A question about quitting

[ladyinblack1964]

Hello everyone,

 

I'm new to the cafe. This is my first time in grad school, and it may be my last.

 

I'm a student in a low-residency MFA in creative writing program. While I enjoyed residency, it has been one month since class started, and quite honestly, I hate it.

 

It's not even a question of "do you need the MFA?" and those debates that rage on the interwebs. I know one can be a writer without an MFA. I'm not even sure I want to be a writer. While I enjoy many hobbies (art, jewelry-making, playing with my pets), I'm not sure I want to devote my life to just one. I got the impression during residency that This Is Not a Hobby; It Is A Life.

 

Since I started classes, I've been in a minor panic every time there is an assignment. The instructors assure me I am doing well. It's more like, I am experiencing strong resistance. Today I am supposed to analyze four short stories and discuss point of view, diction and narrative distance. When I look at the stories, my eyelids want to shut and I just don't care.

 

My friends and family tell me "you can do it." Sure, I probably can. I just don't know if it is the right thing for me to be doing.

 

Anyone ever drop out of a grad program? Any advice? Thoughts, etc.?

 

Thank you for listening.

 

[smg]

Hello everyone,

 

I'm new to the cafe. This is my first time in grad school, and it may be my last.

 

I'm a student in a low-residency MFA in creative writing program. While I enjoyed residency, it has been one month since class started, and quite honestly, I hate it.

 

It's not even a question of "do you need the MFA?" and those debates that rage on the interwebs. I know one can be a writer without an MFA. I'm not even sure I want to be a writer. While I enjoy many hobbies (art, jewelry-making, playing with my pets), I'm not sure I want to devote my life to just one. I got the impression during residency that This Is Not a Hobby; It Is A Life.

 

Since I started classes, I've been in a minor panic every time there is an assignment. The instructors assure me I am doing well. It's more like, I am experiencing strong resistance. Today I am supposed to analyze four short stories and discuss point of view, diction and narrative distance. When I look at the stories, my eyelids want to shut and I just don't care.

 

My friends and family tell me "you can do it." Sure, I probably can. I just don't know if it is the right thing for me to be doing.

 

Anyone ever drop out of a grad program? Any advice? Thoughts, etc.?

 

Thank you for listening.

 

I dropped out of an MA program 7 or 8 years ago.  It was the right move.  I have never regretted it.  I don't imagine I ever will.   But...I'm also a screw up without a future.  If you know what you would rather be doing make that happen and walk away don't waste any more time. 

[ladyinblack1964]

Dear smg--Of course you have a future--you just don't know what it is. Please don't put yourself down.

 

I don't know what I would rather be doing. In fact, I started the writing program because I felt like I was wasting my life in my job and since I get free tuition, I might as well take advantage of it. I am not sure those are very good reasons to go to grad school.

[danieleWrites]

You mention two things that struck me as odd. The first is that your MFA program leaves you with the impression that creative writing isn't a hobby, but a Life (capital letters Life). The second is that you're not sure you want to devote your life to just one interest.

I know a lot of MFA graduates. A lot. They are devoting their lives to teaching composition courses as adjuncts because the jobs that utilize the MFA are not thick on the ground. Not all MFAs adjunct or instruct, but the degree is remarkably worthless, career-wise.

Creative writing is whatever the creative writer needs it to be in his or her life. If creative writing is a hobby for you, there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. If you have the money to spend on an MFA and no real ambition to use that MFA for a creative writing focused (writing poetry or short stories as opposed to creating ad copy or greeting cards/author v. industry, as it were), then the only question to answer is whether or not an MFA program will do something for you personally. Will you get something out of it? If you feel the program is right for you, but the attitude is a stumbling block, then stay in the program and make your adviser and instructors aware that you feel a sense of hostility and rejection toward your vision of the place creative writing has in your life. Your program is probably, like every other program, looking for graduates to brag on, hence the pressure. However, your program should still be sensitive enough to your goals as a student to not alienate you. To be fair to the program, they may be playing the take-it-seriously card in order to try to elicit better work.

