Valle

Thank you. And congratulations on your acceptances!

Yeah, I got this too. No idea what that means.

Hey there. I am in the same boat. Older, kids, career. And I'm international, so it'd be a huge deal to go for an MFA. That said, i applied to two programmes. But the thing is that I can't go anyways, at least not this year, even if I do get in. I do think it's possible to write without an MFA. Of course, an MFA provides community, time, structure, etc. but these are things one can get without being in an expensive, life-uprooting programme. I have heard that it is very difficult to get an agent without an MFA, but I also hear that getting an agent should not be the main motivation to get an MFA. So yeah, kinda contradictory and probably no help. I enrolled in a Gotham Writers Workshop. I know a writing workshop is not the same as a 2-year programme, but I'm hoping it'll help deal with the disappointment, and it'll be fun too!

Just took myself off the waitlist, so hoping someone else'll get my place now. 🙂

Thanks very much. I hope you get some news, too! Well, my application was very last minute, made in a rage whilst correcting students' essays generated by Chat GPT. (I work at a business school and our policy is to have our students use AI to read, write, think, breathe. And the funny thing is I'm the only one in the faculty who sees a problem with this! Okay, rant over!). Anyways, I started my application pretty much a week before the deadline (and yes, the other is Iowa!). I still don't think I'll go, even if I get in off the waitlist. Can't justify putting my 10-year-old labrador through a planeride across the Atlantic so I can go be a write. Oh yeah, and kids, husband, and all that.

Just got a lovely email from JHU. I'm waitlisted for fiction! This is so surreal as I applied to just two schools (three guesses what the other one is!). Just so nice that someone finally read some of my work and thought it not so bad.

Oh wow, exactly! I struggled for years to get a permanent job. Then once I got one realized, hold on, am I going to be doing this for the next twenty years of my life. How do you manage to write with a family? I am usually exhausted by the time the kids have gone to bed. Also, even if I do an MFA, the question of what comes next is not too far from my mind. I'd have to come back home to Switzerland and then what! You are not suddenly more hirable because you have an MFA.

I know exactly what you mean. I did my Phd at Cambridge. Thought that forever fulfill this need for validation. News alert: it didn't! But finding out what that elusive right reason for wanting to do a degree is is difficult.

Hi everyone, I've been lurking on here for a bit and have enjoyed getting to know you. I applied to a couple of schools this round (not many as I'm still unsure if an MFA is right for me). Do most of you want to end up teaching creative writing/English and that's why you are doing an MFA? Or is anyone doing an MFA just so you get a couple of years to write? A little context: I'm older than the average MFA student (41) and have a PhD in English lit. I found it very hard to stay in academia as I hadn't published enough scholarly articles. I am now teaching communication at a business school and really hate my job. I have been writing on and off over the past ten years and got a couple of stories published, but find it hard to keep it up with a full-time job, young kids, nobody to read my work, etc. An MFA for me would really be a way to buy time to write and to meet fellow writers. My goal is not to teach creative writing as I live in Switzerland and there is no such tradition here. As people in the arts and humanities, we are trained not to think of education as having a transactional value (i.e. where does this get me?). However, the reality is that we still have to think about what it is for, especially if, as in my case, it would require schlepping kids across the world, subsisting on a stipend, remortgaging the house, etc. I realize there is no such thing as an ideal MFA student (or maybe there is...who knows!), but if there is someone here who is, let's say, from a different stage in life, I'd like to hear what made you apply. Oh, and congratulations to the ones who got in or are waitlisted. And to the others: hoping you have plenty of exciting projects lined up to take the sting out. .