The No MFA Project

$105,000.

I hope you can appreciate the enormity of such a sum to someone currently making, well… a LOT less than $105,000 a year. This price tag would be hard for me to stomach even if it were for something guaranteed to give me a fantastic return on my investment.

But it’s for an MFA in dramatic writing.

Now, don’t get me wrong – the program is FANTASTIC. It really is. So much so that the horror of taking out $105k more in student loans (despite the fact that I still have some that I’m paying off) was something I could almost – ALMOST – overlook.

But the truth is that it’s a rough economy right now. More debt doesn’t seem like the best idea. People everywhere are struggling. Besides, an MFA does not rank among those degrees which help ensure that you will make a successful living. MBAs, which, depending on where you go to school, may cost about the same, give you a much better chance of earning a decent salary after graduation; with an MFA, you might struggle for years before breaking the $40,000 barrier.

Therein lies the dilemma. If you are a more creative-type person, you will most likely feel depressed working in non-creative jobs. Then, as you feel yourself drowning in a bland, disappointing world in which your time and energy are wasted on bland, disappointing tasks, you might stumble across an MFA program masquerading as a life raft.

If you want to change your life, drastically, quitting your job and going back to school may seem like the way to do it. But there are risks.

I am that creative type. When I was in third grade, I had a mean, old-school teacher who called my parents in for a conference to report this alarming fact. I can’t help it; it’s just who I am. Can I go to work and churn out spreadsheets and order forms? Sure. (I hold down a perfectly respectable, if low-paying, job.) But at the end of the day, I feel as if more time, energy, and will power have slipped away from me, and I’m faced with an alarmed, panicked feeling that tells me the longer this goes on, the less likely I will ever be to become a real ‘writer,’ the creative kind that does it for a living.

Then, TADA! I found this MFA program, this absolutely amazing MFA program that would give me amazing contacts in the script-writing world of stage, screen, and television, a program that would help me to complete a beautiful and expansive body of work. But, well, you know… $105k?

What if I were to go back to school only to graduate two years later still unable to find a fulfilling job, still unable to make any money, and, what’s more, with $105,000 of debt that I have no foreseeable way of paying off before I’m 105 myself?

It’s too hideous to contemplate. If I face bouts of feeling helpless now, I can only imagine what I’d feel with $105,000 guilty dollars hovering over my creative head.

The debate raged on inside of me for weeks. To apply or not to apply. To apply, with the hope of getting in, would mean a willingness to borrow and spend this amount of money. To not apply meant that I would be stuck in my same boring life, spiraling ever-closer towards the danger of never really accomplishing what I’d like to accomplish.

Then a thought struck me: why were those my only two options?

Maybe the program really is my only way of breaking into a new, better life for myself. One with a career that fits. But maybe, just maybe, there are other ways.

The application deadline for the program was December 1^st. Today. I’m letting it pass me by.

For one year, I will be looking at everything that program offers me, and brainstorming creative ways to go out and get those things on my own, for way less cash and – in some instances – for free. I’ll be keeping track of my successes and failures right here, for the benefit of all you would-be MFAers who are caught in the same dilemma… If, after one year, I haven’t made any strides, then perhaps I’ll have to admit that the $105,000 MFA program can give me something I just can’t give myself, and go for it… but if, instead, I can make great strides on my own, investing in myself instead of a school… well, life will be beautiful.

I should be able to find ways to do it, right? After all, I am the creative type.