I’m almost positive at this point that I did not get in to the PhD program at OU, the only school to which I applied this year. I knew already that my chances were slim, but with every day that passes and I hear nothing, it’s more and more likely that I’m going to get a form rejection in the mail in a week or two. I know that the OU faculty usually makes their decisions by the end of February, and I know, also, that if you get in, you hear right away, but if you don’t, you hear much later.

I’m incredibly disappointed. I felt like OU was my best chance to get a PhD, for a number of reasons. If I can’t get in here, I don’t think I can get in anywhere.

So who cares, you might be wondering. It’s not like a PhD would have guaranteed me a tenure-track job. True. But aside from the fact that the main reason I wanted to go back to school was simply because I want to be back in school—I like school—I think the MFA is on its way out as a terminal degree.

Because I’ve been realizing I won’t get in to OU, I’ve been frantically looking for jobs that I can apply for. I should have done this in the fall, but I was so overwhelmed with other things, I just never got around to it. At this point, there are few positions that have yet to be filled. There are some, though, and I’ve been pouring over each one that I find, feeling my heart sink a little bit more each time I see PhD listed as a preferred degree, if not required. Many of these are community college jobs, non-tenure-track. Still, still they prefer candidates to have a PhD.  It doesn’t mean I can’t apply, but it DOES mean it’s unlikely my application will be taken too seriously.

In this job search, I haven’t found a single position that doesn’t at least list a PhD as preferred. Not a single one. In the past, I’ve found a handful, but it’s rare. Colleges and universities, it seems, are considering MFA’s only when they have to anymore. Enough people have PhD’s that they don’t really need to accept a master’s degree as terminal. As much as I’d like to say it isn’t fair, I know that, all other things equal—and they often will be—it makes perfect sense to want to hire the person with the highest level of education.

So I’m finding myself feeling kind of stuck. Even if I find a job now with my MFA, it seems unlikely that I’ll be able to move up to anything more permanent without a PhD. I suspect within five years or so, MFA’s won’t be considered terminal at all. Yet the school I felt I had the best chance of getting into doesn’t want me.

So what do I do? I don’t know. Apply for the few jobs for which I’m qualified, I guess, and hope for the best. And in a few years, when my degree isn’t enough to qualify me for any jobs? I really don’t know yet. I’m going to have to really evaluate my career prospects and figure out the right path, and soon.

As you probably know, I decided this year to gamble on applying to a PhD in Creative Writing program. It’s a gamble for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is that going through the application process cost me a considerable amount of time and money (roughly $275, all told, and I only applied to one school!). I talked last week about how I don’t hold any delusions about my chances of getting in, but if, by some miracle, I do get in, I’ll be elated.

How come, you ask? Why do I want to spend five years working toward a degree that may not do me any good out in the real world? I know getting a PhD won’t guarantee me a job. I do think it’ll increase my chances, but realistically, not by much. To get a good job as an English professor, I need, more than anything, to just get lucky. There are far more applicants than there are actual jobs in this field, so, while having a PhD might help me be more competitive, the chances are still good that I would get a PhD and still not be able to find full-time work.

But that all has to do with what I would do with the degree after graduation. That’s not actually the reason I want to go for the degree. The truth is, I want to go for a PhD because I love being a student and I want to be a student again, if only for a little while. My time in my MFA program was the happiest, most fulfilling of my life. I learned so much, grew so much. I met lots of amazing people and became immersed in a world I had hardly known existed before.

I know that going back to school for a PhD wouldn’t exactly replicate my experience as an MFA student. I’ve already learned much of what there is to learn about being a writer, and I’m already part of the writing world. Still, I know studying with a new set of professors and students will only help me become an even better writer. I miss workshop, and I miss taking other types of classes too. I never did feel like I got a very firm grounding in theory and criticism, and every lit course is completely new—even when you’ve already read and discussed the books the course covers.

I love discussing literature. I love learning new factoids about literary history. I love discovering my own interpretations and opinions through the research process of writing a paper (though I admit, writing actual papers isn’t always my favorite thing, although even that often brings with it its own sort of pleasure). And yes, I love giving and getting feedback in workshop. I love talking writing with other writers.

It’s like that adage: Some people want to write; others want to have written. I think some people want to be PhD students, and others want to have earned PhD’s. There’s nothing wrong with either perspective. In fact, logically, making the time commitment to earn a PhD probably should be the result of a calculated decision about the future. But for me, I just don’t have the energy to think too much about the future. When I do, I start to feel overwhelmed and depressed. I don’t know if I’ll ever find a full-time job in academia, but I do know that I would get a lot out of (and enjoy the heck out of) being in a PhD program. The degree itself, for me, is beside the point. When I ask myself what I would like to spend the next few years doing, I can’t think of anything that I’d rather do than be back in school.

The deadline for applications to the PhD in Creative Writing program at Ohio University passed this week. I got my application materials in a couple of weeks ago and won’t know whether I got in or not for a couple of months, but I’ve decided to assume I won’t get in and make plans for next year accordingly. It’s unlikely that I’ll get in, you see, and accepting that now, being prepared for it, will help soften the blow when it comes.

I’m not being pessimistic. The truth is it’s just incredibly, incredibly difficult to get in to a PhD in Creative Writing program, way, way more difficult than getting in to an MFA program. The PhD applicant pool has been distilled down to only people who already have master’s degrees. Most of them are published, and probably many have published in more impressive journals than I. I imagine that most of them probably haven’t published a book yet, but even then, it’s not unlikely that I won’t be the only applicant with a book under her belt.

It’s incredibly competitive, to put it short, and even though I feel good about my application, even though I do have a book, even though my GRE scores were surprisingly high, still, I can’t be sure I’ll be the single strongest applicant this year, and that’s what you’ve got to be to get in, at least at OU. They only admit one fiction PhD student each year, so having a strong application is one thing, but you’ve got to have the strongest to get in.

I’m choosing to believe I will be among their top choices. I don’t know how many applications they’ll get this year, but let’s say they get about forty (that seems like a reasonable guess based on what I know about these things). All forty, as I said, have already earned MFA’s or MA’s, and probably at least thirty of them have been publishing regularly for some time. Probably most of them are good writers, but the selection committee will find reasons—they’ll have to—to whittle the list down to say five or ten. I’ve decided to believe I’ll make it that far because I did feel good about the materials I sent in.

But from there, it basically feels like it’s down to chance. At that point, any choice would probably be a “right” choice; all of those applicants have proven themselves enough to get in. But only one can. The odds are against me, then. They’ll pick one person, and no matter how many applicants they narrow it down to, probability tells me the one most likely won’t be me.

So rather than letting myself get carried away hoping for something that probably won’t happen, I’m going to face reality now and move forward with the understanding that it isn’t going to happen. I see no harm in this plan since if I do get in, it will be a wonderful surprise, and if I don’t, I’ll already have made peace with the news before I even got it. I probably won’t get in, and it’s better for me to accept that now and move on.

