Life After Grad School?

– “Okay, for one, you see those student loans right there?”
– “Yeah?”
– “Yeah, that’ll really fuck your shit up.”

Sometimes it doesn’t make sense. You did everything right: went to college, earned good grades, published short stories. You finished grad school with a full-length manuscript, even scored some artist residencies. Your list of professional references is growing, an excellent sign. The right people are endorsing your work. It appears you’re ready for the next big step: querying for representation. The pitch becomes your primary concern—the query letter, the sample piece, the book proposal—every moving part. You were never interested in cars yet suddenly you find yourself the mechanic of your own future, and you’re supposed to get it running. 

Your only option: jump in and learn by doing. Maybe you fire off multiple submissions per round, maybe you dribble one at a time. If the goal is “Don’t quit,” you begin to think, “To what end?” A whole year passes, and another, then another. The breaks you take between revision cycles get longer, but as long as you keep revising, your existence has potential to become art… right? It’s motivating when you’re in school, but afterwards it might sound pompous. Meanwhile, precious, kind rejections glitter atop a pile of boilerplate No’s and queries gone cold. Yes, you can do everything right and still be refused. No more A’s for effort. Grad school is over.

Life After Grad School: Reality Sets In For New Writers

Hopefully you found a job after graduation that supports your writing, whether financially or via gaps in the schedule. If you’re lucky, you landed a gig like this, a platform to express and hone your voice. If you’re really lucky, you have a partner who resents you only a little for earning less than them. Don’t worry too much about eroding your relationship. Your chances are good if they stuck with you through grad school (or lockdown) and you’re not a piece of shit. No matter what shape the relationship is in, you should always know what the other needs. So don’t just talk but ask and listen. Broke-Ass people don’t make bad partners or writers, shitty people do.

Otherwise, if you’re fortunate enough to live on noodles and priceless love, you get luxuries like patience and feedback. Yet, in the darkest of times after grad school, your most loyal supporters may seem merely sympathetic to your delusions. I insist you ignore your doubts. You’re your own motivator, your own editor, your own secretary. You should be too busy making your vision a reality to second-guess it. Remember, if you’ve gotten this far, it’s because you earned your progress. If you trust the process and keep at it, you’re bound to succeed. Ideally. Fingers crossed. 

I remember dreading graduation. Indeed it was the end of the road, though I feared a more Death Proof-style (NSFW: gore) crash-and-dismemberment ending. Thankfully it wasn’t the case. For me it’s been more like one of those semi-truck runout ramps you watch on your phone. The Department of Transportation shaves a crude lane from a mountainside and paves it with gravel to keep runaway trucks from crushing drivers, bursting guardrails and exploding on the valley floor below. The rough gravel and dissipation of excess momentum captures it before anything like that happens. That’s me getting a job with Stuart.

Resetting Expectations So You Don’t Go Insane

Let’s talk about imposter syndrome. Listen: did you manipulate the circumstances unfairly to get ahead? No? Good on you. Doubt is aftershave on freshly razored skin, a sting reserved for the deserving. It means you’re putting in the work and taking only the hands-up you honestly earn. If you really were a fraud, you’d know it in your gut.

Another tendency among the newly graduated is to feel a loss of identity with graduation. It’s a result of unconsciously entwining your identity as a writer with that of a student. Untangling that takes work. Finishing grad school and getting an MFA does not mean you’re ready to teach. It means you finished acquiring the necessary tools to tell your story the way you want it heard. You didn’t go to school to become a writer, you became a writer who then went to school. 

Your challenge now is using them to make that a reality, and it’s much easier said than done. I’ll say it again: It is much easier said than done. The memoir I wrote uses earthquakes to visualize the effects of traumatic abuse. In grad school, at the fellowships I won and residencies I earned, people I met expressed interest in the concept. You might say I read too much into it. I am guilty of thinking my project not superior, but unique enough that a ‘Yes’ would come soon.

“Why will no one publish Sexy Space Story?”

Three years and many queries later, time has proven me wrong. Schoolmates of mine, even those who entered the program after I did, are published, agented, and Ploughshares-nominated. It would be too easy to give up now. I know this because I have given up before. My barista knows my face but not my name, since I’m not there often enough to be a regular, because I only come when I need to work in a space that is not my apartment. I have an iced americano and a slice of humble pie. 

After grad school, you learn what depression really means (if nobody taught you already). Your mentors, employers, even your partner may not tell you that you can in fact give up—but only for a little while. It’s incredibly easy to feel sorry for oneself, to slip into misery like a hotel bathrobe. But you’re not yourself when you stagnate like that. It’s your mess. Be proud to clean it up with whatever tools you need (medications, meditation, therapy, etc.).

Here’s an anecdote about child abuse. Whenever my stepdad hit me, I’d run to the far end of the trailer park where my late friend Kali lived. She let me cry, but she never allowed wallowing. “He’s just a person,” she reminded me. “Don’t be scared of some person.” (I miss you, Kali.) Remember, you can take a hit and feel sad for a while, as long as you pick yourself up and move on. I am still querying.

Sure, do it for everyone that believes in you. They will each appear in the acknowledgments. But goddammit, do it for yourself. You knew you could do it first.

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