“Most MFA grads know about the rough patch that often hits the first six months after the program. You feel burned-out and disconnected, and you have to adjust to life without deadlines and mentors and all that esprit de corps. My pastor-friend calls this a “coming down from the mountaintop” experience. For a lot of grads, this is the end: they never write again.”
My Spring Semester 2013 is finished. Now we wait for grades to lock.
One last Waffle House meal for Spring Semester 2013.
The MFA and Jobs
When I was in the process of applying to MFA programs, I was warned again and again that there may not be a job available for me once I graduate, that the landscape of academia had changed, and that I might even want to consider whether an MBA might make more sense. Aware of these warnings, I still enrolled in an MFA program, but I diligently followed instructions.
Some on-point advice for creative writing MFAs.
Almost done with the spring semester. Migraines set me back a day, but hopefully I can make up that lost time over the weekend and get everything finished by Monday. I am ready for Summer Session.
Not to say Summer Session will be a cakewalk. Oh no. Summer is the busiest time of the year for me. I have computers to set up and applications to write and letters to acquire and essays to edit and poems to send out and boxes to unpack and clothes to give away and weights to lift and oh yeah, I might buy a couch. We’ll see.
It’s the end of the semester at Virginia Tech and the traditional boundaries of “calendars” and “weeks” and “days” are hardly relevant. This semester I’ve been learning about creative nonfiction, a genre I really should have studied in depth long before now. It’s good to have it in the skillset, finally. That might make me employable as a teacher of writing someday. Heaven knows I have enough stories to write, especially the ones I shouldn’t be writing down.
Citizen dirt shoveling after the official ceremony.