Now that I’m on winter break, I’ve been finalizing my application for the PhD program in Creative Writing at Ohio University. I feel good about my application. I got my official GRE results the other day, and in spite of my worries about the Analytical Writing section, I got a 5.5. I’m in the 97^th percentile for verbal and the 96^th for writing. My quantitative remains very low (although I did do better this time than last time), but that shouldn’t matter. I’ve got a published book under my belt, a writing sample that I feel is pretty strong, great letters of recommendation—I think I stand a decent chance.

But. You just never know, do you? Especially considering I’m only applying to one school.

I know what you’re thinking. Did she just type what I think she typed? ONE SCHOOL? Is she CRAZY? The answers are yes, yes, and I don’t think so, respectively.

Here’s the thing: I want to go to Ohio University. I already live in Athens, for one thing. My husband has a good job working as the managing editor of one of their journals, a job he loves and doesn’t want to quit. I’m a huge fan of Joan Connor, one of the fiction faculty members. I want to study under Joan. And I want to study with my friends Jolynn and Kelly. Yes, Ohio University is where I want to go.

But yes, I know, you’re supposed to cast a wide net. You’re not supposed to get too hung up on one specific program. PhD programs are crazy competitive. It’s crazy, and crazy cocky, to assume you’ll get in to your top choice.

Well I’m not assuming I’ll get in. But at this point, I’ve decided I can’t risk spending a ton of money to apply to a ton of different schools, when the truth is we might just be better off sticking around here for a while. If I don’t get in to OU, then maybe I’ll apply to more schools next year, but leaving Athens means giving up Damien’s job benefits. With a small child to take care of, it’s hard to give up insurance in the hopes of finding something better down the road. It’s not like a PhD will guarantee me a full-time job. I might get a PhD and still be stuck adjuncting, like I’m doing now.  

Still. I want a PhD. And not even just the degree itself—although I must admit, I do like the idea of being Doctor Cowger. I want to be back in school. I miss being a grad student. I love taking classes. I love workshop. And putting this application together has just made me realize how badly I do want this. So this year, I’m only applying to OU. I’m really hoping that I’ll get in and won’t have to start thinking about a Plan B, but if, come spring, I receive that painful little rejection letter in my mailbox, Damien and I will sit down and talk about the future, and if we decide it’s the right thing for our family, I’ll apply to other schools next year.

But here’s hoping it doesn’t come to that. Here’s hoping I get in to OU.

This past week I took the GRE for the second time in my life, and I did surprisingly well on the verbal portion of the test. The first time I took the test, I didn’t prepare at all, and I was embarrassed by my verbal score of 500. This time, I decided to prepare, and it was definitely worth it. The new scoring system is different from the old—now the quantitative and verbal sections each score out of 170 instead of 800—but I think my old score would have been about a 146 on the new scale. My new score, I’m proud to share, is 167—I only lost 3 points total! I don’t know yet what percentile that puts me in, but I’m sure I’ll be happy with the final report.

I thought it might be useful to share how I prepared for the test this time around, in case anyone might be planning to take or retake the GRE too. I did four things to study:

1.      For the past several months, I’ve been studying with vocabulary flashcards. The words came from words that I came cross while reading. Any time I found a word that I didn’t know, I would write it down, look it up, and create a flashcard for it. I reviewed my flashcards whenever I had spare time. I even brought them with me to class and quizzed myself with them while my students did free-writes.

Interestingly enough, many of the the words I added to my flashcards do appear on GRE vocab lists. The words you come across in the real world are the same words the GRE tests you over, so that’s nice to know.

2.      About a month before my exam, I downloaded a GRE vocab app. I wish I would have thought of this sooner. It didn’t occur to me to look for an app until my mom mentioned to me that that was how a friend of hers studied for her GRE. I looked into it, and there were an overwhelming number of GRE verbal prep apps, many of them free. I did some research online and decided to go with Barron’s Essential GRE Words, which cost me about $5.

What I liked about this app is that it gives you the 800 most commonly used GRE words. Many of the free apps either give you way less or way more—800 seemed to me like a nice large number that was not SO large it would feel overwhelming in the amount of time I had to study. Even better than that, though, the app divides the words into the “300 Absolutely Essential Words” and the rest. The top 300 words are the words that by far show up the most often on the exam. You can study with those words first. When you’ve mastered them, you can then switch to studying all 800 words. The 300 most common will still show up, then, so you can review them as you study the other 500 words.

Also, this app lets you create two piles of flashcards: “Know It” and “Study It.” If you don’t feel you need to review a particular word, you just add it to your “Know It” pile, and that word won’t come up anymore. I used the “Know It” pile pretty sparingly, though, because I didn’t see the harm in reviewing a word even after I was pretty sure I had it down.

The downside of this app is that the sample quizzes were useless. They haven’t been updated for the type of question that appears on the new GRE. If you go with this app, don’t waste your time with the quizzes. For $5, too, I would say that’s a pretty serious flaw in the app. I know $5 isn’t much, but it’s pretty expensive for an app. I’m sure there are cheaper or even free options that give you the same words without the worthless practice quizzes.

Either way, this app helped me quite a lot. I put it on my iPod and my phone both, so I always had it with me wherever I was. When I would be waiting in line or whatever I would study the app, and in the month I had it, I got through the “300 Absolutely Essential Words” pretty handily. If I had started sooner, I could have moved on to the other 500. If you have a device on which you can put apps, I definitely recommend downloading a GRE prep app as you prepare.

3.      About a month, give or take a week or so, before the exam, I started reviewing with a hand-me-down prep book: Kaplan’s GRE Verbal Workbook (from 2011). The book was only a year old, so it had been updated for the current version of the test. This book was incredibly useful. It walked me through exactly what type of questions to expect and gave me advice on how to approach the questions.

It also had several practice tests. The week or so leading up to the big day, I took a practice test a day. I think the practice tests really helped put me in the right mindset for the exam. Also, the practice tests come with detailed explanations of each answer, so after you score your results, you can review the answers you got wrong and learn about why the right answer is the right answer. This was arguably the most useful tool in all of my GRE preparation.

4.      The final step I took to prepare for the verbal part of the GRE was downloading the free Power Prep II software from the GRE website. I didn’t do this until the day before I took the test, and while that might seem strange, I think that timeline worked just fine. I used the software to take a timed sample test (I only took the verbal parts). The main thing this software helped me with was it gave me an idea of what the actual screens and computer functions would be like on the actual exam. I learned how to mark a question to review at the end, where the buttons would be on the screen, etc. While the system is fairly intuitive and you can certainly figure it out the day of the exam, having practiced with it ahead of time took away any anxiety I might have felt over the logistics of the test itself.

Also, the sample test gave me a score, which I found useful. I got a 163. I had (pretty arbitrarily) decided I wanted to get at least a 160, so getting a 163 on the sample test made me feel really confident on test day. Who knows? Maybe that extra bit of confidence is what pushed my actual score up to 167, since I wasn’t distracted by test anxiety.

Things I would do different if I had it to do again: While the only thing I think I would change in my preparation for the verbal part of the exam would be to have downloaded and started studying with the Barron’s app earlier, if I had it to all over again, I would prepare for the other two parts of the exam at least a little bit.

