The
MFAer Leaves the Nest:
The Truth Behind the Sorrow and the Pity
I’ve got an MFA. It sucks trying to find a job.
I don’t usually talk like that, and I don’t really
think that’s true, but hey—you can’t be
a recent MFA graduate with no book out and start talking about
the job market with any real sense of hope and success, or
people get suspicious. Me? I still go to the readings and
after-parties, like those guys back in high school who’d
just graduated and still drove around the parking lot at lunch
in their Trans Ams and Camaros; I do my best to not eat two
meals before, so I look thin, and will eat as much asparagus
dip as I can muster. I wear my shoes with holes. My degree
is in poetry, and I know the potential power of guilt. But
home, the key alone in its lock, a new car in the driveway
(a mid-size, granted), I catch myself in the hall mirror—a
beautiful Murray Feiss in brushed nickel and silver I found
at an antique show—and something sticks in my craw.
The papers lie—MFA’ers rejoice, and ignore that
criticism and perspective which maketh no sense! The job world
may not be completely at your door step, but there’s
enough of it stuffed under your stoop from which to make a
genuine living.
It seems we recent creative writing grads live in a Solzenietsen-like
climate of wintery economic thinness. Take a quick skim through
most magazines like this one, and somewhere, backed up against
a handful of advertisements for creative writing programs,
there’s an article like this. Sure, we all teach in
the composition programs for the English departments downstairs
from where we studied, if they’ll have us. I remember
getting my teaching assignments just days before one certain
semester, and discovering that the four sections of 101 I’d
been scheduled to teach only three days earlier had been reduced
to two. The English Dept. Chair happened to be coming out
of his office, saw me seeing the schedule, and gave me a familiar
look. It was the same look my dad had given me when, at fifteen,
I’d told him I wanted to be a poet.
The worst thing about this postgrad pseudo-angst is that if
you’re in an MFA program, or are about to be, it’s
part of the whole Struggling Writer persona you just want
to sink your teeth into and suck on, no matter how sour. And
you even play it up to other people! On the first day of those
comp classes, just after I’d introduced myself and my
grad background, I’d always ask if anyone in the class
was thinking about the BFA program at W______ where I taught.
There’s always some guy with long hair who smells like
too much patchouli who raises his hand. "Ladies and gentlemen,"
I then announce, "remember to tip your waiters and bartenders,
they’re working hard out there." Everyone gets
it, and since they’ve just learned that, as a poet,
I’ve got more Ramen noodles in my cupboard than they
do, the self-deprecation thing makes for a nice icebreaker,
and patchouli-man doesn’t mind a bit.
The truth is I felt lucky to be teaching at all, and was grateful
for the actual pay. Comp instructors make great money, that’s
all there is to it. Yes, we teach the 101's, and grade a million
papers, and schlep from part-time office to cubicle to partition-space
semester to semester. But it seems hard to really complain.
I went into this racket knowing full well the gamble such
an education creates, and I think anyone who does otherwise
is taking a dangerous risk. Maybe the best angle on Happy-Job
after the degree is the teaching or publishing or editing
assistantships now available in nearly every MFA program out
there. And delving yourself full-throttle into an industry
so close to writing while “learning” to write
can only help one’s own work. Especially teaching. Community,
technical and proprietary colleges—and there’re
a kabillion of them in this country—are almost always
looking for adjunct instructors of English and literature,
and if you’ve had that sort of experience during grad
school, you’re almost a shoe-in. I’ve managed
to turn three years of teaching part-time at a local two-year
tech school into a nice administrative job that pays as much
as some associate profs make at four-year institutions, state
or otherwise. It’s true, teaching classes from semester
to semester as an adjunct can be unsteady, but if you milk
those 8 AM experiences, you’ll put shoes on the baby,
and I think you’ll find something unexpected. Your students
will be just like you were five, eight, eleven, however many
years ago, and they’ll provide for you—if you
let them—an amazing mirror capable of reflection over
your own experiences. Leaving home for college; leaving a
lover for college; leaving the dead for college. They’re
people very much like you, and also completely the opposite
of what you are, and will be. What better group of people
to watch in conjunction with your own ripening writing?
But if that certain stage isn’t for you, don’t
fret, or start reading Swineburne and drinking fake absinthe.
During and just after my program I wrote for a local newspaper
for $25 an article and 25 cents a mile for travel; I edited
the accreditation submissions for different departments at
my school; I did freelance script work for the Department
Of Defense (!), all stepping stones to better jobs once I’d
graduated, either through those connections, or via the experience.
