Nola Writer Wins A Room of Her Own

I confess the phase"Gift of Freedom" strikes me as unfortunate, rather like ad copy for a maxi pad. But hey, for $50,000, pass the Diva Cup. For those who don't know, the Gift is a grant based on the Woolf principle that every women needs a room of her own. Rooms require cash.

One hard adjustment, Post MFA, is losing this instant community of writers gathered together for a purpose. I moved to Nola so that I could meet writers, thinking that given the history writers would be here. They are, and I have met quite a few. Although without the MFA structure it's kind of like corraling fleas.

Barb Johnson is a Nola writer I never met. She seems cool though.

I'm almost applied for this grant last fall. I thought as a 40 year old with 22 years of restaurant experience, I might qualify for that romantic vision — Woman of a Certain Age Pursues Dream. I'm glad now, reading Johnson's bio, that I didn't bother. She runs an all woman construction crew rebuilding homes here in Nola. And she can write. She made the ever-awkward statement of purpose pretty.

Yay! Women writers over 40 are no longer Bronte shut-ins coughing blood into lace hankies.

The Case Against the Master's Degree

The New York Times has opened up a space for "debate" over the worth of graduate education. The discussion is pretty heavy on the con side. Some pertinent excerpts:

"Not all degrees are equal — a master’s in anthropology or art probably has less incremental earning power than a M.B.A. or advanced engineering degree." --Richard Vedder, director of the Center of College Affordability and Productivity and instructor of economics at Ohio University

"I have had too many students over the years who have gotten masters and even doctorates find themselves in debt big time, unemployed and forced to start all over in their mid-30s. If you do find a program that will enhance your prospects for a job and better life, then before your enroll, you need to figure out how you are going to pay for it and, if you must borrow more money, whether you can really afford to take on additional debt."

"One of the dirty secrets of many research universities is that they treat master’s students as cash cows that fund other activities. To make matters worse, with many faculty members uninterested in teaching, students cannot assume they will get what they are paying for."

--Mark C. Taylor, chairman of the religion department at Columbia University


"The M.A. degree is neither fish nor fowl nor good red meat." --Stephen Joel Trachtenberg, president emeritus and professor of public services at the George Washington University

"In some fields, such as business or engineering, a graduate degree typically boosted income by more than enough to justify the cost. In others — the liberal arts and social sciences, in particular — master’s degrees didn’t appear to produce much if any earnings advantage." --Liz Pulliam Weston, author of “Easy Money,” “Your Credit Score” and “Deal with Your Debt.”

"I just finished my M.A. in the humanities, and am unable to find work teaching at a community college (which is what I had planned to do with this degree). Luckily I had a full fellowship, so I don’t have any loans to pay, but I’m back to where I was before I went to graduate school: jobless, broke, and wondering why I didn’t study business administration." --Serapli, from the comments

________________________________________________

I have a master's degree in English from Western Washington University. I can't say for sure whether it has added to my cache in the job market. While I do have a job that I love (maybe "love" is a tad strong; revision: like OK most of the time) and that could be considered to be "in my field," I didn't get it because of my education. I got it through a friend. Most of the skills I use on a daily basis come from other jobs I've had in the past or are self-taught; I can't attribute them to my M.A. coursework per se. However, I did gain on-the-job, transferable skills like classroom instruction and nonprofit management (of a literary magazine) that inform my current work. In addition, my time at Western was (and continues to be) a great networking opportunity.

As for the cost, it ran me about $3,000 in loans. The rest was covered by my TA-ship. Was it worth it? Yes. Would it have been worth it had I paid for it out of pocket? Probably not. Given my current salary, there's no way I would be able to pay off the debt in anything close to a timely manner.

Certainly, there are other, non-monetary criteria for measuring the worth of an M.A. (or M.F.A.). I'd be interested in hearing about other standards for measure.

Cold feet and bat ears

The act of watching a play strikes fear into my heart. Only at first. I begin by worrying that one of the cast members won't arrive for this particular show, a little like imaging worst-case-scenario Kate Blanchett's run in with a motor vehicle in Benjamin Button, and then discovering the understudy maybe didn't expect that today would be the day and left her only pair of run-free stockings at home. What then?

What if the actors recognize that I just reached down to temporarily discard of my concession stand snack wrapper and mistook it for fidgeting in the middle of Act III? What if that guy in the audience laughed at the wrong time (say, during a key character death, a la Hamlet) and I feel embarrassed for him?

