[Izulde]

Sorry to be posting in this thread so much and sounding rather scatterbrained, but I've been obsessed with this for the past week or so...

I've been working on manuscripts for MFA in Creative Writing application, but I'm starting to have second thoughts.

I look at the statistics and see the low rates of acceptance and I feel the pressure, the need to perform. My writing doesn't flow as easily and carefree as it does when I write for leisure or for myself. The quality, too, seems to suffer.

The spectre of poverty also looms over my head. MFA's frequently have horrible salaries and long hours of pay.

I know there's been numerous published, well-respected authors who don't have an MFA. A good friend of mine who is one such individual. (Though he does regret not getting the MFA, as he'd love to have been able to teach in college.)

So I'm considering getting my Masters in Education instead and teaching high school, writing and coaching high school sports in my free time. I have a gift for inspiring enthusiam in others and for teaching... and while college professorship would allow me to engage in higher-level instruction, the path to a PhD is long, grueling, and I would suspect, ultimately unrewarding for someone who finds, in high-level research and scholarship of literature to neither be difference-making or immortalizing.

But then I ask myself, will I always look back and wonder what might have been? Will I continue to wonder if the talent's really there?