Should You Get An M.F.A.?

Things you need an M.F.A. to do:

1. Teach in higher education.

2. Obtain loans from the government related to your education.

Things you don't need an M.F.A. to do:

1. Write

2. Create

3. Self-publish

4. Find a writing community

5. Find a writing mentor

6. Work in the publishing industry

7. Get published

In conclusion, if you are not hoping to become a professor or a teacher, save your money. Perhaps study journalism, perhaps start a zine, perhaps look for writing events on meetup.

HOWEVER,

if you do have the money (or if you don't mind teaching or bartending in order to pay for the degree), I highly recommend it. In a quality program with a dedicated staff and cohort, you will meet people from all walks of life who take the craft just as seriously as you do. You will receive feedback from professors and peers that turns your perception of your work on it's head. You will be pushed and challenged in all the ways you hope to be and you will emerge a stronger writer.

I entered my program as an uncertain twenty-something, recovering from heartbreak in every direction. I was working as a substitute teacher at the time, recently estranged from my family, my partner of five years, and my religion of twenty-six years. I woke up, amazed, every day, that my body was still intact because my spirit felt like at any moment a strong wind would blow and I would fall apart like pieces of shattered glass.

I'd applied to the M.F.A. program several months before that year, in hopes of furthering my career (and honestly of just getting to write for three years without the career-obsessed world interrogating me), and when my acceptance letter came, I exhaled for the first time that year.

Ultimately, my teaching career didn't pan out (I taught one and half disastrous years of middle school before calling it quits and working odd jobs), but that program was exactly what I needed during those three years. It provided me with community, it pushed me not just to become a better writer, but a stronger, more honest person, and it helped me make sense of my story. It was everything therapy should have been.

My career is still largely undefined. I temp, freelance, and delivery drive for money, I stay with family to cut down on bills, I have no aspirations to return to teaching academia full-time, but my family and I are on much better terms (and not just because I live with them), I've rekindled a friendship with the partner I lost, and I've found a spiritual practice and a way of understanding God (and myself) that's right for me.

Would all that have been possible without the M.F.A. program?

Possibly. Probably. Who can say?

In any case, sometimes we need to do the things that don't make sense on paper in order to grow. No one but you can tell you what that thing is.

Maybe get an M.F.A. Maybe join the Peace Corps and live in Africa for a year. Maybe go see that psychic you've been following on Tiktok and book a reading (hint, hint ).

In any case, don't be afraid to explore. It's the only way to grow.