But the overarching freak out has to do with all the projections I'm placing on the actors in regards to their perseverance and hopes/dreams/feelings. I'm all wrapped up on the stage fright anxiety I never really shook from early high school, which consisted of sitting in Spanish class with my brand-spanking new slobber-enhancing retainers, reciting my conjugates. I also contemplate the overall spirit of the people--with a huge range of experiences--who have committed to getting on stage to recite the exact same two hour play for a few months for a few shows a day, possibly many shows a week. I'm not an actor and I'm not a big character developer when I write (poetry/prose dividing line?), so I know little about the kind of dedication this particular task takes. I'm just sitting there, waiting for the lights to dim, biting my nails over the potential cold feet happening backstage. This is me transferring my own flight (not fight) instinct that threatens to take hold of me re: being an artist/"artist" (cough, cough).

I recognized these emotions and ended up putting all of the above labels on what I was feeling yesterday, at Batboy: The Musical at the Village Players theater in Oak Park. This is not a true/objective reflection of the experience--no one was running off stage or fainting or renouncing acting for a career in investment banking. I'll just always have this lingering feeling anyone, while outwardly committed to their art form, could unpredictably beat feet at any moment.

In the show's program, a small blurb announced Obama's funding just pumped into the NEA grant-giving wing, providing a jolt to its dying little moneybag. This funding, part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, gives $50million over two years. Half of this is expected to go to each state's arts councils for individual grants and the other half to, I suppose, art-related programming in general. Sigh. Let's see for one year, assuming all states are created equal, that's $25m / 50 states =$500,000 per state / 2 = $250,000 for a whole state's fund for individual artists' awards. I think the little blurb in the program was worried. And the world turns...

Next post: a exposition on my moral and "spiritual" commitment to art sans talk of money in any way, shape or form. I'm starting to feel a little grimy framing everything in relationship to money or the lack thereof so often.

b-2-b, or, Why Three Ps Should Have A Book Deal

Hey you, friendly anonymous reader. We’re shamelessly plugging our service. Why? Because it’s a year out from MFAland and we want immediate fame, fortune and success. Here is my dirty plea (on behalf of the three of us) to have this blog made book.

Legend: b-2-b = blog-to-book

.5. CUTTING EDGE. Shameless pleading before we’ve hit our blog prime? It hasn’t been done. Well, consider it done.

1. DIRTY FILTHY MONEY. There are three of us. This means you, kind literary agent, with a keen eye for crème de la crème of the blogosphere, get more for your money. Times are tight. So isn’t three voices/perspectives for the price of one great? Remember, the three of us are perilously close to accomplishing all three objectives of this blog. Yes, enrolling in a PhD program and publishing work is great, but panhandling is not. You wouldn’t want us to resort to that, would you? We should NOT reach our three goals. You can make this dream a reality.

2. WE ARE PATRONS. You cannot call us untutored in the way of patronizing the arts. We’ve seen Didion, Carson, Chabon, Howe and Diaz. The list goes on. We’ve been to many MFA readings. We’ve shouted out until hoarse. We go to bookstores and buy books FOR FUN. We shell out money for copies of our own book.

3. THREE Ps PUBLIC RELATIONS. WE HAVE IT. Kelly & Trina did a bang-up job getting the word out via Tom Kealy’s blog, Speakeasy and Mediabistro. I sat back and basked in the glory. We have a built in fan base, see?

4. SHOCK AND AWE. We’ve got plenty of blasphemous content and/or language up our sleeves. For examples, see b-2-b Fuck You Penguin! or b-2-b Awkward Family Photos. We have posted about the blasphemy of rejection (personal and professional), the most horrendous of all human interaction.

5. THE MUNDANE. We have mastered bantering about daily life. We live it and we know how to summarize it. We can mimic b-2-b Stuff White People Like. We can call it Stuff MFA People Like and it will be clever, mark our words.

MFA People Like

a. working a job that requires an expenditure of hours unequal to the expenditure of brain power/pay. That is, too many hours and not enough brain power/pay
b. Montana
c. sitting in a darkened room when it is sunny outside, reading
d. watching birds through binoculars
e. booze

6. FRIED FOOD. We have eaten friend chicken from Double Front in Missoula, Montana. That means we have one up on another b-2-b, This is Why You’re Fat. We also still all like cheese toast.