Quantitative: I made the executive decision early on not to bother preparing for the quantitative part of the GRE. While I still stand by my claim that my math skills shouldn’t matter for an English degree, I do worry that doing so poorly on a test—any test—might give the committee reviewing applications pause. Especially if they have two applicants who are otherwise fairly close, I could see the quantitative score on the GRE being used as a sort of tie-breaker.

After taking the test, I’m positive that I could have done very well had I taken the time to review basic arithmetic and algebra rules. The GRE tests you over math skills that you DO NOT NEED OR USE in daily life, so if you’re like me, and you haven’t taken a math class since you were 17, it’s probably not a bad idea to refresh your memory on these basic rules and equations. Though these skills are utterly useless in my life, I can see that doing very poorly on a test that is intended to gauge your abilities to recognize and perform very basic, fundamental math problems might make me look like a bit of a dunce.

Analytic Writing: I falsely assumed that since I grade and tutor other people’s college level essays for a living, I wouldn’t need to spend any time preparing for this part of the test. I don’t think I needed to spend much time, but if I could do it over again, I would have done a few practice essays from practice prompts ahead of time. I hadn’t actually written an essay in over three years, so when I got started on the first of the two essay prompts on the exam, I found that I had to sort of refresh my skills. I got halfway through the time allotted to me before I realized the scope of my thesis was too complex to be tackled in thirty minutes. But 15 minutes wasn’t sufficient time to start over. As a result, my first essay was lousy. I know it was lousy. If I were grading it, I would give it a very low grade. My second essay was much better, but I know that my Analytical Writing score is going to go way down this time (I got a 5.5 the first time around).

I think it would have been useful to practice with a sample essay or two ahead of time, if for no other reason than to get a feel for the limitations of the thirty minute deadline. There’s no reason why someone like me—with a master’s degree in English, who has published scholarly essays, who teaches and tutors college English—should not be getting at least a 5.5 on my Analytical Writing score. I should have taken the hour or so to prepare. I believe it would have made all the difference.

I’ve been thinking lately about routines. I read a recent article—which, I apologize, I was unable to track down and link to—covering the writing routines of various well-known authors. While certainly different writers write in their own different ways, it was striking the number of writers who routinely write first thing in the morning every day.

Now, of course, these were mostly (if not entirely) authors who make a living off of their writing—a dying breed, unfortunately—so it was surely much easier for these writers, whose sole job is to write and write well, to find the time to write first thing in the morning for several hours (and many of them would then return to writing again later in the day). Most of us have jobs to get ready for and papers to grade, children to feed and chores to do. For most of us, it’s hard to justify writing first and foremost every single day.

But it got me thinking about my own routines and productivity. The period of time when I was unequivocally the most productive was when I was in grad school. I wrote two full length books, and several stories besides, during my tenure as an MFA student at the University of Alaska Fairbanks (Only one of those books got published, but still . . .).

While I was in grad school, Damien used to have to go in to work at like 6 or 6:30 Monday through Friday. I used to get up with him to spend some time together before he had to go in. Then, when he would leave for work, I would exercise, then write. The earliest I ever had to be anywhere was 10:00, and most days, I didn’t have to be on campus until later than that. So I handily managed an hour of exercise and a couple hours of writing before it was time to start getting ready to go in myself.

The result was that I wrote a lot more than I’ve ever written in my entire life. Some days, I would write more later in the day; other days, I wouldn’t. But either way, writing at the beginning of the day like that was an excellent way to start my days. I felt content with myself for having already gotten a fair amount of work done, and I could relax and just enjoy the rest of my days. And when I did write again, it was often because writing in the morning like that got me thinking about whatever project I was working on early in the day. Those thoughts would stay with me, simmering on the back burner, throughout the day.

After grad school, things got more difficult. I’ve tried a variety of different routines. For a while, I was setting my alarm for an hour before I needed to get up so I could write for at least an hour first thing. That worked well, while I did it—half the time, Damien would still be asleep, and the other half, he knew to leave me alone to write. It was a peaceful, relaxing way to start the day, sitting on the couch with my laptap and a cup of coffee.

But at other times, I tried different routines. I’ve tried writing at the end of the day instead of the beginning. I’ve tried not regulating when I write at all, instead regulating the amount of work I do. I’ve tried forcing myself to write for X amount of time per day, or an average of X amount of time per month. I’ve tried setting goals based on specific outcomes, such as complete X scene by the end of the day or finish X chapter by the end of the week. Nothing has ever worked as well as my grad school routine—getting up at around 5, exercising at around 6, and beginning writing at around 7.

Of course, a fat lot of good it does me to know that, now that I’m a mother. With a toddler added in to the equation, establishing and sticking to a writing routine has become almost impossible (note the “almost”). Lately, I’ve been writing after she goes to bed at night and using her nap time to grade papers and do other teaching tasks. This works well in that, at the end of the day, I have time, plenty of time, wonderfully unadulterated time, since Amie is asleep and Damien grades papers at the end of the day himself. But I’m tired at the end of the day. My mind doesn’t function the way it does earlier, and I find that, though I can write late at night, I can’t write as well or as much as I can first thing in the morning.

So I’ve decided I need to rethink and rework my writing schedule, establish a new routine, one that allows me to write when the writing’s good. I can’t write first thing in the morning like I used to—Amie wakes up when I do, unfortunately, no matter how hard I try to be quiet and not disturb her—but I’m sure there’s a way to find time to write during the day, while my mind is fresh and unclouded. The trick is that I need to just establish a routine—something that will work for me and Amie and Damien combined—and then stick to it, every day, without fail. I know routines don’t work for everybody, but they sure seem to work for an awful lot of highly productive writers, and I know from my own experience that they definitely work for me.

I’ve been preparing to retake the GRE this December, so I can apply to a PhD program for next year. The decision to (try to) go for a PhD deserves its own post, so I won’t get into that now. What I do want to talk about it is vocabulary.

See, when I took the GRE the first time around, seven years ago—has it really been that long?—I didn’t bother preparing at all, and I was pretty mortified by my verbal score. On the quantitative side, I did terrible—bottom 25% percent—but that didn’t surprise me at all, nor did I figure it would matter, since I was applying for MFA in creative writing programs. I got in to two of the three schools I applied, so my scores must not have held me back too much.

Still. That verbal score, it stuck with me. I’ll just come out and say it—I got a 500. I was ranked in the 61% percentile (meaning 39% of people who took the test did better than me). I did great on the writing part, but that verbal score surprised me. I’m a writer. I was an English major. I read all the time. Why was I not scoring up way at the top on the verbal part of the test?

Seven years have passed since then. That’s seven more years of reading, six-and-a-half years of teaching experience, and three years of graduate school (in English). I’d like to think my verbal score will improve this time, but to hedge my bets, I’m working on my vocabulary.

