One of my favorite things to do is make mixtapes. Even though they usually aren’t in the classic mixtape format (I usually make playlists on iTunes and burn them to CD) the sentiment remains the same. (If I had a tape deck, I’d make actual mixtapes. There’s a drawer in my kitchen filled with blank cassettes. I just can’t use them.) Anyway, I’m not going to dive into the purist argument of what a mixtape is. Point is, it’s a great gift that requires a lot of time and thought, but not a lot of money. It’s difficult to survive today. It’s hard to scrape by. And with Christmas and all of that nonsense coming up, the wallet can be extra tender this time of year.

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I just read a very interesting article by Elsie Blackwell in The Chronicle of Higher Education. She explores how to measure the success of an MFA program and how to define a successful post-MFA career. Here are some snippets from her article:

When I met with the external reviewers who visited campus, I was asked about placement. That’s a word that educes defensiveness from many of us who teach in programs that grant art degrees.
…
Graduates of M.F.A. programs have always followed a greater variety of career trajectories than their scholarly counterparts in humanities Ph.D. programs—both because they’ve wanted to and because they’ve had to.
…
One reason for this is that substantial publication is a prerequisite for a good teaching job in creative writing, and that almost always means a full-length book. Unlike young literature scholars, who need a book to keep the job they get, creative writers almost always need a book to get the job, plus another to win tenure.
…

While we who teach in M.F.A. programs can show our students how to write a strong pedagogy statement and stage mock interviews, the best job training we can give is to help students write a good book, cajole them into finishing and revising that book, and give them advice on getting it published. That also serves the students who don’t want to remain in academe; nearly all of them do want to publish books.
…

Besides, consider us an instructive preview. The dearth of jobs for Ph.D. humanities graduates, together with the related recent interest in alternative careers for scholars, suggests that a broader definition of “placement” may be coming soon to a variety of non-arts programs too.

How would you measure the success of an MFA program? How do we know whether we are “successful” after graduation? Did you enter your MFA program with a specific goal of what you wanted to accomplish after graduation?

OK, so this note is going to be rather short, as I’m on my lunch break at work. I don’t know about you, but I’ve been rather interested in the Occupy Wall Street protests, and they’ve got me somewhat optimistic for the first time in a few years.

One question that’s been bandied about is a pretty basic one: Why the protests? And to be sure, the protests are hardly homogenous; there’s all sorts of different viewpoints and myriad causes being supported by protesters across the country.

But at its most basic, I think it’s quite clear that people are angry, and at one group of people in particular: The Scrooge McDucks among us.

No, really, Scrooge McDuck. You may remember the Duck Tales, which featured Scrooge McDuck, a very wealthy Duck who made a habit of taking a morning swim through his vault of money.

Now most of the folks that I’d label Scrooges aren’t actually individual people. They are banks that got bailed out. Well, I was thinking about the bank bailouts, and after (hastily) doing the math, I realized that the bank bailouts had not only given the banks, we’d given them enough to actually make the opening scene of the Duck Tales possible, and then some.

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despite all economic indicators across the board being pretty dismal, trust us when we say we are a very fast growing and dynamic company located in the heart of a very exciting place in which you will love to work even if you have to commute many miles to get there.

our products are so amazing, it’s hard to believe we even need someone like you to help us sell them, but since our completely realistic goal is 112% market share and then total world domination, we are looking for a marketing director who has a lifetime of experience in our ridiculously obscure industry and who’s worked in a fucking-warpspeed-hyperdrive-faster-than-anything-physicists-have-proven-is-even-theoretically-possible fast paced environment.  you must be exceptionally talented beyond our current needs, but willing to work for a salary we would normally only offer to people who were merely “good enough” in a more stable economy.  this position will report to a vice president whose job the desired candidate could probably do for him (in their sleep).  the right candidate must be able to quickly look at massive amounts of data and then hastily create an action plan that is really really similar to what we’ve already done in the past because change comes slow and we don’t want to freak out the board.  you will play a key role in very little within our organization, but you will be able to reasonably claim on your resume that you did when you search for a new job in 2 months or 12 months or 24 months or whenever you’ve forgotten what a colossal pain in the ass it is to look for jobs.

