Star as a Best Poetry Book of 2015, and Fast-Food Sonnets (Coal City Review Press 2016) is a 2017 Kansas Notables Book selected by the State of Kansas Library. They co-edited with Dr. Jericho Hockett a 2023 Kansas Notables Book, Kansas Speaks Out: Poets in the Age of Me, Too. Their work has appeared in Denver Quarterly, ndiana Review, BlazeVOX, Fact-Simile, 1913: a journal of poetic forms, 3:AM, Tarpaulin Sky, DIAGRAM, and others. Etzel is the recipient of a 2017 Troy Scroggins Award and the 2017 Topeka ARTSConnect Arty Award in Literary Arts. He is a TALK Scholar and part of the Speakers Bureau for Humanities Kansas and leads poetry workshops in various Kansas spaces. Learn about them at dennisetzeljr.com, or join their mailing list for writing rituals and advice at tinyletter.com/poemslyrical.
K-State English 
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