So now I don’t know if I should get a teaching certificate or an MFA from a low-res school and try to get some teaching under my belt at the same time. Keep in mind, I must keep my full-time night job to pay rent. I am also afraid that I’ll be moving out of state in a couple years, so a certificate might not be worth it. It is considerably cheaper, but from all I’ve seen of private schools, I need both. Anything higher, I need experience, which I can’t get without a certificate.

Basically, I need a certificate to gain experience, so I could get this and do an MFA at the same time (possibly pay out of pocket for some of it), or I could get an MFA while working my mindless job, then try to get a certificate in whatever state I end up in, but then I end up and be 29 with no experience, but then could get a job right away and could possibly pay for all of my certificate out of pocket.

WHAT WOULD YOU DO??

Thanks for your comments. I really appreciate your thoughts. I’m just getting ready to start writing here a bit more. Hope you keep reading and discussing.

Gordon

From what you’re describing, it feels like teaching works much the same way – in order to get the writing experience and still raise your family, you had to get an MFA without a teaching focus. It’s a sacrifice, but I don’t think that should stop you from pursuing the dream to teach. If anything, I feel that someone who has made this kind of sacrifice is in a better position to mentor students. And I say this because I’ve been very fortunate – my own MFA has been a two-year residency program with a teaching fellowship. Tuition is covered, we participate in workshops, and we’re required to teach an undergraduate course – from the academic perspective, it couldn’t get much better.

On the flip side, though, I still feel that my experiences from before the MFA program have shaped me a great deal. I was in the Army for five years, I’d worked lots of odd jobs (and even been let go from a few), and I had been keeping my own writing life alive without the continual encouragement of school. When I teach, now, I have all those experiences to put on the table. I understand my students when they struggle with their writing, and I can relate – many of my classmates can’t. I’ve spoken with a few grad students who feel that it’s better to “stop the bad writers from going into writing” than it is to encourage everyone. And that, to me, just doesn’t feel right.

I know you posted this a while ago, so I’m hoping you’ve gone on to find a teachings position since then. Either way, it sounds like you’re someone who sets and keeps priorities, and that’s important. Maybe it will take some time, but you strike me as someone who would do a fine job not only teaching, but showing your students how to keep the writing dream alive through tough times.

Have a good one,
Ryan

However, if it’s just teaching that you wish to be doing, why about looking into, what about looking into the Teach for America program or a summer internship at a prep school like Andover [http://www.andover.edu/SummerSessionOutreach/SummerSession/Employment/Pages/default.aspx] as way to get some experience and make a career transition in the academic direction you seem to desire?

I completed a BA (hons) in English & Creative Studies, then looked at doing an MFA. Ten years on and I still haven’t done so, and the only reason I can think of doing an MFA is to go on and do a doctorate then become a lecturer perhaps. But that isn’t really my aim re: writing – I just want to write. It would be nice to have those letters though, which sounds kind of pointless! – MFA..

At the moment I keep a 1000+ word offbeat fiction short blog at http://jamesbent.com/blog and I work in the corporate world as well, so full on feel you re: selling an ounce of soul a day.

Have you tried adjunct teaching nights at a local community college? It could give you experience for your resume and to see how much you really want to make this a career. In graduate school, it’s easy to watch your grad professors (these lofty, established authors) teach a one-one schedule, which is one course in the fall and one course in the spring, and dream that for ourselves. Yet, the opportunities available are often teaching young undergraduates who may not provide the same mature and serious minded classroom atomosphere of graduate school. There will be great classes full of able-bodied writers and there will be classes full of knuckleheads. I love both sets of students and the challenges each present. I enjoy teaching thoroughly, but I know it hurts my writing. It saps away time and energy.

That, however, doesn’t stop me from thinking about going back to do an MA Great Post!

I also think that the time to change is, always, now. For me, I am finally moving things around in my writing life (taking classes, applying for local writer benefits like communal writing space) and it makes me not worry so much about the day job. Because my day job is good work, but my writing is my REAL work, and after a 7-year period post-art-MA trying to figure out why I wasn’t creating regularly, I am writing, constantly.

I wonder :is writing for your corporate job making it hard to write after you punch out?

I don’t really know you, but I do work as a coach (primarily for college students). I’d be willing to discuss this stuff with you over email, if you’d like. Sometimes all it takes is a sounding board.

On last thing: this quote, from the interview you linked to, seems apt here:

“Richard Hugo says that MFA grads, or any writer, for that matter, shouldn’t teach until they’ve been writing, really writing, for ten years. Can’t think of a better piece of advice. Getting an MFA degree is no conference of authority; in fact, receiving one’s MFA is just the beginning of the real writing journey. Why should one leave an MFA program and immediately begin teaching. I’d like my teachers to have some more experience in writing before they begin tossing around exercises and maxims.”

Cheers.