Sometimes I lie awake in bed in the middle of the night and wonder if I made a huge mistake by leaving college when I did and not getting my sacred, holy bachelor’s degree.
Then I remember that having a degree is massively overrated and there are people with no degrees who are successful, people who have them and are not even using them, etc. And I remember that I carry zero debt here in my thirties and that is pretty rad. And that I managed to carve out a pretty lucrative internet career with no formal training hahaha.
If I go back to college, it won’t be just to “get a degree.” It will be to actually get something meaningful out of it, so it would definitely be for creative writing.
Like most 18-20 year olds, I was too young and confused at the time to really have any idea who I was or what I wanted. An esoteric liberal arts environment was really the worst thing for me when what I really needed was structure and grades and to pick a major and take a writing class. Evergreen had none of that. At that age all I wanted to do was go to punk shows and make my fanzine and take road trips and obsess about boys. And that’s all I did, outside of my pointless and easy classes (world music. barf!). I did a lot of living, all of it clean, but all of it exciting.
Actually, can I major in spelling? I am pretty good at that.
i have a history degree. i work for an insurance company, not a university or a library or a museum. i have a shit-ton of student loans. i congratulate and am jealous of you and your debt free self!
It is still valuable if you got something worthwhile out of it though! You know? Like I want a creative writing degree but it’s not like I am convinced I will ever make money from what I write. It would just be an interesting education for me.
this is true. i mean, i loved some of my classes (loathed others but that’s normal when you’re not into math but have to take it…)and some of my professors really encouraged me, just wish i would have done some things differently so i could have gone to grad school after or done something that would have boosted my chances to actually get a job related to it like in a museum or something (me and about 1000 other fellow students!) but oh well, for now, what i’m doing is okay and i know it won’t be like this forever.
If Jodi (Greg’s ex) can get a BA in Philosophy and a MA in “creative writing”, so can you. And I guess she’s teaching at a community college. You did write 3 magazines cover to cover before you were 21. You may not have had “grades” but you learned about “evaluations”, which is the way the real world judges work. You probably don’t panic about an annual evaluation, or fear asking for a raise. Love, Mom