As I’ve been studying my new words, I’ve been focusing on expanding my vocabulary for real and not just memorizing a bunch of words that I’ll forget as soon as I take the exam. I want to actually have a stronger vocabulary, not just for this exam, not just so I can get into a PhD program. I want to have a stronger vocabulary because that’s important—isn’t it?—as a writer.

When I got the results of my first GRE, I tried to make myself feel better by reminding myself that I’m not a fan of bombastic prose (although I didn’t use the word “bombastic”—that’s a word I learned as I’ve been preparing for the test this time around). Concision and simplicity, minimalism, that’s what I’m drawn to as a reader. Couldn’t I write, then, and write well, even if my vocabulary was only better than 61% of college graduates (and really, it’s 61% of college graduates planning to go on to grad school, since that’s who takes the GRE)?

The answer is obviously yes—I mean, I’ve gone on to become a published writer; I won an award to publish my first book, for cripe’s sake—but, as Reverend Lovejoy from The Simpsons would point out, the answer is, “Yes with a but.” Yes, I can write well with an only just higher than average vocabulary. But I can write better with an even better vocabulary.

As I’ve been learning new words, I keep coming across words that I really like, words that I can’t help but imagine using in future stories, words that have more interesting and refined meanings than their simpler counterparts. These words can open the door to all kinds of interesting metaphors and ideas, and though I still think it’s important (for my tastes) that readers shouldn’t have to hold your book in one hand and a dictionary in the other, I do think my writing can only stand to improve from the careful, unobtrusive addition of these less common but oh-so expressive words here and there.

I’ve said this before and I’ve always gone back on it, but you have to believe me, this time I really mean it: I’m done with my thesis novel. Finished. I’ve officially moved it to my “Failed Attempts” folder, from whence it shall never return. When I had said I was going to move it to my “Failed Attempts” folder in the past, I lied. Well, I didn’t lie, exactly. I was planning to do it. But when it came time to actually make the cut and paste, it just felt too, too, I don’t know, too something. Too painful. But this time, it’s already moved. It shall forever be considered just another one of my failed practice novels.

How do I know I’m really going to stick with it this time? Because this time, it felt really good, like a relief. It felt right. This time, I decided, I really am ready to move on.

And not only that, but this is the first time I’ve looked at the novel and thought, Eh, it’s not really that great. I got to this point because I was working on yet another revision of the novel, with the intention of entering it into Fence’s Modern Prose contest. This revision was sort of a combination of my most recent draft and some earlier drafts, and I do think the result was better than what I’d been sending around. When I had been cutting things in previous revisions, I actually cut some scenes that I now think are pretty integral to the reader’s understanding of certain characters, so with those scenes woven back into the story, everything felt a lot stronger.

But as I was working on it, I started really analyzing how well some of the components of the novel are working. There are some great things in this story, I think. Some of the writing is really strong, and some of the moments feel perfect. But there are some really serious problems with a couple of the characters, leaving those characters feeling very flat on the page. There are points that lag, too, and I almost feel like it’s a novella that’s been stretched in to an entire novel.

In short, I don’t think I want it to get published. I don’t think it reflects what I’m capable of. I can do better. I’m a much better writer now than I was when I began this novel. My first drafts, now, need less work than this nth draft of my thesis would still need, and I think it would be a better use of my time to work on a new first draft of a new novel.

Which is exactly what I’m doing right now. And the truth is, I’m having way more fun and am way more interested in this new novel than I am in reliving for the millionth time the same story from my thesis. I’m just so sick of Timothy Bannister and his dead father—there, I said it. I don’t want to work on this novel anymore. I don’t want to send it out. I don’t want it to get published.

But that doesn’t mean that those few years I spent working on it were a waste. I learned a lot about how to write a novel from this experience. I made a lot of mistakes and learned how to fix them, and I think my next novel will be much stronger from draft one as a result. Maybe the next one will be a practice novel too, who knows? But I do know that this last one definitely was, and finally—FINALLY—I’m okay with accepting it and moving on.

I feel like I post a lot complaining about the woes of academia, especially teaching adjunct. This, I promise, will not be one of those times.

For the past three years or so—pretty much ever since I graduated with my MFA and realized that the best job I could hope to get with the degree was part-time, adjunct work that offers no benefits or stability—I’ve been seriously considering switching careers and becoming a librarian. In fact, as recently as this past April, I was talking to some of the professors at the Columbus campus of the Kent State MLIS program and making plans to start in the program with a GA this coming fall.

But. I backed out. Because Columbus is an hour and a half drive from Athens, where I live. Because the GA position would require me to be on campus four days a week. Because it paid even less than teaching adjunct does, and I can’t afford to put Ami into daycare (nor do I really want to, to be honest) as it is.

At least, those are the reasons I told myself at the time. The real reason I changed my mind and instead signed up to teach classes in the fall at the community college where I work is that, somewhere deep down inside me, I’d rather teach.

There are a lot of things that are frustrating about carving out a career for yourself as a college instructor. Teaching adjunct pays abominably and you never know, from semester to semester, how many classes you’ll be offered (or whether the classes you did get will get cancelled due to under-enrollment just before the semester begins). Landing a full-time professor job feels impossible at times. I used to think I just needed to publish a book, but the truth is, even with a book published, I’m still not even getting contacted for interviews, let alone being offered any positions. And even if I did land a full-time job, there are frustrating things about that too. Professors are expected to publish regularly—you know, the “publish or die” mentality we always hear about—and to be honest, trying to get published and dealing with rejection is hard enough without my career hanging in the balance. Plus, I always hear professors objecting to the amount of time they have during the school year to actually write, between classes and committee work and editorial duties for their school’s journal and reading student theses and, and, and . . .

But the truth is, for a writer, teaching is about the best gig I can imagine. Even now, as I teach adjunct, I feel really lucky when I consider the alternative possibilities. Teaching creative writing, for one thing, holds you accountable to be writing yourself—otherwise, you feel like a fraud (Amy Hempl pointed this out when she was here for this year’s Lit Fest. She is so right!). It also makes you feel really inspired. Teaching comp and other English courses also has its benefits. Believe it or not, you learn a lot from your students and from trying to teach them the things you know but sometimes forget to apply to your own work.

Aside from the benefits of teaching itself, being a teacher does afford you a lot of time to write and, in my case, time to be home with your child and be there with her as she grows up. I taught online for the first nine months of Ami’s life. I can’t think of another career that would have allowed me to work entirely from home while I was raising my baby. Starting this summer, I began commuting back to campus one day a week, which I’ll continue doing through the fall. A job that only requires me to physically come in to work one day a week, well that’s pretty awesome, don’t you think?

Teaching three or so classes at a time leaves me with plenty of time to write. Yeah, I get that if I had a full-time job, I’d have a lot of additional demands beyond simply teaching, but even in that case, you get the summers and most of the winters off. Who can reasonably complain about having three months off every single year (and if you have tenure, an entire year off for sabbatical every seven years)? Full-timers have plenty of time to write. You could easily write a full draft of an entire book every summer, if you wanted to. If I was a librarian, I would have to work year-round, and I would have way less time to write, as a result.

