What I Did with My MFA in Writing

I graduated from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago with a Master of Fine Arts in Writing. That sounds pretty fancy, but I have mixed feelings about whether or not the experience was worth it. As I contemplate my ridiculous mounds of debt and the types of jobs available to overeducated artist types during a recession, I sometimes wonder if it's too late for law school. Here's a brief look at what I did immediately before and after graduate school, and what choices I've made that have helped me achieve my goals so far.

Before Graduate School

Before attending graduate school, I worked as a freelance writer and at the same pizza place I'd worked at all through my undergraduate years. It turns out that earning a bachelor's degree in English is not the most lucrative life plan, especially when you live in the state with the country's highest unemployment rate. (Michigan, currently at 15%.)

But I really, really wanted to pursue writing and to live in a place where "writer" is actually a career option. I saw graduate school as a meal ticket out of Michigan and a graduate degree as infinitely more marketable than a bachelor's degree. I had it in my head that an MFA in writing from the best graduate art school in the country would guarantee me a teaching job at another university.

During Graduate School

I won't go into too much detail about my graduate school experience here. I've written about it in several other places, and there's no need to rehash. Let's just say that graduate school was hard, I worked hard, and the social experience was kind of a letdown after all my naïve buildup. I went looking for a community and a way to sustain a creative lifestyle post-school. Instead, I became a better writer while also becoming more and more discouraged with my real-life prospects.

After Graduate School

MFA-holding writers are a dime a dozen, it turns out. Totally lost about what to do next and laid off from the crappy call center job I used to support myself in graduate school, on a whim, I applied for and was accepted to do a residency at an artists' colony in Vermont. That was where I really figured out what I wanted the rest of my life to look like. As one of the younger people there, I was surrounded by mid-career, successful artists and writers who had somehow prioritized being creative and made a living doing it.

In this non-competitive environment, I discovered that community-building and collaboration are essential to a thriving artistic practice. I came home with a renewed sense of purpose and a commitment to taking what I'd learned in an ideal place and transforming my reality to closer match up with what I wanted.

Finding Employment

After several months of collecting unemployment and blowing it on travel, I got called back to my dreary call center job. Like a good employee, I went, but it wasn't the same. I'd seen more and done more, and being back under those fluorescent lights in a cubicle smaller than my arm span wasn't going to cut it anymore.

In June of 2009, I quit my job that I hated (in the middle of a recession, no less) to freelance fulltime. I've got debt up to my ears, but I'm happy, writing for a living, and free to keep traveling. I'm mostly getting by all right. And after a five-month application process, I finally landed a pretty decent job teaching online classes for a university. I can get the teaching experience I need to hopefully land a brick-and-mortar teaching job when I'm ready to trade in my portable lifestyle and settle down. In the meantime, I see this as a way to meet my financial obligations while doing things I consider important, like more artists' colony residencies in beautiful places.

I also got involved with a start-up group of writers and artists who hold monthly salons. We bitch about our lives, talk about our work, invite featured artists to read and perform, and eat way too much. We also have created a community and a non-judgmental place to be our creative awesome selves. The next one's at my place. Tomorrow, I'll be rearranging the furniture to make a performance space and cooking up a mess of veggie chili for my awesome and brilliant pals.

So...am I using my degree?

The jury is still out on whether or not I'm "using" my MFA in writing. I was freelancing before graduate school without it. I will say that I definitely became a better fiction writer in graduate school, which was one of my main goals. My early stories embarrass the heck out of me, frankly. So I have my degree to thank for that. I wouldn't be able to get any sort of legitimate college teaching position without my degree either, and that's something I would like to do more of.

On the other hand, what I really needed to know to make myself happy, I learned in a valley in Vermont, far away from the constant critiquing and competition of a graduate writing program. I reference my artists' colony residency and my travels far more often when I ask myself questions about artistic practice and articulate my goals. My MFA writing program, while probably necessary for meeting career-type goals, was pretty useless in terms of giving me what I needed to be a success in my own mind.