Quitting is viable. Ultimately, what it comes down to is what your plans are for the MFA, should you stick with the program and get the degree, and whether or not you're better off sucking it up and getting the degree. Most people featured in the literature books we make college students buy? They don't have MFAs. That's a relatively new invention. There is nothing wrong with writing as a hobby. Emily Dickenson composed entirely as a hobby, for herself. It wasn't Her Entire Life. She's one of our greatest poets. Anne Broadstreet. I can name a ton of others.

What it comes down to are the answers to a few questions: how does and MFA fit into your future goals? why are you getting an MFA? is the program helping you become a better writer? if you quit this program now, are you looking to enter another MFA program in the future, or a different graduate program?

Full disclosure: my MA was in creative writing; my PhD program is not.

[Roll Right]

I just went through a similar period of questioning whether to continue with my graduate work. I just wrote my comprehensive examnjnation I. The sociology of globalization. Its a three day test, an essay of at least 6000 words on questions that are generally unknown to students until the test prompt is received.

I must have studied for a year. I was prepapred to say the least. But I have a problem with tests meant to function as gates to advancement. I tend to lock up under that sort of pressure. So, I bumbled and fumbled with my though my thoughts and writing for the first day without making much progress. I thought to myself that I was not meant to be a sociologist, even though I've been studying it for 9 years. I just couldn't bring myself to write.

The second day, however, my fiancée came to me and gave me a lot of support, and had others I'm close with call me and do the same. So I stuck with the writing and by the end of the second day I had finished two of the questions. One of those answers was much better than the other, but I still got them written.

The third was hard again, I was so angry I was being made to take the test. I couldn't stop thinking that it was a hazing ritual, and that it was fucking with my mental health, and that I'm probably going to fail it and have to suffer through these three days again. But I kept writing, and when it came down to the test deadline, I was ready to pass it in with 6292 words and all three questions answered. And what's more, I think I may have passed.

I'm trying to say that you should stick with your MFA even if the going seems rough. It's bound to be tough and unpleasant sometimes, but if you devout yourself to a career then you will have those moments of struggle, which will lead to further growth. And really, devout yourself to your work, otherwise grad school is not worth attending. Itll just be a series of hurdles you passed to get an MFA....and then, who cares?

[themmases]

I left a grad program a few years ago and I'm so glad I did. It wasn't working for me, it was causing me a lot of anxiety, and being there clarified a lot of things about the job market and course of study that I hadn't fully understood before. I left for a totally unrelated job that I turned out to be great at. I knew others in the field in way better situations than mine (fully-funded PhDs-- I was just an MA student) who told me I did the right thing. Many people I knew eventually left.

 

It's less harmful to you to stay since you're getting free tuition, but there is still an opportunity cost to being in graduate school instead of somewhere else. That's particularly true since you don't want creative writing to be your life or your profession. That means you'll have to find some other career eventually, and instead of getting paid to figure that out you're spending time in a degree program you don't enjoy and that won't help you find a job once you start looking.

 

Most often the solution to a bad job is just to get a new job, hopefully after articulating what you don't like and planning for how you'll avoid it in the future, not grad school.

[Scantronphobia]

This is a question that I am having, and I haven't even started classes yet! I just began a doctoral program--a fairly selective one--and had orientations. I am already freaking out thinking what a fraud I am and how I must have really fooled all of those professors into thinking that I have any kind of abilities to do the work they are going to expect. And now I am not so sure that I fooled all of them. I met with some of them this week and suspect that they see through my act with their super intellectual x-ray vision. There is a name for this complex: the Impostor Syndrome. Only I am the exception: I really am the impostor. But maybe feeling certain of that is part of the syndrome, too.

 

At any rate, I don't feel that education is ever a bad thing...for what it's worth. 

[juilletmercredi]

I contemplated quitting my graduate program in my third year.  I ended up not doing it, and I'm really glad I did not quit, but I respect people who know when to pull out and my reasons for contemplating quitting were different.