So in spite of all my bitching and my “grass is greener” nonsense, I’m really lucky to be in the field I’m in. Teaching is the perfect profession for a writer, at least for me. I hope, of course, to someday land a full-time job, to buy a home with a yard and a swing set for Amalie, to plant ourselves somewhere and just live there, period, but in the meantime, teaching adjunct isn’t so bad. I’m glad I’m a teacher—I’m going to go ahead and say it. And here it is, in writing, so the next time I start getting all wishy washy about what I want to do with my life, someone can point me to this blog post right here and remind me how lucky I truly am.

Last year, I got back from AWP to find, in my stack of mail, a manuscript request from an agent. His eventual rejection of my novel pointed out that I had “impressive credentials.” This year, I returned from AWP to a form rejection for a job. These facts pretty much sum up the difference between how I felt about having a published book a year ago—hopeful, confident that it somehow mattered—and how I feel about it now.

One rejection from a job isn’t such a big deal, you’re right, but I haven’t even landed a single interview, not even for the jobs I would have otherwise thought I’m well qualified for. I’ve heard that the job market for fiction professors is particularly competitive, that many of the applicants have multiple books published by major presses, have appeared in Best American and the Pushcart anthologies, and have logged a few years of Visiting Writer experience. They are, you see, much farther along in their careers than someone like me, who has only one measly book and has been teaching adjunct at a community college for the past three years.

And the thing is, I know, I guess I’ve known for a while, that the standard route is to apply for Visiting Writer positions (the full year stints) after publishing a first book but before applying for full time jobs. A few years of Visiting Writer gigs allows you to fill out your CV a bit while buying yourself time to get a second or maybe even third book out there. But I have a small child to take care of. I can’t move my family from place to place every year—I want my daughter to grow up in a more stable environment. On top of that, I’m in my freakin’ thirties, for cripe’s sake. I’m starting to feel a bit old to be cobbling together part time work and temporary positions.

So this all raises the question, why am I wasting my time in a field where I’ll be struggling paycheck to paycheck for most of my life? Why am I so keen to stay in a field where an entry level position is a part time job at a lousy salary, a field where it will take years of hard work and perseverance to get to a point where I can actually do more than just scrape by? I get enough rejection from the actual publishing side of being a writer. Do I really want to stay in a career where I get rejected from having a decent job too?

The job prospects for the other field I’m interested in—children’s librarianship—aren’t much better. The children’s librarian at our local library only works part time, too, and when I asked her a while ago for advice on entering into the field, she warned me that the pay is low and the jobs, hard to come by.

Great.

What am I doing with my life?

I don’t know. Maybe I’m asking too much. Damien has a good part time job as the Managing Editor of New Ohio Review. He has benefits, and though he doesn’t make much money, between the two of us, we can teach enough classes as adjuncts to bring in the extra we need to pay the bills and feed our child. Maybe I should just be happy with what we’ve got and feel lucky we’ve got the degrees and experience to have jobs at all, no matter how unreliable.

Still, it’s so depressing to think that our daughter is growing up in a family where neither parent has a full time job. Are we setting a bad example for Amalie? Should we give up and go out and get office jobs? I couldn’t tell you. I really don’t know.

Kathryn Nuernberger is the author of the poetry collection Rag & Bone, which was awarded the Elixir Press Antivenom Prize. Her poetry, which is raw and real and exceptionally well crafted, has appeared in numerous literary journals. She teaches full-time now at Central Missouri University and is the Poetry Editor for Pleiades, but when I met Nuernberger, she was finishing up her PhD in Poetry at Ohio University, where she worked as the Assistant Editor of New Ohio Review and, later, the Editor of Quarter After Eight. In spite of her busy schedule as a professor, editor, and mother of an adorable one-and-a-half year old, Nuernberger found the time to answer some questions about her experience winning a book publication contest.

Can you tell us a little bit about the process of writing and revising Rag & Bone? You hold an MFA and a PhD, right? Were any of the poems in this book included in your thesis or dissertation?

I never had the idea that I was writing a book – that task is so monumental I don’t think I could have written a line if that had been the goal. Instead I spent years writing poems, occasionally pausing to spread all of the ones I liked out on the floor and see if they could be grouped in an elegant and meaningful way. Then I’d submit the result to publishers and go back to writing new poems. I repeated this process every six months or so, taking out weaker poems and putting in newer, better ones. I can remember at least six different titles and arrangements, but there were probably more. There are a few poems from the time when I was working on my MFA that made it into Rag & Bone, and many more from my PhD time.

How did you know when the manuscript was ready to begin sending out?

I definitely began sending out the manuscript before it was ready. But I’m not sure how to avoid that. If I found myself thinking older work was as good as it possibly could be, that would be a sign I’d stopped growing as a writer. Alternatively, if I never had those moments of confidence that I had just written something really great, I’d have to give up writing altogether. This is why I love and am grateful for editors – without them I’d be alone in my attic accepting and rejecting myself willy nilly.

How much research was involved in selecting which contests to enter with this book? There are so many poetry manuscript contests out there—how did you learn about the Antivenom Prize?

I used The Writer’s Chronicle and Poets and Writers to keep track of the upcoming contests. If there were presses I wasn’t already familiar with, I’d check out their catalogue to see if they published the kind of books I want to read.  

What made you decide to enter the Antivenom contest in particular? How did you know your book would be a good fit for Elixir Press?

Elixir seemed like a good fit, because many of the poets they published share my interests in quirky history, scientific factoids, and mythic memory.

Can you talk a little about the editorial process for your book? How closely did your editor work with you once the book had been selected as the winner?

Dana Curtis was a very patient and helpful editor. I’d just finished one of those big overhauls of the manuscript about a month before I found out I’d won the prize, so I sent her a manuscript that had a completely different title, a different ordering of poems, and in some cases, some pretty dramatic revisions of the poems themselves. She shared the revisions with Jane Satterfield, who judged the contest, and they accepted these changes. She also had the manuscript carefully copy edited, which was a great help, since there are a million ways to bungle a comma. And she worked with a designer who did four versions of the cover that I was invited to choose from. I’ve heard horror stories about presses that claim artistic control of the manuscript once it’s been accepted for publication, but I was always included in the decision-making process and my requests were always respected… all the way down to my preference for a serif-font.

What has the press done to get the book in the hands of readers? What have you done personally to market the book?

The press sent out many review copies of the book and also has submitted it to some prizes. I’ve scheduled readings in any city where I can find a couch to crash on.

I’ve long been interested in the difference between an MFA and a PhD—both are considered terminal degrees, though more and more programs these days are looking to hire people with PhD’s. As someone who has been through both types of programs, what do you see as the major differences? Would you encourage writers to get one degree over the other?

I thought of getting an MFA as the secular equivalent to spending two years in a monastery or asherim. I was checking out of the work force for a time to focus my attention on poetry because I thought I would be a happier and more fulfilled person at the end of that process. In the back of my mind there was also the thought that I might be able to work in academia someday, which can be a really supportive environment for writers.  

