by Ramona Pilar
About this Column:
When I was about to graduate form Graduate School, I realized I had no idea what I was supposed to do with an MFA in Creative Writing.
I was born and raised in the second tier of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, a survival mode of sorts: living moment to moment, reactive instead of proactive, ready to put out fires, real and imagined. That level of “readiness” without an actual crisis transformed into debilitating anxiety. I learned I lacked the mental space, energy, and experience to plan. Having that buffer is a type of privilege I’m only now learning to understand and practice. Hence going to grad school under the assumption that there were career answers there. They may have been, but I knew not where to look or what questions to ask of whom in order to build a career.
The initial intention was to teach, but the MFA program I attending didn’t really provide TA-ships or other teaching opportunities. Again, proactivity was not a strength I’d developed or a muscle I even knew I had; It was mythical.
At the end of it all, with fat debt and fatter doubts in my abilities, the time came to take my skills into the professional realm. I had just enough skills and aptitude in certain areas to be hyper-aware of how unqualified I was for everything remotely related to my interests and training.
I was a playwright, essayist, arts & film critic, and novice marketing/PR copywriter with no big-name bonafides and a drought of confidence. There was no “fake it ‘till you make it” for me.
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