Young, existentially challenged, seeking advice on a fork in road

King's Blanding

Hello, H/A!

I used to frequent these forums many years ago, under another name. I faded away, for no real reason, but I always remembered how useful the advice was here. You guys helped me through some big stuff! And so I return once more, burdened with the sorts of life choices that we all must make, but unlike most normal, well-adjusted humans who can confidently set their own course, I find myself paralyzed with indecision.

I’m in my final year of university. I’m an English major finishing up a five year stretch, and I’ll finally be free come May. Well, maybe. That’s part of it.

Right now, in addition to the six courses I’m taking, I’m working two jobs. One is as the managing editor for my university’s student newspaper. The other is as a writer for an immigration advocacy group/business thing (it’s hard to explain).

I spend roughly 25 hours a week working on the student newspaper. I work in an office with other writers for about 20 hours a week, writing stuff about immigration and whatnot. Between that, I have my classes and homework and reading.

I’m fairly busy, and I don’t get much sleep, but so far this is pretty standard fare — I’m sure many college students work multiple jobs to get by.

I’m frozen in regards to how to maneuver toward the future, however. I don’t know quite how to organize this, so I’ll just list my options out and my reasoning behind them.

1) Graduate and continue on as a writer for the immigration place.

I’ve been working here for about nine months now. It pays pretty well for a college job, about 15 an hour, and I’m guaranteed to jump up to full time upon graduation. I should also be getting a small raise.

To be blunt, though, I don’t necessarily ENJOY my work. I mean, I’m thankful to be writing, and to be paid to do it. I’m not knocking it. But what I’m writing is so terribly boring (procedures, instructional articles, the occasional informative blog post). It’s not as soul-crushing as it might sound, but it’s not exactly the most stimulating stuff, either.

We’re told that there are opportunities for growth, and I do believe them. We have a lot of revenue coming in, and we’re making a big push into the spotlight soon. When I joined, the writing staff consisted of four people, but that has since doubled and we’ve gotten a nice new office space.

It’s kind of nice, but it’s also bad — before, there was an intimate feel, a kind of “put our heads together, we can figure this out” type of thing. Now it’s all really, really corporate. And even more than that, all the new people brought on have been hired at positions ranked higher than where I sit now. Which is understandable — they’re bringing on highly-qualified people who have graduate degrees. But I can’t ignore the fact that I’m lowest on the totem pole at the moment. It’s not the same as it was five months ago, when it seemed like there was a ton of upward mobility. I don’t feel that anymore. It feels like there was a vacuum above me, yes, but it has since been filled and now I’m just sitting here, pecking away on a keyboard.

Not to mention that, though I love my boss and her boss is great (in fact, all of the high-ranking people here are wonderful and brilliant), I don’t very much like the people I work with most, the writers who were here when I first started. They’re very manipulative and… I don’t know. I can’t explain it. I guess it doesn’t matter. All that matters is I don’t feel very connected to them. The people who work above me are very mature and I get along with them great and they seem to like me, too.

I would like to continue on if I’m given a promotion upon graduation to something in content or product management, maybe, but I’m not sure I’m really feeling just staying on as a writer with the dull glow of a promotion always on the horizon.

2) Stay with the student newspaper.

As of now, I still have to confirm this with our business manager, but I’m 99% sure I could stay with the paper after I graduate, so long as I’m in two class each semester.

Why would I do this? Well, for one, I love the paper. I’m not big on journalism (in terms of writing articles), but I love managing it and improving everything. I’m very passionate about it.

I also can make money there. As managing, I don’t get too much, but our advertising guy is leaving in May, and he makes good money (which could easily be great money, if he knew what he was doing, but he slacks a bunch). If I stayed on, I could do his job AND managing, and make enough each month to survive. I live in a big city with a lot of ad sale opportunities, and our advertising person makes a commission off every sale. I could pursue it full-time (minus the two classes I’d be taking each semester, too) and do well.

There’s also the small consideration that, if I were to stay, I’d almost be a guaranteed shoe-in for editor in chief. We are having elections in April (my God, I just realized that's next month), and I have the staff’s support and the board’s support.