Because those two MFA years were the first time I had devoted myself so completely to the study and practice of writing, the learning curve was shockingly steep. I did not experience that same degree of explosive growth during the time I worked on my PhD. Instead, the four years I spent in a PhD program were a time of steady growth and more methodical revision. It was also a great time to work with accomplished writers and study alongside talented young writers. One great benefit of getting a PhD for me was that I was sheltered during that period from the financial insecurities of the job market – I didn’t have to worry about whether I would be able to find work as an adjunct from one semester to the next, nor did I have to return to my old job as a high school teacher, which can be very time-consuming and emotionally-draining.  

I would advise creative writers to choose programs that emphasize craft over literary theory -- but that balance varies from program to program and the MA/MFA/PhD distinctions aren’t necessarily the key factor. I would also advise writers to pursue these degrees because they find pleasure in the educational process itself. If the MFA or PhD is only a means to a tenure-track end, the risk of squandering 6-7 years of your life in pursuit of uninsured, low-wage adjunct work is very high.

I know you teach full-time now at the University of Central Missouri, where you also work as the Poetry Editor of Pleiades. Do you still find the time to write? What are you working on now?

Because I’m a mom to a young child, I find that this new job actually allows me more time to write. Greater financial security = more child care. I like to joke that I work 9-5 at the poetry factory. I write from 9-11 every morning, then spend the rest of the day on my teaching and editing responsibilities. For me that steady rhythm is good for the creative process. I just finished up a new manuscript earlier this week. It’s a series of poems based on fragments of an Old Kingdom Egyptian cosmology. But if my experience with my first book was any indicator, I’ll be rewriting the whole thing again in six months.

Last week I talked about my conflicted feelings about my alma mater the University of Alaska Fairbanks being included on this year’s Huffington Post "Top 25 Underrated Creative Writing MFA Programs" list. I was thrilled to see that UAF was being acknowledged as underrated, yet at the same time, I felt ashamed of my excitement because I’ve always frowned on the very idea of ranking programs.

Seth Abramson, I assume the Seth Abramson who wrote the article to which I was responding, commented on my post, but for some reason the comment does not appear on the actual page. I’m not sure why. I don’t know if he deleted the comment after making it or if Blogger is up to its old, bratty tricks again (I have had so much trouble with the comments feature of Blogger lately . . .). At any rate, Abramson, whom I readily admit is far more of an expert on this stuff than I, made some excellent points and offered some valuable information, so I thought I’d include some of what he talked about here to give a more complete view of the issue. In case it was Abramson himself and not some Blogger glitch that caused his comment to be deleted, I won’t reproduce his argument word-for-word.

First of all, Abramson had the foresight to direct me to the Poets & Writers article that details their methodology in putting together their ranking list, which I should have linked to in my blog post last week but didn’t—sorry about that. Much of my frustration over the ranking list last year came, actually, from reading about their methodology. (For example, I was frustrated by the assumption that any program that does not have a good website with complete, detailed information about their program must not be providing good funding or be highly selective. I understand the P & W logic here—if the program was highly selective and funded a large percentage of their students, why wouldn’t they say so on their website?—but I think the logic fails to grasp that some programs simply have very, very, very bad websites, and they don’t include information on their sites that they should.)

Still, while the article does admit that “Four of the nine full-residency MFA rankings are based [on] a survey of a large sample of current MFA applicants,” there are still five additional ranking categories which are actually based on “hard data”: “funding, selectivity, fellowship placement, job placement, and student-faculty ratio.” Abramson suggested that the P & W ranking list does seem to acknowledge that different applicants have different needs, and that’s a fair point. On top of that, the P & W article freely admits that the data collected to prepare the report represents “publicly known data rather than an ordering of all extant data.” The rankings are most definitely flawed, but P & W knows and admits this. They did the best they could with the information they had.

Perhaps a more important point that Abramson made is that the rankings are valuable partially because they provide a list of what programs are even out there to potential applicants. Though not all programs make it into the print article, the full list is available online, and anyway, Abramson believes that MFA applicants take the time to do more research than just reviewing one ranking list. This is very true. I knew a lot of people who were applying for MFA programs last year, and while to my knowledge every single one of them closely considered the P & W rankings, all of them also did a substantial amount of additional research before they solidified their list of where to apply. I will add, though, that most of them, when narrowing their lists of which programs to look into more closely, didn’t include many low-ranked programs on those lists, and to my knowledge they didn’t include any programs that didn’t make P & W’s top 100, like UAF.

The strongest point that Abramson made in defense of ranking lists was that the programs themselves use these lists to make a case for more funding from their universities and to generally improve the areas where they appear to be lacking. I hadn’t thought about this at all, but it’s an excellent point and probably very true. Maybe, for example, a program that does provide the majority of its students with full-funding and is very selective but doesn’t have a great website advertising this information might take its low ranking on the list as a good sign that it’s time to put a little more energy into marketing to potential applicants. It doesn’t mean that there was ever anything wrong with the program itself, but such a program might receive more applicants, allowing it to become even more selective, if it drew up a new and better marketing plan or garnered more funding from its university.

Anyway, since nobody but myself had the benefit of reading Abramson’s response to my post, I wanted to address some of these points and be a bit more even-handed about the issue. Abramson has made me rethink the way I view rankings. I still don’t buy that a program’s placement on a ranking list absolutely correlates to its worth and quality as a program; however, I can see, now, the value of these sorts of lists. And anyway, as Abramson said to me, P & W’s ranking list is still very much in its infancy, and surely the methodology and readily available data will change and get better as the ranking system itself matures.

This week the Huffington Post released their new list of the top 25 underrated creative writing MFA programs, and I was thrilled to see that the University of Alaska Fairbanks made the cut. It felt to me like very well-deserved (and long overdue) recognition for the program that is so close to my heart.

My reaction to the news, though, was a little shameful considering that I’ve always shunned creative writing MFA ranking lists, believing that they’re mostly self-perpetuating (the Poets & Writers list, for example, which is the definitive ranking list people turn to when researching and applying to CW MFA programs, bases its numbers largely on the opinions of people who are currently applying for MFA programs, many or most of whom used last year’s P & W rankings to help them formulate those opinions.)

Still, I have to admit that part of my distaste for these sorts of rankings results from the fact that UAF, which I know is an excellent program from my own personal experience, is usually overlooked. It’s a bit spiteful and jealous, I know. But the problem with ranking things is that, just as somebody’s got to come out on top, somebody—many somebodies—have got to come out somewhere in the middle or on the bottom, and it isn’t always true that the “top” programs are any better than the rest.

It often feels to me like any program that doesn’t make it to the top 25 (or at least top 50) gets unfairly shunned and ignored by MFA applicants (and many others in the CW world), when really, probably most (who knows, maybe even all) accredited CW MFA programs are damn good, absolutely brimming with top-notch writers, both faculty and students alike. UAF is a great case in point: the P & W list ranked them 105 last year out of 130 (although UAF did receive an honorable mention for funding). Programs ranked that low don’t even appear in the list printed in the magazine—you have to go to the website and click “Additional Rankings” to even see the rankings below the top 50.

