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IS A CREATIVE WRITING PHD RIGHT FOR ME?EVENT DESCRIPTION In this panel, five current and recently graduated Creative Writing PhD students will reflect on their reasons for pursuing the highest level of graduate education, what they feel they gained from their educations, the expected and unexpected issues they encountered while in their programs, and what advice or food for thought they would impart to those currently considering applying to Creative Writing PhD programs.?EVENT CATEGORYArtistic and Professional StewardshipPANEL PARTICIPANTS Gwendolyn Edward (moderator)Gwendolyn can be found online at . You can also follow them on Twitter @gwenparadice and Instagram @gwendolynparadice and by email at gcewyb@mail.missouri.edu Kara DorrisKara Dorris can be found online at . You can also follow her @dorris_kara or email her at kara.dorris@ic.edu. Samyak ShertokDonald QuistDonald can be found online at . You can also follow him on Twitter and Instagram with @donaldewquist.William Todd SeabrookEVENT CONTENTOpening RemarksProvided by Gwendolyn Edward. Welcome, everyone, to our panel, “Is a Creative Writing PhD Right for Me?”. This panel was conceived, for this conference, for two reasons. First, AWP serves as a means of adverting a lot of graduate programs, but more MFA than PhD programs are represented, and we wanted to provide a venue for which people could research their graduate school options a little more. Secondly, we also wanted a space to be candid about what the PhD was like for us—how it differed from an MFA—in hopes that we could contribute to people’s informed decisions about graduate education.?Our panelists today include myself, William Todd Seabrook, Kara Dorris, Samyak Shertok, and Donald Quist Instead of starting with questions, I’ve asked each panelist to introduce themselves with a short narrative that includes why they initially wanted to pursue a PhD, what their top 3 wants and or concerns were for their PhD education, and finally, where they accepted and why they chose the program they chose to attend. After each panelist has spoken, we’ll continue with brief conversation, then I’ll ask three questions, and we’ll leave plenty of time for a Q&A.IntroductionsTodd: My name is William Todd Seabrook. I am a fiction writer, specializing in flash fiction, and also the owner and editor of The Cupboard Pamphlet, a prose chapbook press. I had always thought I wanted an academic career. I came from a family of teachers and academics, and I thought being a professor was my natural path in life. And in order to be a professor, you need either a PhD or a book deal. I didn’t have a book deal being a flash fiction writer, so a PhD it was. When I was finishing my MFA, there were only 30 or so PhD programs in creative writing, and I applied to about half of them. I was accepted to Georgia and Florida State, and I chose Florida State. At the time Florida State was ranked #2 in the country for PhD programs, and they paid the most, so it seemed like a no-brainer. Donald: I’m Donald and I’m the author of the linked story collection?For Other Ghosts?and the essay collection?Harbors, a Foreword INDIES Bronze Winner and International Book Awards Finalist. My writing has appeared in AGNI, North American Review, The Rumpus, and was Notable in Best American Essays 2018. I’m the creator of the online micro essay series?PAST TEN, and co-host of? the?Poet in Bangkok?podcast, and I’ve received fellowships from Sundress Academy for the Arts and Kimbilio Fiction. I earned my MFA in Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts and am currently a Gus T. Ridgel fellow in the English PhD program at University of Missouri. When looking for the right PhD program my main “wants” were (1) full-funding, preferably over $16,000, (2) diversity among faculty with a wide variety of expertise, and (3) flexibility of degree requirements: more autonomy, freedom, and opportunity to complete the program at an accelerated pace. Thankfully, the Creative Writing program at the University of Missouri- Columbia met these “wants” but not without several compromises to many personal aspects of my life.?Samyak: My main reason for pursing a PhD was to continue reading and writing poetry, and teaching poetry. My international student status might have also played some part on this decision, but I couldn't tell how much. My top three factors were faculty,?funding, and?more focus on creative writing than critical writing. I ended up going with the?University of Utah because it was the best option overall. (Plus the?mountains were breathtaking when I visited.)Kara: What did I want from the PhD? I wanted time—time to write, to learn before going on the job market. I wanted community—to live and breathe an atmosphere devoted to creative writing, to be with other writers who would both encourage and inspire, to extend my MFA, I guess. I wanted to get a job teaching creative writing, to continually enmesh myself in a world devoted to writing. To spend every day in a place that understood the power and relevance of poetry. In the end, I applied to various programs over two years, was waitlisted and rejected, and finally