7. FURRY ANIMALS. The three of us own five cats combined. This makes for endless contribution to and viewing of b-2-b I Can Has Cheezburger. We have researched our competition.

8. NO SHAME. Please do this thing for us? Our book jacket photo will be amazing.

9. SHAME. Ah—no, I mean…we do this because we want to a) rant and rave, b) keep in touch with other MFAers and c) provide solace [see a)]. Book or no book, the blog will still mosey along, emotional baggage intact.

P is for PhD!: An Update

Here’s the PhD app count.

Nope
UGA
Tennessee

Yay!
Ohio University

Silent As The Grave
FSU

In But No Word on Funding
UNL

Through MFA Blog and P & W Speakeasy prowling, I have determined that “no word,” translated from Admin-Speak to Applicant, probably means waitlisted. I’m not sure if that means waitlisted for funding or just waitlisted. Technically, I have heard nothing. Some people have posted in these forums FSU acceptances and others FSU rejections. Maybe there’s an unofficial waitlist and an official waitlist. Or maybe a baby alligator hatched in the hard drive. Or maybe…where are Gogol or Kafka when you need them?

I should probably contact the English departments but don’t want to be the one person who cracks the fragile eggshell mind. I feel badly for admin workers not paid enough to put a face on the unwieldy, disorganized, underfunded clusterfuck that is the American public university. You know they keep sawed off shotguns under that growing pile of manila folders. What if it’s my call that activates the inner sniper? Jo Ann Beard wrote the defining essay on the collegiate spree killer, so there’s not even a Best American in it for me.

I have noticed a general trend this year, in that lack of funded spots are now (at least partially) blamed on “the economy,” although I am suspect. After all, it was my understanding that PhD progs admitted hardly anyone to begin with. Does that mean Tenn cut back from one to zero spots this year? FSU (according to anonymous internet sources) apparently cut back “one or two” spots due to budget constraints. UNL has “two or three” funded positions.

These “this or that” numbers, however, appear to be the best investigators can do. I know times are hard for educators, because I’m guessing schools don’t want to accept people only be stripped of funding later.

I would nonetheless like to make a plea for answers that are direct as possible. I suspect the caginess stems from the fact that writers and educators are in charge, and no one wants to be the meany. Confront liberals with hard questions and they bury their heads in the organic, fair trade sand. Still, it’s wrong (wrong, I say!) for PhD progs to be even less forthcoming with funding info than MFAs. It’s one thing to decide you are willing to wing it and risk loans for 2 years. But five?

P is for PhD!

I just received a call from Ohio University. I'm in their PhD program for nonfiction.

OU offers $15,000 — untold riches for a grad student.

P as in PhD: A Reprise and a Brief Rant

To recap, I applied to two PhD programs and was accepted to one, Nebraska, but without funding. I decided to defer and work on my book for a year instead submerging myself in lit coursework. Good decision, but if an agent doesn't bite on my proposal, then I'll try to break in the old fashioned way: Get the University press to publish my dissertation. Then I have that gold star needed for my job and visiting writer apps.

Options. The way of the unknown writer is to try any and everything. So...I'm thinking I should cast a wider PhD net this time around, which means I have to decide about the GRE Subject test in the next few days. Do I really want to pay $130 (!) to not know the answers to a series of questions about fusty British fuckwits? Yet three programs on my list (USC, Knoxville, UGA) all require it. I don't believe for a red hot second that any creative writer faculty member cares about the score I get. FSU and UNL don't even require it. (Why I applied). That I would waste time studying isn't an issue.

But $130 is a lot of money for a student loan living poorling. And it's a scam. How can the GRE not be insanely profitable? You hire a few academics to write questions, rent a room and collect the cash. Furthermore, the test is outdated. It might as well be called The Thackeray Subject Test.

Complicating things further is that USC and Knoxville both accept about two students every return of Pluto. The chance of admission is very slim. Sigh.

Hangin' Tough

New Kids in the Block are playing the New Orleans Arena. I picture threadbare Members Only jackets, male pattern baldness, formation dancing, Alleve, Metarie housewives in Coldwater Creek matchables, Cosmos in turquoise plastic tumblers.