I really love the paper, and I love my job there. I love it a lot. And I feel… unfinished with it. I started as copy editor and then transitioned to arts and entertainment editor. And just two months ago, I stepped into managing. I did it to try and improve the paper before I left it, to just try and patch it up because it has honestly been terribly mismanaged, but now that I’m in here, making changes, I see that I can do a lot more than I had though (especially if I were EIC). And I feel like I still need more time to do it.

I also feel like, if I were to stay on at the paper, grab EIC and advertising so I can make enough money to live, and really fix it up, I would make some great connections for a future career. We work closely with a few of our city’s biggest newspapers, and I could improve that relationship even more. I think I might have many more doors open after a year or more of being EIC of this paper and fixing it up than I would if I were to just leave it all and enter the workforce now.

3) Creative writing.

This isn’t a choice now, since I haven’t applied, but I’ve had professors approach me about enrolling in my university’s MFA creative writing program. I’ve always been interested in creative writing — I write short stories, spec scripts for TV shows, and (part) of a novel in my spare time — and I’ve considered an MFA strongly before, but I’m not sold on the idea.

BUT, if I were to stay at the paper, those two classes I took each semester could feasibly just be workshops with some professors who I really admire and respect, and I could work on my writing that way.

So, yeah. Sorry if this didn’t make much sense. I’m just not sure what to do. I feel like I’m on the precipice of Big Things, but I’m scared of making the wrong choice now and regretting it later. If I were to go with my gut, and if I could guaranteed work as both advertising and managing/chief, I would go with the paper. Honestly, the only reason I wouldn’t choose it is if I couldn’t get the money necessary each month from it just to survive.

But I also feel like my writing job is the Real World, and maybe at some point I just need to submit to the grind of it all. I don’t think of myself as being super idealistic, but I was never a fan of clinical corporate environments, and the place I’m working now is feeling more and more like that every single day.

Any advice on this would be greatly appreciated. Thanks so much in advance.

Enc

Where do you live (country/state) and who or what is paying for your education. Without those two facts giving advice here is gonna be rather tough.

King's Blanding

Apologies. I live in the United States — I'd rather not say the state, as I need this to be anonymous, and knowing the state will mean you know the university, pretty much. But cost of living here is SUPER reasonable, especially in places on the edge of the city.

I am the one paying for my education. I pay what I can out of pocket, and do some loans for the rest. I don't owe too much.

I guess monetary calculations would also help? If I were to stay with this immigration group full time, I'd make about 2,400 a month. An apartment would cost maybe 500, up to 800, and I'd likely have a roommate.

If I stayed at the paper, and got EIC and managing, I'd be making about... 1,800 a month, minimum. That would jump up way more, though, with the increased ad sales I'm sure I could bring in. Probably up to around 2,500 a month.

Enc

But those figures are before the cost of your tuition, right? From what I'm reading you have:

1) Job you have, $28,800 a year, no supplemental costs for employment.

2) Job with University press, $21,600 stable minus cost of x2 courses of tuition out of pocket (approximately 6 hrs @ $350 per hour for the average in-state, public regional institution ~$2,100 per semester or $4,200 a year assuming the three semester system and your summers are skipable), so really $17,400 a year guaranteed at your present rate.

3) MFA costing approximately $1200 per credit hour at most in-state public regional universities x36-50 hours.


Concerning the jobs, if you have any sort of assurance that the paper job will ensure a minimum $11,400 annual raise you are not going to be making more than where you are now.

I'm not going to tell you what to do with these because honestly I doubt any of us can given the subjective nature of employment, but as someone who works in Higher Education and who ran admissions for a Creative Writing MFA program I can tell you that unless your desire is to teach Composition, High School English, or Creative Writing you do not need an MFA to pursue publication. The purpose of the MFA is to develop the tools to create both a professional portfolio as well as teaching credentials. You can develop a portfolio in many other contexts without the expensive degree, but the only way to teach is to have the Masters degree in most accredited institutions in the US (a minimum of 18 hours of graduate level work in the CIP discipline you intend to teach with a terminal degree is the usual competitive standard in SACS, ranging from Texas to Virginia).

