Is an MFA Worth It?

Dear Yanyi,

Over and over I hear writers I trust and respect say that the MFA is a waste of money. And always (at least I cannot think of an exception), these writers have an MFA and are working as writers. Additionally, non-extensive research positions the MFA as a “gate-keeping” - you need it to get noticed, to get read, to get fellowships, to have opportunities, etc. and etc. and etc.

But beyond that, surely the MFA IS a way to work on our craft, no? And no matter what it costs, it is a cost that can be absorbed by student loans, which is not the case for the various (many amazing) writing workshops offered via other methods. And, perhaps even more than the craft aspect - or certainly intimately connected to it - is the ability to be part of an ongoing group/cohort/community - where you have constant access to feedback, response, workshopping, and editing…along with the ability to revise and regroup.

I have more student loan debt than a person should be allowed to have (see everything you’ve written re: classism)…which leaves me with the “so what’s some more?”

I’ve had a shit couple of years and am in a constant struggle to literally eat and pay bills. And every time I take a writing workshop, I feel a longing deep in my soul to apply for an MFA so I can do that All. The. Time. Besides, graduate student loans usually include some money to live on…relieving some of that pressure as well.

Obviously having missed the regular cycle, I’m now 99% sure I’m going to apply to a few low-residency programs. Maybe I’m looking for your validation? Maybe I’m just looking for your reaction to my various thoughts and perspectives?

Sincerely,
Dreaming-of-a-Writing-Community

Dear DoaWC,

Thank you for this letter from what feels like a different age. When you wrote to me in early 2022, Joe Biden was still president. No one in the public knew about something called ChatGPT, and most of the time you needed a computer science degree to know what LLM stood for. No major news outlets were debating the technicalities of the word “genocide” and there was no platform called X, only a pretty big one called Twitter. I didn’t have to say, as I feel compelled to now, that when I use an em-dash, it’s because I love to write with them, not because I’ve edited down a blob of text borne of statistical likelihoods.

These changes washed over me last month as I read your letter and the many others waiting in The Reading’s letterbox after I lost my own (day) job to the downstream consequences of “times like these.” I realize that my letter is years late, and perhaps you’ve already applied to MFA programs; perhaps you’re graduating! Or you decided to take a different path.

Yet, I feel compelled to write to you anyway. I don’t know all of what happened to you in those terrible years, but not having enough resources to eat or pay bills is exhausting and disempowering. It is lonely and in some ways invisible given the American propriety to tread lightly around money, a classist conundrum in which you have come out again and again to others that you can’t afford to do dinner and drinks or that you’re one week away from having your lights turned off. In the US, baked into our culture is also the shame that comes with this, as a lack of resources is wrongly linked to a lack of effort or talent. That is, in order for the US to uphold its national myth of freedom and opportunity, a lack of resources must reflect a lack of worthiness.

I’m inferring from your letter that you understand these conditions as systemic and not personal. I’m also inferring, from how you talk about MFA programs, that what you value is not the degree as a credential to teach or a status marker for the literary world, but as a portal to craft and community that does come when the program is right. I hear your exhaustion and despair; I see your empty cup. But I also notice longing. I notice hope ensconced in a dream.

In the dream, you are in writing workshops all the time. In the dream, you are working on your craft, immersed with a community of peers who are as obsessed with writing as you are. In the dream, you are not struggling to pay for groceries or being hounded by late rent notices. You aren’t chasing clients or making barely above minimum wage or staying at a job you hate because you need the health insurance. In the dream, you’re writing every day. You’re a writer, which is another life: a life that feels less alienated and more genuine; a life that actually belongs to you.

Among other things, MFA programs sell the promise of a writing life. For two to three years, with student loans or lump-sum payments, we can rent the life of the mind complete with research libraries and literary panels. We can rent a spot at the podium, trembling while introducing storied alumni and faculty, and a spot in those seminar rooms, close to a Real Writer next to others who want to become one too.

