If you have more than one graduate/professional degree

[Anonymous]

BS Psychology
MA Clinical Psychology
MD Psychiatry

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:BS Psychology
MA Clinical Psychology
MD Psychiatry

Interesting path. I bet you are great at your job.

[Anonymous]

BA in linguistics
MPH
JD

Was planning on going to medical school. I had all the prerequisites but took a detour in graduate school where I discovered I love policy work in health. Work in health policy now.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:BFA - Fine Arts
MEd - Art Education
MFA - Printmaking

Curious to know your salary. This was my trajectory but I dropped out at the first level, followed a different career path and make $300k with no degree. I’d like to go back just to finish what I started but not in the same field of study.

Admittedly, not very high. I taught art - high school, and then college level (need an MFA for college level) and am now a Fed in a mildly related niche field. The Fed job pays the most by far!

[Anonymous]

JD
LLM

[Anonymous]

sociology
MPA
MSW

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:BA, English
MFA, Creative Writing
MLIS, Library Science

I’d love to do this. I did BA and MA in English Lit. What do you do for work?

I was a librarian, branch manager and then administrator for a large public system, 30+ year career. It was always interesting. During the first 2/3 of my career I was able to write and pursue that world too. Administration was a lot more work but I really enjoyed managing people and the buildings, as in, remodeling them, etc. I worked with interesting people. I learned a lot about government and I think an MPA and some management jobs in other parts of government would have been interesting career paths too.

You will never make big bucks, but I never got sick of it and always felt I was making a good contribution to the community. However, a lot depends on where you work, the clientele you serve and how the economy is going. It was bad after 2008, but the last ten years were great. It's actually an ever-changing field that adapts constantly to new technology, social trends, etc. and I definitely used my writing skills every day in large and small ways in administration. Many people enter the career as a second career.

There is a concerted effort against public libraries going on right now by some activists and that's depressing. It may die out or public libraries may be de-funded. It's sad, but as I said, libraries adapt and change. There may just be fewer of them. We'll see.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Would also love an MFA in Creative Writing as I retire.

I have one and don’t recommend it, especially as a retirement activity. For multiple reasons. There are plenty of classes and conferences you can explore outside of academia that are better.

I have the same and agree.

[Anonymous]

MPH
PhD
Both in public health, ten years apart.

[Anonymous]

Some of the combinations so far:

MA-MLS
MFA-JD
MEd-JD
MLS-MPP
PhD-JD
MFA-MLIS
MEd-MFA
MA (Psychology)-MD
MPH-JD
MPA-MSW
MPH-PhD

[Anonymous]

BS - IE
MS - Business Analytics
JD

[Anonymous]

BA - Communications/Public Relations
MS - Project Management

Use both

[Anonymous]

BA Sociology
MA Education
PhD Psychology

[Anonymous]

BS, MS and PhD in engineering. Working at a tech start up after being in Fed consulting for 20 years.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Would also love an MFA in Creative Writing as I retire.

I have one and don’t recommend it, especially as a retirement activity. For multiple reasons. There are plenty of classes and conferences you can explore outside of academia that are better.

can you recommend any?
I looked at some of the programs. They offer health insurance, a stipend, sometimes tuition for grad assisting.

The conferences I'd recommend are Bread Loaf, Sewanee, and Tin House. I've been to Bread Loaf once, and Tin House twice and had an amazing time. Haven't been to Sewanee, but many of my friends and acquaintances have and they enjoyed it as much as the other two conferences. Unfortunately writing community hierarchy stuff is on full display at all of them; but it's pretty much the most fun you'll ever have. The craft talks at Bread Loaf were nothing short of genius. There are lots of other conferences as well that are less selective that would offer some experience with workshop method for folks who don't gain admission to the Big 3. There are writing classes/workshops offered seemingly everywhere. If you are local The Writer's Center in Bethesda is a great place to start. I'd try workshops somewhere like that before diving into an MFA program; you might hate the workshop process in which case you won't want to do an MFA (best to show at least some exposure to the workshop process before applying to an MFA program anyway). If you aren't local to the DMV, there are lots on online opportunities -- Gotham is the one that comes to mind, although their beginning workshops can be hit-or-miss depending on how dedicated the cohort is for any given class (a great teacher really can't do all that much to fix a workshop with lots of people who drop away). A friend teaches for the UCLA extension -- they offer some pretty serious writing class opportunities (with a pretty serious price to match, unfortunately). If you join AWP, you will get access to their (huge) database of conferences and centers. An AWP membership is probably worth it -- lots of info that is helpful for writers.

As far as my opinions on getting an MFA: I worked at AWP for a while, which is the Association of Writers and Writing Programs, which started out as just the Association for MFA programs. So I feel like I've seen the sausage being made. The MFA programs I would advise people to consider would be programs like Iowa, Johns Hopkins, and Maybe UT. Maybe UVA. Maybe Brown. Places like that. Getting accepted at one of those programs, or any fully funded program really, is very, very difficult. The odds are against you. So you could throw your hat into the ring and apply, but don't hold your breath. Getting accepted to a program that doesn't fund everyone, or perhaps anyone, is more likely (although anything but the low res programs are still going to be very selective). I do not recommend programs that fund some students but not all of them -- it creates an ugly environment, and any MFA grads from such programs who say otherwise are lying or clueless. I really don't recommend that anyone who doesn't secure full funding pursue an MFA at all. There are reasons for this in addition to financial ones. The short of it is that I have heard program directors recognize that they are admitting people without talent because the programs are cash cows -- and that there are ethical considerations with that. Like I said ... watching the sausage get made.

If you want to write, there is nothing stopping you. Just write. You don't need a graduate degree to do it, and many writers feel such programs stomps the creativity out of them. No one from my MFA cohort has published anything of note, and I'm one of the few who has published anything at all (which is undoubtably the result of my stubborn persistence and not a reflection of any relative talent).

Don't mean to be a Debbie Downer here, I just think that these cash cow programs are problematic. But if you apply and get into Iowa? Then yes, by all means, go.

oddly enough, that's where I am.

What do you mean that is where you are? You live in Iowa?

yes.