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you may have noticed in my previous posts references to the fact that i am unemployed.  this is still true.  sort of.  what is perhaps more accurate (if not annoying to say) is that i have continuous partial employment.  in other words: i do a little bit of freelance work.

the virtues and perils of working in this “gig economy” are fairly well documented, and basically boil down to this: more freedom, less (career) safety.  as someone who studied fiction in graduate school, the appeal of setting my own work schedule obviously has great appeal.  the lack of financial security is worrisome, though.  as is the essentially cost-prohibitive nature of medical care (i’ve been lucky so far, but i gotta figure that extremely limited access to medical & dental benefits is gonna bite me in the ass at some point).

i do like that this freelance movement seems to be nudging our ideas of “work” in the united states in a new direction—one that has, perhaps, a healthier balance between what we do to earn money and support ourselves and what else we do with the rest of our lives (it’s no secret that american workers are insanely productive—by which i mean “workaholics”).  but i’m not so sure the current tax code, or general economy, or culture of the u.s. is really in a position to support a new, broad, gig-based workforce.  however, with events like the international freelancers day tomorrow, and websites like freelance switch, and organizations like freelancers union, we might be getting closer to that.  i’m just still wondering what comes next.
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The new Poets&Writers MFA rankings have generated plenty of discussion.  Earlier, almost 200 creative writing professors signed an open letter disputing the rankings.  Now, Scott Kenemore, possibly unaware of this criticism, pens a scathing attack on P&W at slate.com.  He draws a solid conclusion, but his arguments do not hold up.

To his credit, Kenemore is upfront with his personal reasons for writing this piece. “Year after year, their ranking of Columbia University—my alma mater—has steadily fallen.”

He points out that Columbia employs well-published writers as professors, leaving the reader to intuit that writers who have won literary awards are prima facie great teachers. Rarely, whether the discipline is writing, mathematics, sports, etc, are great talents also great teachers.  Often, mediocre talents are great teachers, and great talents are medicore if not lousy teachers.

Kenemore’s second argument (if you allow his first claim to be an argument) is that “(Columbia) is also located at the center of the book publishing, agenting, and editing universe. The guest speakers and visitors from New York’s literary scene offer an unmatched immersion into the world of professional writing.”  This is true, although, every MFA program within a short train ride from Manhattan matches this immersion.

Finally, Kenemore points out that Columbia “remains a top choice for applicants.”  But asking prospective students to rank schools is, as Leslie Epstein, novelist and Boston University program director and signer of aforemention open-letter said, “analogous to asking people who are standing outside a restaurant studying the menu how they liked the food.” Read more »

Has this ever happened to you?

You graduate with your advanced degree and step into the “real world” with high hopes for your career. Well, maybe not high hopes–you did major in the arts–but a moderate longing for success. You start strong, applying to all the jobs you can find, but one by one they pass you by, until you’re left at home feeling worthless, a lump with no hope of employment beyond the service-industry work you did before you were educated?

Well, pout no more, my friend. You might be down in the dumps, feeling a little blue, but follow my ten feel-good tips and you’ll be rid of the unemployment doldrums in no time.

This could be you!