Here is where I disagree with the writers you’ve talked to: yes, there is value in renting a life. We rent lives when we travel to new countries and when we meet our friends for lunch and don’t have to cook or clean. We rent lives with each class we take and each visit we make to new museums and libraries. It is invaluable not only to imagine but also to experience who we can still be, no matter one’s age or expertise. The value of an MFA program, or any purposeful writing space, is a controlled environment to practice being a writer so you can fight to stay one in the chaos of this world. To practice is not about perfection. It is about permanence.

Yet, what I’m hearing from your letter is not only a desire to try a new life but a profound need for relief from your current one. As you said, you have more student loans “than…should be allowed,” so it feels almost flippant to add more to them. Why should it matter, you seem to ask, if the weight you’re carrying is already so much? Perhaps your recent experiences, and maybe the experiences you’ve had for your entire life, have told you otherwise. If you weren’t given the chance or resources to care for yourself in the present, why should you believe the future would be any different?

For there is some payout that makes the possible debt of a program feel small: the fantasy that this writing life won’t just be rented, but durably lift you out of where you are right now. By some chance encounters with the right people in power, by some fluke of unaccountable craft improvement, the fuzzy borders of the dream will slip into reality until it becomes real life. A life that is doubly valuable because it’s not only where you want to go but also a trapdoor out of where you are right now.

Sometimes it seems as though the only way to escape one life is to burn it all down. Perhaps small sacrifices, one small act of self-effacement at a time, have bought you chances for attention and care. It seems logical, from there, that more might buy you more: for the resources you needed yesterday to show up today. For someone who should have been there for you to actually be by your side.

Could you be harming yourself by taking on more debt? I can’t answer that for you. But I can tell you that love doesn’t cost anything. I can tell you that you are worthy of writing because you dream of it, and that the writing life you seek is already yours. How can you care for it, how can you stay present enough to protect it, now and later, because you are worthy of that too?

Say that you do take out a loan. What would the payments look like, month-to-month? What would you have to do in order to make them? How would that affect the time you have to write? Or say you didn’t: say you decide to pay your way through, which means only taking night classes or commuting in to your program. How much would you be able to really be in your program if that was the case? What about after?

It was striking to me that you did not mention scholarships in your letter. Perhaps you feel as though these are out of reach for you. Perhaps you are burnt out, and a loan would protect you from the disappointment of getting into a program you can’t afford. Or perhaps you’ve been taught that you just don’t deserve gifts.

We have been tricked to believe that love is on the other side of some sacrifice. That lives must be transacted, even when the cost is too great. That praise is not real but criticism is. That love is more real when it comes with pain. In those myths, love doesn’t look like what we already have. And what we have is not just what’s in the pantry or our bank accounts but also our refusals, our dreams, our actions in the streets. What we have—and what we have to protect—is who we are in the world. That is, you have a right to your whole life, not just a couple of years of it.

You are a writer. Your life is already the writing life. It is not a bio in a literary magazine; it is not a prize or professorship, as neat and simple as that would be. The only thing that having an MFA confirms is that many of us, myself included, have wanted permission and freedom to take our longings seriously. DoaWC, you cannot buy what you are already doing. You are rich with the dream of your life.

Earlier I said that practice is about permanence. By that I mean writing is a profound practice of showing up. Practice for self-expression. Practice for having our own lives. The permanence comes not in borrowing, but in learning and giving away what we have. By showing up to practice we transform ourselves. We become different people. We are writers, yes, but the point is not to be a writer. The point is to become more ourselves.

Writing is the practice toward the permanence of who we are: to stake our days into the earth with an image that only we can see, to love and value that vision, and to structure our lives so it can exist and grow. To write is to be here more. To write is to make an impact on ourselves so we can impact others. Not just to long for our lives but to live them; not just to live them but to re-vision them, draft after draft.

A program is not an inner life. The tether you hold in yourself, through feast and fallow, is something that can never be bought or sold. It cannot be given—and it can never be taken away.