I got paid next to nothing for most of that stuff, but it
put enough bulk on my ribs and resume, the latter definitely
earning for me better work in the future. How did I get those
jobs? I talked to people. Everywhere.
It’s a stupid thing to try and even explain, really.
We all know the power of networking. It’s become such
a buzz word, it’s lost its meaning. But everyone you
meet has something they can give, and something they may need.
I met the editor of that newspaper waiting for jury duty;
on asking my MFA dept. head if he knew of any “work”
that might be floating around I was put in touch with other
department heads who needed editing work done; a friend who
worked at a school in VA saw an internet ad looking for writers
to work on a short film the DoD was subcontracting. The little
infrastructures of our lives may only seem partially substantial
while we’re writing in school (the cliché of
the writer alone in her monk’s cell doesn’t have
to be), but they really become the lifeblood of how and where
and why we get jobs after school. The writing world may seem
small, but it’s bigger, and tied to many other fields.
And it’s very tight. Much to my amazement, I saw several
classmates move through my graduate program without so much
as saying hello to other students, visiting writers, professors
outside their areas of study. I remember seeing their families
at graduation, and meeting them, and seeing that same look
in their eyes my dad had in his so many years ago. I know
it can be hard for some people in new areas to adapt—especially
writers—but when you enter an MFA program you’re
telling those students and teachers that something about them
has attracted you to their school, their writing, the beach
by their school, whatever, and that you want to be part of
their community.
And maybe the best place to be community is at a residency.
I think residencies and retreats are the bestest, most fun
and enlightening way to get a job. You get to hang out with
a bunch of other writers—maybe artists, too—who’re
either about to push through that envelope you’re stuck
in, or are on the other side, and perhaps ready to rip yours
open and pull you out. Like community colleges, there are
millions of possibilities out there, scholarship-ready and
not, long term and not. Plus—and here’s the rub—they’re
people just like you! Much like the English students you may
teach, these folks are on the same road you are, only a little
further ahead, or back. At the residency, or retreat, or even
just a two-day conference, you get a real taste for the differing
range of palates in the writing world, and where or how or
when you’ll fit in. I spent a month in Vermont I’ll
never forget. Not only was I able to sharpen a relationship
with a poet whose work I’ve fawned over for a long time,
but I was able to do something absolutely invaluable for a
young, stupid writer like me: I was able to meet people outside
my realm of experiences. I met P______, an amazing, famous
Italian artist, with whom I struck up a great conversation
about Dante’s The Inferno, specifically the
Pinsky translation. Now, this has been one of my favorite
books for a long time, and there I was in his apartment with
a bunch of other writers and artists, bragging about Pinsky’s
book. P_____ smiled. “That book,” he said, smiling,
“is the worst translation of that poem.” Eeek!
Talk about foot in mouth. But then began a conversation I’ll
never forget, the poet and the artist comparing notes about
one of the greatest works of art ever. I learned more from
P_____ about The Inferno, and how to read it, than
I think I ever could have learned in grad school—nothing
against my former profs, mind you. I still love Pinsky’s
book, and look forward to debating those same points with
P_____ one day again, because we have a friendship now—however
brief, however fleeting—and I’ll always be able
to either look back on that experience, or look ahead to the
next. It’s also true that I was offered a job during
that residency—an assistant’s job, which would’ve
paid a little money, and a lot of experience—and while
I wasn’t able to take the job, looking back, my experiences
there were so rewarding, employment or not, that I think each
“young” writer should make leaving the nest for
another writing moment absolutely necessary. I don’t
know where he said it, but Tim O’Brien says it best:
“Sure, write about what you know, but know a lot.”
Moving around in the residency/conference/retreat world can
be a true boon for us.
Shrugging off the apron of the pre-MFA world can be tough.
After graduation, the MFA’er might see those waitress
and bartend tips as adequate. They’re not. They’re
death. However those patrons may inspire you, or give you
great stories, if you’re in the trenches you need insurance.
A savings account. Those same customers will not invigorate
you like those artists you’ll meet, and the money might
be just enough to make you forget why you joined a creative
writing program in the first place. There’re a million
people out there calling themselves writers, and about eleven
of them are making a living doing it. Wouldn’t it be
great to be number twelve? Sure it would! But for those of
us not the superstar, or the James Merrill, a balance must
be struck between that act of creating, and the act of eating.
True, one feeds the other, and creating most always comes
best when one isn’t eating, hunger being that best of
sauces. I’ve come to believe, though, that the apron
of discontent need not be cinched so tight. Good work, good
food and good words—with a bit of hustle, you can have
all three.