decided to go back home to Texas. I applied and was accepted to the PhD program at the University of North Texas. I attended UNT partly because I wanted to be closer to my family, partly because it is where I earned my bachelor’s degree, and partly because I knew the poets, Bruce Bond and Corey Marks, were amazing teachers.I tumbled into my MA in English, literally; after earning a BA in psychology, I decided I wasn’t ready for graduate school, but since I was already admitted to the UNT graduate school, I took three graduate English classes: Shakespeare, Fiction Form and Theory, and a Poetry Workshop. The amazingly generous Bruce Bond changed my life and inspired me to be a poet. (When teaching an English Senior Seminar class and talking about opportunities after graduation, my students laugh at this story; they can’t imagine one of their professors being so irresolute, somehow getting a graduate degree without much preparation or finesse.) After the MA, I got serious I researched MFA programs like crazy (I desperately wanted to be a poet); for PhDs, looking back to ten years ago, I’m not sure what I was looking for. You see, I have this enormous capacity for forgetting: contests, journals, jobs, graduate programs—once I submit or apply, I tune it out. If I didn’t, the anxiety would eat me alive. And the rejection. Should I be admitting all this?I began leaning seriously towards teaching during my MFA; the wonderful poet Carmen Gimenez Smith went to AWP and let me substitute teach her intermediate poetry workshop; reading through the poems, typing comments, finding poems I thought each student might like all made me want to teach creative writing. Beside wanting to teach creative writing, I think I went into the PhD because it was expected, and, frankly, I didn’t know what else to do. I hadn’t been trained for anything else, and my MA/MFA never outlined my options beyond teaching and being a writer. So, I looked for accredited programs with writers I admired and funding packages. Gwen: I’m Gwen, and I’m a prose writer of both fiction and nonfiction currently ABD at the same school as Donald, the University of Missouri. My main reason for pursuing a PhD was that I wanted to teach. I hear a lot of people say they teach to support their writing, but I knew no matter what my job was, I would always write. I really do love teaching, and felt like I needed a PhD to be competitive for faculty positions. I also really love literary studies. I didn’t have much of a diverse education before my PhD. My studies were rooted in “the canon” and contemporary writers who were mostly white. I wanted to work with diverse faculty, and work with a diverse student body, not just because I’m queer, and impaired, and Native, but because I knew if I was going to teach for a living I needed to service my students by being broadly read and understanding of ALL the conversations regarding writing and literature. I got offers from three schools and choose the University of Missouri because I felt recruited by the woman who is now my dissertation chair, Julija Sukys, and because they offered me a fellowship for minority students that resulted in significantly more funding than the other places.Brief Panelists Discussion (freeform: panelist can respond to each other, though Gwen will introduce the topic: what surprised you most when first starting your program or preparing for it? What was most unexpected? Content may change during discussion.)Donald: What surprised me the most upon entering a PhD program was how much I had to learn about being a “teacher-student”. I had spent five years as a college writing instructor. I’ve held adjuncting positions as well as a full-time lectureship. I had taught a variety of students, in the U.S. and abroad. So, I struggled, initially, with having to reconcile my teaching experience with the department’s goals for standardization. I had been largely autonomous, and now I had to follow a prepackaged semester calendar with assigned due dates decided by the Director of Composition. There were multiple observations and a mandatory course in the theory of teaching college-level writing. This new teaching environment compounded stressors from other aspects of my new life as a student. Teaching was something familiar I had hoped might ground me as I adjusted to the social and academic demands of the program. I had spent the summer before the first semester orientation, crafting a syllabus and curating reading assignments. I had to throw all of that away. I had to learn how to follow instructions and accept a lack of control. I had to teach myself how to trust the intentions of my new teaching mentors.?Samyak: I was most surprised by how amazing my cohort was: they were extremely supportive and healthily competitive. More?importantly, they were great friends.Kara: What surprised me about the PhD? I’ve been thinking about this question for days. I’d already completed a BA in psychology and half-assed my way through a MA in English at the University of North Texas. Although I went to New Mexico State University for my MFA, I then returned to UNT for my PhD. I knew the campus, the professors, the town. What I didn’t know throughout my