Scott Momaday: I had not wanted to go on with my schooling. I had graduated from the University of New Mexico with a BA. I had taken a job teaching at the Dulce School on the Jicarilla Reservation. I spent a year there and I loved it. Wonderful setting, great people, the kids were wonderful. I was teaching seventh graders, up through eleventh or twelfth graders. And I was a bachelor earning the princely sum of $4,000 a year. Nothing to spend it on, except steaks down at the trading post. I’d go buy the best piece of meat you’ve ever seen and bring it home and feast on it. I won the fellowship to Stanford. And I thought, “Hey, I’ll go to Stanford. I’ll live off the fat of the land there for a year. I’ll learn something about writing. It’s a great opportunity, but then I’ll come back here.” I took a year’s leave of absence. I meant to be gone for a year. I ended up staying 20 years in California because Yvor Winters talked me into going through the mill there. So I took the bachelors and then stayed in and took the doctorate. By that time I was overqualified for Dulce, so I got into the business of college teaching.