Money in the English Humanities is in either 1) Teaching or 2) Technical Communication. The former does not pay well unless you are in the .07% that manage to make it to tenure and your best bet after student loans and the graduate degree is Community College employment in the current job market (which pays reasonably well for education, ~30-50k depending upon the region for most entry-level professors) though publication and the teaching loads are not what the idealized "ivory tower" of the college professor used to be 1930s-1980s. It is now a super-saturated market with 100 applicants minimum for each English Humanities teaching position (we are running an entry level composition one position right now that netted 234 applicants, over 150 of them with MAs or MFAs (and quite a few PhDs) and are roughly competitive, and over 30 with a considerable publication record).

Technical Communication is the "real world" or "corporate working for the man" field and pays reasonably well. Companies need people that communicate well for innumerable contexts, from web copy to sales/marketing to instructional manuals and inter-organizational communication. Laymen need to have translations for highly complicated engineering products and those complicated engineers need to be able to explain to investors what the hell they did over the last 5 years and several million dollars. These positions are all dominated by writers and you can make considerable money doing so (especially in writing for STEM based corporations and disciplines, though you will have to study up to understand the field you are entering). This requires putting on a tie, casting off the image of being a "non-conformist" and understanding that sometimes you have to be what is expected to fund your personal life in all of it's unique charms.

There is the nebulous option 3) Publish and become the Next Great American Novelist (TM) but the likelihood of doing so without a secondary job is honestly a terrible idea unless you are like Christopher Paolini and have parents and godparents as industry publishing executives who are also dinner party friends of Oprah. Unless you are connected, the odds of being picked up and published without needing a primary job on the side are minuscule. This is why so many published authors also teach: it is a stable position on the side that (sometimes) leaves working hours you can devote to your craft.

I'd recommend tracking down your institution's career services office. If it is anything like the school I work at they have an entire listing of corporate partners that have jobs just begging for soon-to-be-graduates to hire on as temp employees (and later as permanent if you work out). Look for "externships," these are the paid versions of internships that don't offer class credits (or cost tuition) that can help you get your foot in the door.

But you gotta make that call by your onesies. No one else can tell you what is the best call for your own doing.

Enc

I'd also note that "I'm sure I could" is not a good groundwork for employment comparisons. You should assume your pay will be what the basic amount you have been offered in writing and have commitment for, even in a commission environment, until you have 6 months to a year in the position to gauge average commission based income. Selecting the paper job because of personal interest is a fine reason to go that route, just don't count chickens before they hatched on the money side of things.

ceres

Whenever making a decision like this, I ask myself a few questions, in roughly this order:

1) What does it make me happiest to do?
2) What is practical to do?
3) If 1 and 2 are not the same, will I terribly regret not having done 1?
4) If yes to 3, how can I use 2 to make 1 happen as quickly as possible?
5) If 4 is not possible, how far a stretch is making 1 work now?

It's a fairly simple algorithm that can get pretty complex in execution, but it helps a whole lot. In order to answer all of them, you need to have a pretty good idea of what each entails and some pretty concrete numbers to work with as far as pay, demands on your time, how dedicated you are, and how much you can cram into a day. When answering, you need to be lofty in your ideas and goals but also honest with yourself about what you can actually do.

The key to making any decision is having those numbers and being able to be blunt and honest with yourself about what you want, what you can do to make it happen, and what you are willing to put up with along the way.

Pi-r8

Could you just continue doing both? That way if one doesn't work out for some reason, you'd have something to fall back on. Or if it becomes too much work trying to do both, you'd have a better basis for comparison. And the MFA is always there for you whenever you want it.

One thing... it seems a little sketchy to me, staying at the school in perpetuity taking 2 classes per semester. I don't think editing a student newspaper is supposed to be a permanent position- it's partly an opportunity for students to learn about journalism, right? But I'm sure you know way more about it than I do.

Xix

Another algorithm:

1) What is(are) my ultimate goal(s) in life?

For each Goal:
2) What is the next thing I could do that will get me one small step closer in the direction of that goal?
3) Do it.
4) Go to 2.