 

So here was my takeaway from that experience:

 

Feelings of frustration, resistance to doing work, isolation, even mild depression/low-grade "blues" are quite common and - unfortunately - normal in graduate programs.  I hate to say it like this, but they are misery-making experiences.  That doesn't mean you can't be happy - indeed, the last two years of my doctoral program were two of the best years of my life, both personally and professionally.  You just have to make a conscious effort to do it  But the key is to remember why you are there.  If you have compelling reasons for being in your program and you realize, after contemplation, that you really love your field and program but you're just feeling frustrated by normal grad student type stuff, you can get help dealing with the stress and press on.  I was frustrated because I wasn't sure what I wanted to do with my life and I was making the transition to being more independent (from classes and papers to qualifying exams and my dissertation).  But I knew I loved my field, and I wanted to be a researcher in my field, and all of the jobs that got me really excited required PhDs.

 

There are cases in which your malaise/depression are really indicators that you should quit, though.  If you are unenthusiastic about the work - that's a key predictor.  It's one thing to be like "Sigh, I don't feel like writing this paper today" occasionally, but if you are like that all the time, in every class, with every assignment, I think that's a sign that you're unenthusiastic about the work and maybe the program isn't a good choice for you.  If doing your work makes you so miserable you want to cry or hide (but you are otherwise a happy/content person), then that's a good sign that you're not in a healthy place and you should leave.  If you think deeply and you can't think of any good reasons to do an MFA professionally or personally - other than "it's free/cheap and not what I was doing before, in theory," then that's probably another sign that you may not want to stay.  That's a sign that you needed to find a better job and/or a career that really fulfills you, not that you need a random graduate degree.

 

As a last thought.  When you begin to discuss these things with friends, family, and acquaintances, you are bound to get at least a few and maybe many people who will say "Just stick it out!"  They will say that you finish what you started, that you only have X years/semesters to go, that they're sure it sucks now but it'll be so great when you finish, that your job prospects will be so much better when you are done, that you took the place of someone else who really wanted to be there and thus you should feel guilt if you leave, and other drivel.  You might be telling yourself these things in a guilt-ridden moment.  They're all rubbish, and the people who say those things usually don't know what they're talking about.  I was really, really surprised when I discussed quitting with people - the people in my field, who had gotten PhDs or were in the process, were all really sympathetic and understanding and tried to help me find resources to solidify my decision and find jobs to move on to.  It was only people who had never attempted a PhD who said stuff like this.

 

And like I said, they are all rubbish.

 

1) You shouldn't always finish what you start.  Sometimes, the prudent thing to do is quit!  If you start doing something and you realize it's useless, why persevere?  For example, if you started painting your living room pink and decide 1/3 of the way through that you really want it to be blue, and you're totally sure, why the heck would you finish painting it pink.

2) It may only be X more years but that is X more years of YOUR life that YOU have to do, nobody else.  Sure, in the grand scheme of things 2 years is not a lot of time.  But life is too short to spend 2 years of your life miserable especially if you don't really want or need the prize at the end.  And 2 years can be a looooong time if you are sad.  That's also 2 years of experience you could be gaining doing something you really like, and 2 more years of savings and retirement investments.

3) It's actually not that 'great' when you finish.  Scientifically, people tend to be really bad at predicting how they will feel in the future.  I thought I would be absolutely elated when I defended my PhD!  In reality, I actually felt really tired, and relieved.  It's been 3 weeks and elation is not what I'd describe any moment since then.  After my defense (which happened at 1 pm), I crawled into my bed and took a long nap.  My committee asked "How's it feel?!" and I was like "It feels like nothing.  I just feel numb.  And tired.  I want to sleep for like a week."  And they laughed and said that was totally normal and they all felt like that, too.  Besides, even if you did feel really elated for even like 2 weeks straight at the end - which isn't going to happen - is that really work 3 years of misery and discontent?  NO!  The only good reasons to finish a graduate degree IMO is because a) you realize that you really need the graduate degree to do what you want to do, even though you are unhappy and/or it is so, so personally important to you to finish the degree that you would be more miserable if you quit.  And I'm skeptical about B.

4) Your job prospects will probably not be much better with an MFA, and honestly, they might be worse.  Some employers will wonder if you expect to be paid more because  you have an MFA in an unrelated field.  Others will be afraid you will jump ship at the earliest opportunity if a more relevant position comes along.  So it's not really a given that an MFA will lead to better job prospects.

5) Finally...this doesn't matter.  You shouldn't feel guilty that you got accepted over someone else.  That's in the past, first of all, and second of all, it has no bearing on whether you decide to leave or not.