I never believed the fairy tale that my MFA would help me find work. I have work. I worked full time throughout acquiring my MFA, which I wouldn’t recommend to anyone, but which worked for me. I have never regarded education as job training, but as a means of personal development. I completed the MFA purely for myself, not to gain or develop job skills.

As a high school teacher I work with students for many more hours than I would teaching at a university, and for less pay than if I were in a college-level tenure track position. (And no one at my school cares whether I am published.) But I earn substantially more than I would as an adjunct anywhere, and that’s something I already knew before pursuing the MFA.

Therefore, I didn’t think the MFA would help me get a job, and I didn’t think it would make me a writer. I was already a published writer before entering the program. I hoped I would get to know other writers and that I would become a better writer, and that’s what happened.

A writer I know recommended that beginning writers “marry money” and that’s advice I wasn’t considering. Historically, writers have generally been of two sorts—rich or otherwise employed.

My choice? I have a day job. I write at 5am every day. That habit predates Naomi Shihab Nye telling her workshop students at The Flight of the Mind about her personal writing schedule. I wasn’t even in her workshop, but my room mates abruptly changing their minds about my early-morning habits and want to know how early I could I wake them?

I write for myself. I submit only occasionally. I thought by my age I would have three books and that hasn’t happened, but I still write and I am undiscouraged about publication. The writing matters, at least to me.