EE_Hardy

Brooklyn College called me with an acceptance. For anyone who doesn't get the answer they wanted for this cycle—I hope you'll keep trying. I've been inching toward taking a risk like this for years, continuing to work and save money so that someday I would feel secure enough to devote myself to writing. After applying to 10 schools in 2020, my only acceptance was Columbia. With a heavy heart I rejected their offer because of the program's cost. I feared what that level of debt would do to my ability to focus on writing after graduation, and a few months later this article was published and I felt all the more secure in that decision: ‘Financially Hobbled for Life’: The Elite Master’s Degrees That Don’t Pay Off"* Between now and then, I've been rejected from dozens of writing seminars and retreats, but thanks to the generosity of friends reading my work and giving feedback, I have gotten better. I've also significantly upped my rate in my day job (which pays the bills), saved as much money as I could, and seen parts of the world that inspired me to write all the more. This is a difficult process, but I've felt lucky to have been in this supportive corner of the web with all of you. I'd like to think that somewhere in the recesses of our minds, a distant connection will be made between our anonymous words here, and those published with our names, and I look forward to reading more from everyone. *If you open that WSJ article in an incognito tab, you can get past the paywall.