• Watch a lot of reality TV, especially shows where people are extremely stupid/in grave danger. You’ll feel so lucky not to be stuck in a swamp/a narcissist with eight kids/so stupid clothing labels pay you not to wear their clothing that you’ll feel better about yourself–just don’t think about the TV stars’ money.
• Create Facebook pages for your pets, your neighbors’ pets, your alternate personalities. “Friend” them all and watch your Facebook value skyrocket.
• Write a lot of blog posts, the more whiny/sarcastic the better. You’ve got to let out what’s inside you.
• Cruise the internet for other posts to comment on, and really rile things up. Tell bloggers their favorite bands stink out loud, their ideals are ridiculous, their photos are lame. You’ll be surprised how much power you have to get under other people’s skin. And that’s what you need right now: power. Read more »

A year after my graduation, I’m still in Michigan, still working for the State government, still espousing my big dreams: of working for a literary journal, or becoming a literary agent, of working at an independent press, of getting another advanced degree and teaching. (I think part of my problem is indecision. Another is massive student loan debt.) These are all paths I can take (hypothetically), and with which I would be most pleased.

At first I put this all on hold because it just wasn’t realistic (so said I) to move to a new city with a low-paying job and an unspeakable monthly loan payment. Plus, Michigan came with free rent, a nearby literary community that was easy to break into (hi, Ann Arbor!), and tickets to Spartan football games. A year, I said, then I’ll do something new.

And I am planning something new—it’s just not anything that was already on my list. Instead, I’ve decided to spend a year in France* teaching English. Well, technically it’s nine months, but my visa will be for a year. If my application is accepted, I’ll leave a year from this September. I’m young, I thought. If I don’t do something like this now, while my entire life is pretty much unattached, when will I do it?

Of course, I don’t know that much about teaching English to non-native speakers. I’ve done some tutoring to very advanced speakers before, but never to kids (8 to 18 years). But I figure an interest in language, in saying things, can only help. Plus, I’ll only be working 12 hours per week while there, so hypothetically I could come home with a finished book, or at least a bunch of new stories. And then I’ll get on to that list of mine.

* For anyone who is now saying, “How awesome!” a working knowledge of French is required for this program. But there are similar programs in (I think) Italy, Spain, and Austria, for Italian, Spanish, and German speakers. Also, Finland offers a program where you don’t need any language knowledge. Just English.

Inevitable product placement...too much?

This past week I was teaching a lesson on creating and writing persona based poetry to my high school creative writing class (as a volunteer) when the unthinkable happened: I was explaining that John Berryman created three distinct voices or personas, one of which is a character named Mr. Bones, who speaks in Minstrel dialect. Except I didn’t say Minstrel. I said menstrual. Repeatedly and with hand motions.

See I’ve always had problems with pronunciation, especially with words that I read often in books but never have reason (or confidence) to use in conversation.  What happens is I go to use a word that I know to be correct and proper for what I want to say and then completely botch how it’s supposed to be said. It’s like character names – Harry Potter’s Hermione for example, I mangled that name for years. Or a better example is the word invalid, as in a person who is sickly, but for years I was saying IN-VAAH-LID instead of IN-VUH-LID. I was corrected, slightly incredulously by the father of an ex-boyfriend  during a very heated debate.

But anyways, there I am saying menstrual and flapping my hands around for emphasis and seeing the horror on the faces of my students but thinking, of course,  it’s in reaction to the use of Minstrel dialect in poetry when I hear a slight cough behind me and then my name. I look back at Mr. Creasman, the teacher of this fifth period class and he says: Read more »

remember when you were an english major in college?  and all those people kept asking what are you going to do after graduation? and are you gonna be teacher? i do.  i sorta hated those people.  for their utter lack of imagination, and for their inability to deal with the crushing amount of jealousy that came with the belated realization that my collegiate academic experience was vastly superior to theirs.  you studied supply & demand bell curves?  chump.  i read books i wanted to read anyway, and honed my critical faculties in the process.  then i went and (fairly easily) got one of those same jobs in BUSINESS that all the chumps studied graphs so hard for.

i’ve never regretted the decision to be an english major—not even once.  in fact, my only regret was that i didn’t double major and take a bunch of creative writing classes, too.  but with the end of my tenure in an mfa program looming now, this time it’s me asking the question what am i going to do? because it sure as hell isn’t going to be teaching.

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