graduate career was myself (and maybe I still don’t). Specifically, I didn’t know what I wanted from life, what would make me content, if not happy. I always knew I’d complete the PhD, but I was also greatly surprised when I passed my defense and graduated. I never stopped to ask if you’re supposed to be miserable in PhD programs. Since we all tried to put on brave faces, to outperform each other, I was surprised by how many of us were truly depressed and miserable. I mean, I knew it was supposed to be hard and challenging, but do those have to equal miserable? You can’t always see the difference when you’re in the thick of it; I couldn’t see the difference. And if miserable is the graduate school normal, we need to seriously rethink the graduate program paradigm. Todd: Nearly from the acceptance phone call to the day you graduate, there are a lot of politics inundated in PhD programs. Professors vie for students they want, they try to sell their courses for enrollment, and even from the meet-and-greet, you discover that you are in a larger game of helping the careers of others. I didn’t realize I was going to have to play a top-level politics game from the moment you get the acceptance, which will determine teaching positions, awards, fellowships, everything.Gwen: What surprised me most? Maybe in actually preparing to enter a program, I underestimated how much time would be spent on preparing applications. Then, I didn’t understand a lot about what getting my education paid for meant—that I was still responsible for fees for my classes even though I had a tuition waiver. I also didn’t understand how expensive it was to be a grad student: conference travel. And regarding this, I didn’t know much of what I spent would have to be reimbursed, not paid for by my department if I got travel funding or what not. ?Moderator Questions1. What were some of the unexpected issues or problems that arose during your PhD?Kara: When thinking about issues I encountered, I’d like to talk about performance and expectations (as in acting a role) in and out of the classroom. I’ve come to realize that trying to play the part of smart, go-getter grad student was detrimental to my mental health and the joy I found in reading and writing. I’ve always been that shy girl in the back corner. The classroom has never been a haven, never a shelter. It’s been a slow, painful poison. But let me back up. I love what the classroom stands for: to read Conrad’s Lord Jim and explore how it works, its potential meanings, feels like ambrosia to me. So, when I say the classroom was poison, I don’t mean the knowledge shared, never that, but the expectations and my constant failures. Honestly, I never felt safe. Today, I would probably be diagnosed with anxiety and introduced to coping strategies, but back then I thought I was just weak and scared. For a young woman who never felt good enough, I fell into an environment that reminded me daily that I wasn’t good enough. I can’t be the only creative writing student who hates to be center of attention, who feels overwhelmed by the expectation to show off in the classroom. For me, it has always been difficult saying aloud what I can craft and polish over time on the page (even for this panel I had to write an essay to convey what I wanted say). In the PhD, I really did try to play the game. I would say to myself: I’ll say one brilliant thing today. In reality, I was lucky to say anything; everyone else was always so eager, jumping in before any silence had settled while I waited politely for a turn that rarely presented itself. In contrast, the MFA never made me feel inferior; I believe the MFA let me be myself, gave me space to discover myself as a writer. The MFA built me up while the PhD tore me down. Yes, I know, we are always playing roles: student, lover, writer. Every time I pick up a pen, I become Poet Kara instead of plain old Kara. But the difference is I like the Poet Kara role, but PhD Candidate Kara didn’t make me happy; instead, it made me miserable, anxious, and depressed. But how well you played the role, honest or not, determined your place in the academic hierarchy, as well as the fear that this role playing continues in academia once you graduate and find a teaching position. Even as I tried, I didn’t play the role well; I just want to be generous and kind, excited about writing. But that’s not enough for a PhD program. And, honestly, I’m not sure it should be; but I know trying to be the go-getter, brilliant student was disastrous for me. I survived, I graduated—my first published book stemmed from my PhD dissertation—but those five years weren’t pretty (nor was the job market afterwards). My advice is to be yourself and carefully choose what roles you want to take on and shake off the ones you don’t. Todd: I discovered that nearly everyone in a PhD program is very talented. I had been used to being one of the better writers in my MFA program, and especially in undergrad, but it was a bit of a reality check to be among so much talent. I had to come to terms with my competitive nature and do some serious contemplation of why I was a writer, whether it was because I loved doing it, or because of how it placed me