Yet my alma mater, as I’ve said, is an excellent program. This is not cognitive dissonance talking; if I’d gotten a bum deal from going to UAF, I’d say so. In fact, I’d probably spend far too much time ruminating on what a waste of time it had been going there, what a bad decision I’d made (I could, after all, have gone somewhere else. UAF wasn’t the only school that accepted me, but it was my top choice program from the beginning). But the truth is, the time I spent at UAF was, to date, the best three years of my life, and certainly the most fruitful and instructive. I entered the program naïve and lazy; I left the program having completed two book-length works, one of which was accepted for publication just one year after I graduated. The other students in the program, and the faculty, were all incredible writers, and many of them have had significant publication success. It’s clearly a good program, but at spot 105, it’s overlooked by most everyone.

So yeah, I’m excited about this small bit of recognition, but I know, at the same time, that a spot on any of these lists doesn’t mean much. The truth is, I wish rankings didn’t exist at all. I don’t see how we can reasonably say that certain programs are better across the board than others, when really, personal needs, style preferences, etc. all play an important role in finding the right program for you. UAF was definitely the right program for me, whereas Iowa probably wouldn’t have been (not that I would have stood a chance of getting in, nor would I have wasted my money in applying). Rankings, then, bring the value of my degree down a bit, since people are often quick to assume that a program, ranked so low isn’t a very good program. It’s harder for me to find a job than someone who graduated from a higher ranked school, and it’s harder for me to find an agent, too. Even so, I’m proud to have graduated from UAF, and I don’t regret having gone there one bit. Underrated it most definitely is, and, while the same is probably true of several other programs that didn’t make the Huffington Post’s list, it’s nice to see someone out there acknowledging it.

Here’s something I find really interesting: in the May/June issue of Poets & Writers, there’s an extensive article/interview on book contests. Included in the article are some pie charts representing some overall statistics on the winners of last year’s book contests (there were 129 total, or at least, those are the ones P & W announced in their Grants and Awards pages over the course of the year).

The statistics were fascinating for a number of reasons (I was not at all surprised but interested to find out that roughly 77% of the book length contests out there are for poetry books), but the most interesting of the pie charts, for me, was the one that showed that 111 of the 129 winners hold an MFA, MA, or PhD. Only 18 of the winners (roughly 14%) did not hold a graduate degree (presumably—at least for the majority of the 111—we’re talking about a graduate degree in creative writing. At least, that's an assumption I'm starting from, and I think it's very likely. I’m guessing a small number of the winners probably hold a degree in some other field, but I’m betting—and who knows, I could be wrong—that most of them studied creative writing. At any rate, there's no way to know for sure, so let's allow ourselves to speculate a bit here).

As someone who has always been (perhaps overly) fascinated by the difference between formally studying creative writing in a graduate program and practicing writing other ways, of course I found this news extremely thought-provoking. Is this definitive proof at last that writers who earn a graduate level education in creative writing are better than those who don’t? Well, not so fast. I can think of a couple of possibilities that might explain this statistic another way.

For one thing, I can’t help but wonder if writers who go through formal, graduate level creative writing programs are simply more aware of the variety of small presses and book contests out there. I think a lot of would-be writers who haven’t had any formal training just don’t know about certain paths that are available to them. In a graduate level program, you become very aware of these sorts of things—often your own instructors are past recipients of some of these awards.

Another possibility is that the sort of writer who studies in a graduate level program tends to be more the sort of writer whose work is very well suited for small presses. Now that sounds like a very sharp distinction, and certainly there are people who fall on one end or the other of the line. There are MFA students who mostly write science fiction/fantasy. There are non-MFA students who mostly write highly literary short fiction, and there are, of course, faculty members in graduate level programs who have agents and publish with major presses.

I am not suggesting that people who go to grad school don’t or can’t publish with major presses, but we all know that the major presses are primarily interested in the bottom line ($$$) and are far, far, far less willing to publish work that is of high literary merit but has little chance of selling many copies than small presses are. Publishing with a major press has a lot to do with who you know and luck. Publishing with a small press has a lot more to do with how good of a writer you are. So all I’m saying here is that in general, in general (I repeat it to hopefully avoid any misreading of what I’m trying to say here), graduate level creative writing programs accept and train literary writers, and small presses (and, thus, book contests, most of which are run by small presses) are seeking work from the very same type of writer.

Of course, there is always also the possibility that the statistic is a result of a number of factors, and included in those factors might well be that there are possibly more good writers who have studied creative writing in advanced programs than those who haven’t. This would certainly not mean that any writer who hasn’t earned a graduate level degree in creative writing is crap—14% of the winners had no graduate level education, after all. But maybe it’s true that of the writers out there who have really gotten good at writing, who have learned the value of revision and have found their own unique voices, maybe there are more who got there through the aid of a graduate level education than any other way.

I think the statistic probably results from a heavy mix of all these factors and more, but either way, it’s worth thinking about. The statistic is simply too striking not to raise some questions.

I talked last week about the great MFA/PhD debate, and came to the conclusion that it probably doesn’t make a whole lot of difference in the end, as long as you have a great publication history and lots of teaching experience. I do think that some schools probably lean more towards one degree or the other, and of those schools, there are probably more that lean towards the PhD than the MFA. Still, I don’t believe the two degrees are very different from each other (depending, of course, on the specific requirements of the specific program you attend), and I’d like to give the English professors who make up hiring committees enough credit to assume they’re aware of that and that they don’t put much weight on which degree you have, as long as you have a terminal degree.

However, there is another type of PhD that is a different beast altogether: the lit PhD. Now while a creative writing PhD is not much different than a creative writing MFA (depending, again, on the specific program), a lit PhD, naturally, is very different from both. You have to write a critical dissertation—a lengthy, scholarly work that requires a lot of research and a thorough understanding of the criticism that has been published about your topic prior to your dissertation. (It is, in fact, the difference between dissertations that causes some scholars to doubt the validity of the creative writing PhD. A PhD, in most people’s eyes, is an advanced research degree. If you don’t have to write a dissertation dependent on research, many people feel the degree you earn shouldn’t be called a PhD.)

Now if the question is, What will help me land a job,, a creative PhD or an MFA? I would guess it doesn’t make much difference either way. But if you want to know, What will help me land a job, a creative PhD or MFA, or an MFA and a lit PhD? I’d have to guess that the latter option is going to make you stand way apart from both the MFA and creative PhD job candidates. Yes, if you want to be a creative writing professor, you need a creative writing degree, but if you want to make yourself really marketable, an MFA and a lit PhD is probably the best way to go.

I’ve been noticing as I’ve been perusing AWP’s Job List the past few months that most full-time, English faculty positions—and mind you, I’ve only been looking in the “general creative writing” and “fiction” categories—state that what they really want is someone who can do more than one thing. Some of them want creative writers who are prolific in more than one genre (many specify that they want someone who can teach screenwriting or non-fiction as well as their main genre), while others want somebody who can also teach advanced lit courses (many specify exactly what type of lit they’re looking for, and I was pleased to see that children’s lit, the focus I would want to go for if I ever did decide to try for a PhD, often made the list).