As we can see, the post-MFA adjustment is taking time. A fellow Montana MFA grad and I are sharing her studio. Sleeping on the same air mattress. Scrambling eggs out of our single skillet. Reinflating the air mattress. A sampling of college friends, where they are now: head of the radiology dept at Duke University, hi-profile Wall Street stockbroker, professor at Emory working with legislation to protect battered women. As my parents like to remind me, aside from bad marks in cursive writing, my report card showed promise. What went wrong here? A-R-T. Ohnonono, I couldn’t work in a hospital or court or office. I must create.

For work I’m teaching online where I’m learning the joys of emoticons, exclamation points and the sandwich technique:

Dear Administrators:

I am eager to embark on this exciting opportunity. I noticed you don’t pay for training. Is that legal? Again, thanks for this exciting opportunity.

The pay is actually decent, once I actually start teaching (a month from now? A year? From the grave?) For most this job is a part time gig for parents so they afford karate lessons as they organize medical records at some hospital somewhere. Teaching online is the new Tetrus. I’m holding out on full time so I can work on my book. Take my MFA third year, as I’m explaining it. It’s hard. The Visa emits tendrils of smoke as I swipe. I scan the restaurant employment ads with the shameful hungered stealth of drunk-driving by an ex’s house. I worked in the biz for years, have the necessary experience to land a fat job where I can pocket $200 plus a night. For the mere price of my soul. Double hard is that post-Katrina, all the best restaurants in town are (supposedly) in dire need of staff.

The more I sit in hipster coffee shops with my iBook with other black-squared glasses wearing hipsters the more the self-loathing foments.

Boo-Yah!

$500 from the Provost for Prague!

I wasn't holding out much hope since I'll have graduated by the time I actually take the trip. I guess the Provost sees that it can only help to have students (current or former) networking internationally. See--asking for money is always worth a try, regardless of doubts about potential success.

Update: And $800 from the President's Office.

On Squeezing Stones

It's a sad day, the end of an era, really. I sent what will very likely be my last travel funding proposals (for the WMU Prague Summer Program) to the Office of the President and the Provost today. And I shot for the moon on this one--to the tune of $3,700. I'd say that even if I don't get any funds, I've had a good run at UM. The University paid for my trip to AWP in NYC in January and for all but $400 of my trip to Russia last year. At this point, any further cash is icing on the cake. Unfortunately, now I have to strike out in search of new funding sources. I have to learn a whole new set of ropes in my ongoing effort to soak The Man for my art. But before I go, these are my tips for traveling on a University's dime:

1. Think big. Apply to every international writing program, retreat, and conference that comes along, no matter how costly.

2. Come up with a budget. Include everything you might possibly have to pay for in this budget: airfare, rental cars, gas money, program tuition/conference registration, per diem meal costs, accommodations, cab fare, visas, bus passes, etc. Always round up on any figure in your budget.

3. Come up with a proposal. How will this travel contribute to your learning? How might it possibly benefit the university? Get creative. Embrace your inner bullshitter. You can justify any expense, and you know it.

4. Go outside your department. If your department is anything like mine, it's small potatoes in the funding realm. The university president's office, however, has discretionary funds for just such occasions. So does the provost's office. So, possibly, does the Dean of Arts and Sciences (depending on your university). Send your proposals and budgets to these people. Don't be shy. In addition, the Graduate Student Association or equivalent usually has some money to throw at worthy causes, so hit them up, too.

5. Sometimes you'll need to purchase tickets and reservations on a credit card and be reimbursed after the fact. Don't sweat it. Airline tickets and hotels are the easiest things for universities to justify reimbursing, so count on those being covered before incidentals like program tuition or conference registration. Food is your least likely bet.

Appendix: AWP hints

There are lots of reasons to go to the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) annual conference: networking, parties, readings, parties, free books and swag, parties, etc. I've been to AWP twice now the U-dime. Both times, I sent papers to and was accepted by the AWP Pedagogy Forum. The "paper" is really a 1-page curriculum idea for the creative writing classroom. I've never actually taught creative writing, but this is not a roadblock to having ideas about how I would teach it if given the chance. Anyway, having a paper accepted at the conference is a foolproof way of getting at least some funding.

Otherwise, get involved with your program's literary magazine and put together a proposal to represent said magazine at the conference's bookfair. Your school's litmag may already have plans or policies in place for this.



The money is there. You just have to make the commitment to finding it and making it your own. You work hard. You deserve some perks. There will likely never be another time when the money is this easy. Take advantage of it. TAKE EVERYTHING YOU CAN GET.