in among my social peers. I assume it is something like the difference between playing sports in college and then going to the pros. Everyone is better and you no longer seem so good.Donald: I’ve struggled with finding a space for my voice in academia. I’m often patronized or spoken down to. I understand that pretension is commonly associated with higher education, and that patronization is somewhat expected. But this awareness has not prevented these occurrences from having severe adverse effects on my health. There are factors that compound these interactions:Being a person of color in academia I already feel ostracized. As an African-American male pursuing a doctorate, I am a minority in a minority. Despite the intentions of well-meaning white peers, there are cultural frames of reference and underlying shared ideologies that they can draw from in order to aid their advancement through institutional hierarchies. I’ve been in seminar discussions in which, as a visible person of color, I was unable to contribute to points based in a shared white experience held by my colleagues.?Coming from a Creative Writing MFA, there are a lot of gaps in my knowledge of critical literary theory. The literary theorists I knew before starting my doctorate were limited to my primary areas of interest. I had no inclination, and was not prompted, to learn more about contemporary theoretical frameworks after Post Colonialism. And so, I often find myself having new ideas in Biopolitics and Ontology explained to me by peers eager to prove their expertise.?My real-world career experience and accomplishments often feel unrecognized. I have published three books. I run a successful online micro-essay series. I have dozens of publications and I earned a special fellowship from University of Missouri in addition to my teaching assistantship. I still have had members of my cohort view my work as easier than their level of scholarly engagement. This is exemplified in my current work co-editing a collection of academic pop-culture essays. For over a year, my co-editor and I have fought to get a contract with a popular publisher of scholarly texts. However, the editorial board was concerned about my lack of peer-reviewed articles and the fact that my PhD will be in Creative Writing instead of something like Media Studies. For my degree I will have to complete a comprehensive exam, I will have an oral defense, a critical introduction, a dissertation defense. I will have to meet the same requirements as my peers in Comparative Literature, and then I will have to write a novel too.??All of this led to a severe anxiety my first-year in the program. It led to outburst in class. Fights with my partner at home. I gained 30 pounds. I wasn’t sleeping. I was angry. I was tired and trying to prove to myself and others that I was not an idiot, that I knew things too; to prove that I deserved to be where I am; to prove that a person like me, from where I am from, can get a doctorate.? I was taking more classes than I needed to. I rushed, and failed, to try to form my full dissertation committee in the first semester. Eventually, I got into an argument with one of my professors and my dissertation advisor strongly encouraged me to visit the student health center.??That may have saved my life. I met with a campus physician that quickly identified that I had a need for mental health services. I met with a counselor. I learned my level of anxiety wasn’t something I had to live with. I discovered there was something called high-functioning depression.? Now, I’m doing the work of moving towards my doctorate without internalizing so many of the triggers that would lead me to devalue myself and my voice.Samyak: 1. I noticed this a lot more in my second year: the program is not that diverse, and it became very real to me when not a single POC was admitted when I was in my second year. Eight creative writing students were admitted--and not a single POC. The program is great in terms of gender diversity, but that's about it--which is very?unfortunate. I really hope this time they'll bring in at least one POC creative writer.?Gwen: 1) I didn’t know my mental health would be so tenuous. I had severe anxiety before I started my program, and I was unmedicated because I didn’t have health insurance, so I came in already very overwhelmed and anxious. I didn’t expect my mental health to deteriorate as fast as it did, and while I was able to funnel they anxiety into my work--which made me very productive--my relationship with my partner suffered and I couldn't do anything but work, which lead to being very burned out. I did receive health insurance as part of my employment, and saw both counselors and psychiatrists in the first year. It took about eight months to find a medication that helped with the anxiety, and I was eventually able to feel like I wasn’t going to crawl out of my own skin all the time, but there was still a pervasive discomfort, mood swings, and obsessive work ethic. I am still unable to find a work/life balance. 