Lots of people have MFA’s and lots of people have creative writing PhD’s; fewer people, I think, have an MFA and a lit PhD. That’s certainly not to say it’s unheard of—in fact, many professors that I’ve met who currently teach in graduate level creative writing programs hold an MFA and a lit PhD. But I think people who hold an MFA and a lit PhD are less common than the droves of job candidates who just have a terminal degree in creative writing, be it MFA or PhD. It makes sense to me that the people who have a terminal degree in creative writing and a terminal degree in lit are going to stand out from the pack.

This is not to say that only having a terminal degree in creative writing is a death sentence (I certainly hope not, since that’s the only degree I’ve got). All I’m saying is that it’s hard out there. It’s really, really competitive. For every one open full-time position, hundreds of qualified people apply. Being able to land a job in this field requires more than just that you meet the base level requirements and are a good teacher. Most everybody applying for the job can say those two things about themselves, so in order to get to the interview stage, you’ve got to find some way to stand out.

Crazy success in the publishing world is the best way to do that; having several years of teaching experience, especially having taught a variety of different courses, also helps. If you don’t have both of those two things, you probably won’t stand a chance of landing a good, full-time job, unless you just happen to get lucky. But assuming you’ve got those first two taken care of, being capable of teaching advanced level lit courses as well as your creative writing genre certainly couldn’t hurt. I’m sure if you’ve got the first two categories and the third, you’ll stand out from the creative writing PhD’s, who have a much broader education in lit with no specialization. Those people can teach lit courses, as can an MFA, but the person with the lit PhD can teach way more advanced and specialized lit courses, and, as a result, has that much more to offer.

The issue of the difference between an MFA and a PhD with a creative dissertation is once again at the front of my mind. Many of my husband Damien’s fellow MA students at Ohio University have decided to go on to PhD programs after they graduate, while Damien has decided to go the MFA route. Having watched me earn my MFA and get a book published shortly thereafter, yet still be in a position where I haven’t found a full time job, Damien finds himself, I think, worrying about the value of the degree once he earns it. Is he making the right choice? Should he, instead, have applied to PhD programs like so many of his colleagues decided to do?

I’ve been looking around at various blogs and articles where people tackle this issue, and I’ve also, in my own quest to find the answer when I was trying to decide whether I should try to earn a PhD, compared degree requirements for specific programs, but a concrete answer to the question sill eludes me. One thing I have noticed for certain is that people who seem really adamant about one side of the issue or the other appear (to me) to be suffering from cognitive dissonance, where they are trying to justify whichever choice they themselves have made.

People who have gone the PhD route, for example, often swear that hiring committees prefer PhD candidates over MFA’s, yet if you look at job postings, hardly any creative writing positions seem to distinguish at all between MFA’s and PhD’s. People who have gone the MFA route, on the other hand, often suggest that MFA’s are more valuable because they are more prestigious (especially if you go to a highly ranked school) and the degree focuses more on writing than on literature, but I’m not sure I buy that, either.

Indeed, both PhD proponents and MFA proponents alike agree that the difference between the two degrees is that a PhD offers you a more scholarly, literature focused education, whereas an MFA is really just about writing. Having earned an MFA myself, I have to say I think this distinction is inaccurate. In my MFA program, we had to take several literature courses, and we had to take a comprehensive exam, as well. In fact, the requirements to earn my MFA degree were pretty much the same as the requirements to earn a PhD at many schools: you take some creative writing courses, tons of lit courses, and a comprehensive exam, and at the end of it you have to have completed a book length work that your committee deems of publishable quality.

There are only three real differences between my MFA and many PhD programs that I can see: most PhD programs require that you write some sort of scholarly supplement to your creative dissertation, most PhD programs require that you are fluent in at least one foreign language, and most PhD programs give you an extra year or two to write your book (while MFA programs require you to do all the coursework, take the exam, and write a full book at the same time, usually in a period of three years). Those differences seem pretty slight to me, and it doesn’t really seem like one degree has much intrinsic value over the other—the question, though, of whether one looks better on your CV than the other doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with the two degrees’ intrinsic value, though, so perhaps that’s all beside the point.

However, I think most hiring committees know that there isn’t really much difference between the two degrees, although I’m sure it’s true that some places lean more towards one or the other. In fact, I know that some MFA programs are most interested in having MFA’s teach for them because they don’t want to call their own degree into question. I imagine the same might be true for PhD hiring committees. And some places might figure it just looks better in general to have a doctorate over a master’s degree. Even so, when you look at job postings, creative writing faculty positions—whether for the graduate or undergraduate level—tend to make no clear distinction between the two degrees. What they seem most interested in is years of teaching experience and publication credits. Many of them require that you have at least one book published, whether you have an MFA or a PhD, and many of them are looking for people with a lot of experience teaching college English.

And it’s the experience issue, actually, that I think is causing the confusion over which degree hiring committees are generally looking for. If you compare two job candidates, both who just graduated from their respective programs, there will be a distinct difference in amount of experience between the MFA, who was probably only in school for three years, and the PhD, who probably went through a master’s program for a couple of years first, then spent four or five years in his or her PhD program. That means that if you’re just comparing fresh graduates, the PhD will have six or seven years teaching experience, while the MFA will only have three. That probably is something that will make the committees pay extra attention to the PhD.

However, this is kind of an unfair comparison. The person who earned his or her MFA can just as easily teach adjunct for those extra three or four years to build those teaching credentials, and will probably, at that point, be just as hirable as the new PhD graduate. Time-wise, there was actually no difference; both candidates took six or seven years to build up their CV’s. Financially, one or the other may have been living more comfortably during that extra three or four years, depending on how many classes the post-MFA adjunct was able to land per semester, and depending on what kind of stipend the PhD student earned. Either way, the two options are pretty comparable, if you ask me.

So then the most important factor in who is going to get hired seems to be publication credits, and for that, it really doesn’t matter whether you have an MFA or a PhD. All that matters is that your writing is good, you’re doing a lot of it, and you’re persevering and sending a lot of stuff out there. There are all kinds of other variables, too, which can make or break your chances at getting a job, none of which have anything to do with which degree you earned.

So it seems to me that it just doesn’t matter. Go to the program that seems to suit you the best. Go to the place where the faculty consists of writers you admire, or the place that offers you the best funding, or the place that seems to have the course offering that best matches your interests, or the place where you’ll be able to work for a good literary journal.

Whether you earn an MFA or a PhD, landing a tenure-track job is going to be very difficult. It’s competitive out there, and it seems that what matters more than anything is that you get a lot of teaching experience under your belt and that you publish. A lot. Preferably in big name venues and preferably at least one full book. I would worry way more about those things than which degree to earn. As long as you have a terminal degree, you’ve got the base credentials. Think about it, the degree itself is just one tiny part of your CV, and every single applicant will have one or the other of the two degrees. It’s the rest of your CV, really, that will allow you to set yourself apart from the other applicants.