My name is Lori D'Angelo, and I--proudly--have an MFA

Have you seen articles and comments like this: "An MFA is not for everyone" or "My MFA was a waste of time" or "MFAs are ruining writing"?

I don't know that there has been one lately. Oh, yes, there has. Of course, there has. There always is. That post. That comment on facebook or Twitter or Pitterpattertwatter that says an MFA is a waste of money, time, or even, ridiculously, that an MFA ruined someone's life.

Lately, one of those comments or posts or whatever has especially annoyed me. And so I, finally, decided. I'm going to say something. Publicly.

An MFA is not a miracle drug. It will not make you into Charles Dickens or Jane Austen or David Sedaris or Aimee Bender or any writer that you aspire to be or be like overnight or maybe ever. And, by the way, the goal of an MFA is not to make you into some other writer; it's meant to help you become the best writer you can be.

An MFA program will likely be hard. You might cry in or after a workshop. A fellow writer might tell you he or she couldn't wait for your character to die. You take all that. You listen. And then you graduate. You leave. You decide. Will I ever write again? That is up to you. You aren't forced. It might be hard at first to find your rhythm, your groove, after the MFA when you don't know what kind of job you'll have or if you'll have a job at all, but if writing means anything to you--still--you will find a way to write because you can't not write. It's such a part of who you are.

That is not to say that there might not be disappointments in your MFA program and after. Of course there will be. You may not get a fellowship or an internship or a job. You may not be admitted into a PhD program. You may not win a contest or get an agent. Or maybe you will, eventually, in time.

But before I got my MFA, I didn't know how to submit to literary journals. I didn't know what I needed to do to ready my work for publication. Some people learn these things on their own. Great. Good for them. But I didn't, and I probably wouldn't have. I needed a concentrated setting to have my work and my ambition validated.

I needed to know that someone believed in me. Maybe it wasn't all of my classmates. Maybe it wasn't any of them. But it was the MFA program that admitted me and the teachers there, or they wouldn't have admitted me. Time and time again, it meant a lot--everything--to know that someone thought I could do it, so maybe I could do it. I know now--after my MFA--that I can do it. And I believe absolutely and without a doubt that because of my MFA program, I am a better and more confident writer.