I’ve thought and thought about this month’s theme: careers. I’ve rolled over a good answer to this question: how has your education at IWU prepared you for your career?
I’ve pictured what kind of advertisement this article could be for the Modern Language and Literature division at IWU. And in the end, it will be. You will see, and I will tell you, just how well IWU equipped me to work in my field.
But before we get there, I need to make a confession:
I regret my educational choices. I have fumed and kicked and spit at the closed door after closed door that has slammed in my face professionally.
You see, I am an adjunct professor. I often say that my career has fallen into a beautiful triptych: mother, professor, writer. I love all three of these endeavors and find that the blending and weaving of these roles fills deep wells of satisfaction in my being.
But I have yet to find a way to make any sort of substantial living in my career as an adjunct.
So let’s start at the beginning. I started at IWU the fall of 1998 with big sparkling eyes set on a communications degree. Somewhere along the way, I took a creative writing course with Dr. Mary Brown. Twenty years of hindsight reveals clearly that Mary Brown and that course changed my life.
I graduated with a double major in Communications AND Writing.
In 2004, I decided to go back to school. I could go on to get an MA in English and then a PhD. Or I could get an MFA in writing.
“An MFA is a terminal degree,” I was told. And that was it. I never even glanced twice at a PhD. I wasn’t interested in studying English. It was writing that I wanted.
In our exit interview with the faculty and administrators of our MFA program, we asked question after question about what our degree qualified us to do.
“Can we teach?” we asked
“Yes,” the director said.
“How does it compare to a PhD?” we asked.
“An MFA plus a book publication is considered on par with a PhD,” our director said. Then he swept the room with his eyes, smiled, and added. “You know. You all got this MFA to be writers. Not teachers. Go and write.”
We nodded. Or at least I nodded. Yeah, yeah. I would write for sure, but I also needed to make money. That was 2006.
For the last ten years, I have taught composition and creative writing at universities and colleges across the country, and I have loved nearly every minute of my teaching life. Meanwhile, I’ve also stayed true to our program director’s imperative. I’ve written. I’ve published — books and articles, essays, a short story and a poem or two.
Over the last ten years, the creative writing market has flooded with qualified MFA graduates. In this same time, PhDs in Creative Writing have popped up.
The result is a nearly impossible market in which a writer with a terminal degree, two books, ten years of teaching experience, and excellent student and teaching evaluations can get a single full-time job. I’ve tried. Many, many times. The only positions open to me have been adjunct positions: semester-by-semester contracts without health benefits and a fraction of the pay of full-time faculty carrying the same load of classes.
None of this is anyone’s fault really. It’s just the confluence of social and economic changes that swept in after I got my MFA.
Perhaps the final blow came when I applied to teach online at a university. I was informed that though they pay their MFAs in visual art a full-time wage, I would only get part-time pay because they do not consider an MFA in creative writing a “terminal degree.”
I tried to explain that you can’t split degrees like that, that saying an MFA in visual art is terminal but an MFA in creative writing isn’t, is like saying a PhD in British literature is terminal, but a PhD in psychology isn’t.
The boulder wouldn’t budge.
I share all this not to discourage you, or tear down any particular institution. The academy and the market have morphed and changed. This is the reality of the academic climate in which we work.
I write this hoping it will help you make a more informed decision than I was able to make fresh out of my writing and english courses at IWU.
Ironically — in the best possible way — I would not be facing this particular conundrum if it weren’t for the life-transforming education I received in the English department. Mary Brown, Michael Buck, Paul Allison, and Roberta Henson taught me what it was not just to write, but to love writing, to appreciate good art, and to redeem culture through my vocation. In short, I still believe in what I do no matter how much I get paid, thanks to the wonderful faculty at IWU.
If you are interested in teaching writing, consider a PhD first. A PhD in Creative Writing will do everything for you an MFA will, and your thirty year-old self will ‘thank you’ when you’re ready to put down roots.
By the way, I’ve been accepted to a Composition and Rhetoric PhD program. It’s time and I’m ready.
While I may regret the way my MFA has been shut out of the academy, there is one thing I’ll never regret: taking Mary Brown’s creative writing class. Had I never done that, I would never have discovered what has turned out to be my life-long vocation: writing and teaching.
Christin is the chief editor of the Annesley Writers Forum. She earned her MFA in Creative Writing and has taught writing for the last 10 years. Her two books have been published through Wesleyan Publishing House, and she is currently working on her third manuscript. Her articles and essays have appeared in the New York Times and Sojourners. She lives north of the border in Ontario with her husband, and their two school-aged kids. She is learning to enjoy Tim Horton’s, Canadian Tire, and finds herself humming “Oh Canada” at random moments. You can read more about her at www.christintaylor.com.