Garfield Park Conservatory

It is my last semester at Columbia College Chicago and I’m suddenly faced with the rearing head of the monster we all like to forget—the job market. As I’m on my last Christmas break, I have explored the city of Chicago, done fun things like nature walking (in winter) through the beautiful Garfield Conservatory (featured above), and even just got back from vacation to the magnificent city of New Orleans. But this whole time I have also been fretting over the return to the job hunt, and I can imagine it is a big concern for anyone else looking to get their MFA in poetry.

Hello from New Orleans! St. Louis Cathedral

Let’s be honest, we can’t really call up most jobs as a poet and say, “Yes, that’s right, I’m a poet and I lack the three years’ experience required to work for your company.”

But again, it’s all how you represent yourself, because we do come out of here with strong talents in creativity, publishing, and even teaching. There’s a huge demand for creative writers/editors in big and even small businesses. It’s going to be competitive like any job market right now, but the opportunities are there to have financial stability and be in an environment that sparks your creative juices.

My fellow classmates all have diverse post-graduation goals.  Here are a few: computer programming, marketing/copywriting, professor/adjunct, traveling tree planter (I know, right? So cool), service industry, and even continuing their education.

My advice is to have an idea of your possible path before grad school, and to have something in-line that can support you, but also inspires you.

So, what will I do?

Me in Shanghai 3 years ago. I might be going back.

Right now, I am applying to teach oversees in China. The thing that sparks my creativity is travel. So, I have to see the world. I once wrote, in order to be great, to understand the world, I am responsible for traveling the undulating soil of foreign land with my own two feet.

So, where can your feet take you?