2) I also didn’t really understand how demanding my program--while in coursework--would be. I’d done a MA at another school, so I thought I had an idea about what grad classes were like, but the volume of reading and work I needed to produce for my PhD was much higher than in my MA (where there was no distinction in work produced between MA and PhD students). I was reading 2-3 books a week, reading theory to accompany those books, teaching two classes, and trying to do my own critical and creative writing. 3) I didn’t think my hearing impairment would interfere the way it did, and I didn’t have the funds to address it. I didn’t have hearing aids when I first started, and I worried for the first few weeks that I would have to drop one of my classes because my professor spoke very softly and the acoustics in the room weren’t great. I also joked with my students about my hearing loss because I was constantly asking them to repeat themselves or mishearing what they said. I was able to visit an audiologist, but still couldn’t afford the 20% copay on hearing aids. Out of the grace of the universe I met another grad student in a different department who told me how he obtained funding to help him get hearing aids, and six months later, I was doing much better.?2. Can you speak to some of the great and unexpected things that happened?Gwen: 1) I don’t think I was really expecting to find mentors, but I did. I was never friends with my teachers, and had some very bad experiences with a few. But I found three professors that I work with now that I’m blunt, open, and vulnerable with, and they’re all very supportive. 2) I didn’t expect to make life-long friends with people and need to rely on my community the way I do. I moved to my program with my partner—and assumed he’d be my primary support—but as much time as I spent on campus I became close with people in my program and in my incoming cohort. 3) I didn’t expect my critical coursework to affect my creative writing much, but it did, in a very positive way. I got the idea for a novel from one of my literature courses, and it’s fully drafted now, in dialogue with the books and theory we discussed in that class. Not only do I feel my creative work is “deeper”, I also feel more in tune with conversations on the lit side, and hope I can be bridge for students between the two sub-disciplines.Samyak: One of the great things about my program is how knowledgeable and dedicated the faculty is. This is not to say they're available to you all the time; in fact, they're fairly busy with their own projects a lot. But they also take your work very seriously, and when they do meet with you, it becomes clear how much they thought?about your work. The faculty really looks after you in that way.Kara: In my notes while preparing the proposal for this panel, I literally typed: I need to think of more good things. It’s telling that the question I’m struggling with most is coming up with great and unexpected things that happened. But here it goes. I think having generous, caring, and brilliant professors almost outweighs any bad. And even if you find only one person, you can create a positive writing community. I met my best friend and writing buddy, Gwen, and a lot of amazing writers like Laura Kasischke, Brigit Pegeen Kelly, Carl Phillips, and Kevin Prufer. Unexpected, I think, was that I found my voice. The MFA was all about experimentation, and although I wrote some great poems during that time, the five years of my PhD honed who I wanted to be as a poet. Or, at least, what comes most naturally, who I am. I still want to be Laura Kasischke (or Beth Ann Fennelly or Paisley Rekdal) when I grow up, but I don’t have her violently playful voice. I learned to filter out unhelpful criticism and let my own poetic instincts rule. My dissertation turned out to be my first published book, Have Ruin, Will Travel. My dissertation preface turned into the inspiration for an anthology that is under review at a university press right now. Despite the struggles, the time I devoted to writing was worth it. And, hey, I got a doctorate degree out of it. When someone asks, is there a doctor here? I can honestly answer, yes, yes there is. Todd:?I had a generally mediocre to bad experience at my PhD program. There were a lot of big, cutthroat personalities in both the faculty and the other students, but the best thing that happened to me was being surrounded by writers and readers, those who shared my passion for the art.Donald: One of the great and unexpected things that has happened since I've started the program are the invitations to connect with other scholars of color. I was unaware of how many networks there are for supporting people of color moving through academia. Pursuing the PhD has brought my name to the attention of minority writers and critics I greatly admire--like some kind of underground listserv. I've received more solicitations from literary journals and more requests to join panels. I've had a number of invitations to submit papers to conferences I never knew existed--I had no idea there were Black pop culture conferences! I had hoped the PhD would lead to wider career opportunities, I did not expect to see some of these benefits within the first years of my program.?3. If you could provide three pieces of advice, or food for thought for those considering PhD programs, what