That was an oddly prescient statement, as it seems like that's exactly what I've wound up with. One fully funded acceptance, one acceptance with a waitlist for full funding, and two waitlists. I still have two programs left to hear from, but they are more competitive and I'd be surprised if I got in to either of them. It's amazing to me that two months I ago I was tearing my hair out with stress, terrified that I wouldn't get in anywhere, moaning to Greg that it seemed like February would never get here. Now April 15 is coming way too soon.
This decision process is stressful in a different way, though, a good way. For the first time in the last few years, I am genuinely excited about my life and where it's going. I have no idea what I'm going to do after the MFA, but I know the next three years are going to center around two of my favorite things: writing and teaching. For free, essentially. This is the best I could have hoped for right now.
When I think about where I've been the last five years, I'm struck by a few things - moving four times, for instance. There was a time when I would have felt like a failure for flopping around so much, for not being dedicated to one career path, for taking a live-in job at a high school in the middle of nowhere because there were no better options. But lately I've come to believe this is a generational problem, not just my problem. This is a problem for the young people who graduated from college in the years of economic implosion and a post-apocalyptic job market. Almost everyone I know in their early to mid twenties is dealing with the same stuff. We bounce through jobs, we move around yearly, we have learned to live without health insurance (facebook posting, "Does anyone have any antibiotics they never finished? I have a chest cold"), we have accepted that "savings" are more of an optimistic concept than a reality, we don't think about retirement because it already takes most of your effort to get through a given day. We don't know what we want to do with our lives, or if we do, it seems like there are endless roadblocks to getting there. Even the old surefire bets are dwindling - I have a friend who graduated from law school three years ago and still doesn't have a job.
Our parents and the generation that preceded us led such different lives. College, maybe graduate school, then a job somewhere that allowed you to save, buy a house, and work your way up the ladder. When my dad was my age, he had been married for five years and was in law school on the GI Bill. My grandfather was working his way up through the air force. My aunt was in nursing school and would soon have a nursing job, which she has kept for decades. My uncle was working in the radio industry as a deejay (now he owns two stations and manages another). All of them have been in the same career their entire adult lives. They have savings (well, my dad would if he had managed his money better) and retirement plans. They were bona fide young professionals all.
Our generation has been forced to make our lives a different way. "Young professional" is practically an oxymoron. Some of us feel liberated, some feel disillusioned, everyone feels anxious about the prospects for their future. All of the things that used to make me feel like a failure - four years drifting after college, living in a trailer, spending an entire summer sleeping on a friend's floor in order to work a minimum-wage job in Boston, two years as a glorified kid-wrangler for less money and independence than most decent office jobs require, not being able to find a receptionist job in the third-largest city in America, changing career plans and expectations a gazillion times - I'm not ashamed of it anymore. It is what it is. I have, all things considered, been incredibly lucky.
My post-MFA career possibilities could include publication or a tenure-track job (in which case I would probably go on for a PhD; haven't decided how I feel about that). More likely, it will be adjuncting, a freelance editing business, or stay at home momhood. Once that would have depressed me. Now, it feels encouraging.
Ours is a generation of dreams deferred or transformed, but we still have our dreams. Sometimes they do come true.
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