I'm going to get a job. This is my year. I just know it. After all, I was a finalist several times last year, and I even turned down an offer from a Caribbean college (I know, I'm crazy) where palm trees sway and the living is easy.
And I didn't strike out: Last August I began a one-year appointment as a full-time freshman writing instructor at Northern Illinois University, which gives me more teaching experience, a salary (well, sort of) to live on, and time to nab that tenure-track job I believe is waiting for me at some lucky community college. A university job teaching creative writing isn't likely until I find a publisher for my book of stories and my novel. Meanwhile, I am getting noticed by hiring committees: Two colleges, one in New York and another in Missouri, called me this week to ask for interviews.
But the job search has not been easy. Sure, I have a full-time job right now, but that ends in a few months. Since graduating in 1996 with an M.F.A. in English (creative writing minor) from Western Michigan University, I have spent hundreds of dollars on postage, paper, telephone calls, and copying, and several thousand dollars on air fare for interviews at colleges in Arizona, Oregon, and the Washington, D.C., area. For much of that time I was an adjunct at two community colleges 70 miles apart, and besides being poor and having to raid a dwindling savings account, perhaps the most frustrating aspect of the search has been what I call M.F.A. backlash.
I first realized that there were people who didn't understand the M.F.A. degree at all when I applied for a job last year at a Georgia college. Even though the M.F.A. is accepted as the terminal degree in creative writing, the college sent a disingenuous letter claiming it could not consider me as an applicant because I did not have a master's degree. Imagine my shock, after three years of graduate school that earned me membership in Phi Kappa Phi National Honor Society, that I somehow didn't have a master's degree.
I resisted the strong urge to fire back a letter sprinkled with words such as "fools" and "idiots," because obviously it would have done no good. My candidacy at that college was ill-fated and that was that. I figured it wouldn't happen again, that the people there were just peculiar.
Later, I applied for a job similar to the one I have at Northern Illinois. Ironically enough, a contact for the other campus, which offers the M.F.A. degree, informed me that they don't hire instructors with M.F.A.'s. I complained to the department chair by e-mail, explaining why I think it is silly to regard an M.F.A. as somehow inferior to an M.A. I later received a letter from the chair commending me for my fine academic background and urging me to apply again because they planned to hire more instructors. Did I somehow change their minds? I don't know, but I certainly hope so.
Still, perhaps there will always be a battle to fight on this front because when I spell-checked this article, the computer suggested I change M.F.A. to M.A. How appropriate.
My next contact was with a California college. I was informed by letter that I did not meet the minimum requirements for the position, which calls for at least a master's degree in English. This time I picked up the phone.
I reached one of the college's human resources officers, and I explained to him that my 48-hour M.F.A. consists of 33 hours of graduate English courses and 15 hours of writing workshops. I told the man that as far as I'm concerned, the M.F.A. from Western Michigan is an English master's degree and then some. It certainly takes longer to earn an M.F.A. than it does an M.A., and those extra hours of writing workshops have proved to be useful in teaching composition and are not just a foundation for teaching creative writing. He agreed, and I'm happy to report I'm still a candidate there.
However, I have changed how I list my degree on my C.V. As I have said, only 15 of my degree's 48 hours are in creative writing, so I list my degree as an M.F.A. in English. I did that hoping that personnel offices will clearly see that the majority of my graduate work was in the traditional English and composition pedagogy courses required for an M.A. degree. Experience showed me that when my degree was listed as an M.F.A. in creative writing, a few colleges assumed I was long on fiction theory and practice, and short on composition pedagogy and traditional English courses, which isn't true.
I still believe that most colleges examining my credentials will realize I am an experienced teacher and a professional writer and editor of non-fiction and fiction. But I do have a Plan B: Soon I'll send cover letters and my C.V. to television production companies and film studios. I don't know whether they hire many creative writers, but given the declining quality of writing behind the medium, they need more people who know how to tell a story.
Meanwhile, my search for a fall teaching job is well under way, and again I'm spending a small fortune on copying, postage and telephone calls. The jobs seem to be plentiful right now, with more yet to be announced. One of them is mine. I just know it.