would you say?Donald: If I could recommend anything to those looking to start a PhD, especially people of color, I’d encourage them to investigate into health services available in the area; on and off campus. Meet with a physician in those early weeks. Secondly, don’t try to tough it out or just swallow what is said to you. Find a counselor or psychiatrist to talk through things.Kara: Now for the advice part. One, do your research: make sure the professors are not only amazing writers, but also generous teachers as well; contact current students but also students who have recently graduated who might speak more freely. Please be sure they offer adequate funding you can live on. Two, decide what you want from the PhD program in the first place: to simply learn more, write more, read more, become a better writer or find a position teaching in academia. These goals aren’t mutually exclusive, but they don’t always go together either. If you simply want to be a writer, there are jobs that could give you time and inspire you. If you want to teach creative writing at the college level, research what the life of a professor really is like: the course load, the student advising, the service requirements, the tenure process. Research the job market, be prepared to navigate the job market for a few years (unless you are the rare and coveted super-candidate). Knowing these goals will influence the role you play in graduate school, determine where your priorities are (bulking up a portfolio of work or racking up teaching and service awards; yes, ideally, you would do both, but, honestly, I couldn’t, so I focused on my writing). Three, decide what roles you’re willing to play and be sure they’re roles you can live within. For me, the best advice I got was to try and not take myself so seriously. Writers get big ideas, and writers get rejected endlessly—you must find time for self-care and try not to lose yourself in playing the part. Todd: First, Don’t go into debt for the PhD. Second, diversify your teaching experience as well as your writing community experience, whether that is with editing a journal or working with the union or going to conferences. And third, the only thing that matters is having a book by the end of your program. That fact trumps the money, teaching, and faculty members. Whatever school helps you write and get a book published is the school you should go to. Gwen: 1) Don’t conflate the structure of a PhD with the structure of an MFA. The lit classes, theory classes, and possibly language classes you’ll need to take will consume a lot of your time and effort; you probably will not focus on your creative writing in your first 2-3 years. Look at every program you want to apply to and note what their degree requirements are. Map out what you can transfer in, and know how the courses they offer do or don’t fit with what you want to study. 2) Research the faculty. And not just in creative writing, but in the lit classes that look interesting. Don’t use it as a guide, of course, but check Rate my Professor to see if it can help you gauge someone’s pedagogy. Just because they’re writers it doesn’t mean they’re good teachers or editors. If possible, reach out to faculty before applying (and talk to them if you can visit campus ahead of time or on a welcome day) and formulate some questions to help you get a sense of who they are and what working with them might look like. 3) You might feel pressure to do a lot of things to build your CV; focus your time and effort on things with certain returns. This might be an emotional return, or an intellectual one, but don’t take on work just because someone asks you to. You can, and should, say no to things that will get in the way of what you want to be doing. If someone asks you to introduce a visiting writer, do you want to spend the time reading that person’s work, and laboring over an intro? Do you feel it’s productive to work with your student grad organization? I would say weigh everything against if you can put it on your CV, and if you can’t, how important it is for you to do that work.Samyak: One: Don't go into the program without knowing what you've signed up for. In other words, you want to be?very certain on your part that this is?what you want. There are many other ways to continue writing.?Two: Have some sources of income in place?before you begin the program, for the stipend is barely livable. I mean it can be livable, but it'd have to be very frugal. That is, unless you receive one of those extremely generous fellowships, which would allow you live well. Three: Be?prepared to be a part of the community--and this can mean many things to many people. One of the reasons you want to be in a PhD program is to have a community that you otherwise wouldn't have. This could mean being very supportive and responsible during workshops,?joining the editorial board of the school journal, supporting the readings of other students and the faculty, etc. Of course, you can't attend all the events all the time, but the community at the U has been a huge factor for me so far, which I'm very grateful for. ??Q&A with Audience ................
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