I love to create classes, I love to teach, I love to learn. This weekend in Detroit I had the most beautiful time studying natural dye and quilts with Kayla Powers, saylem m. celeste, and Ellen Rutt. It fed my spirit to be in community with other queer and trans people, doing and undoing with plants and fabric.
I am in a time of deeply contemplating why it is I teach, read, learn, write, or show up in any way to not just my creative practice but this practice of becoming and belonging.
Last year I swiftly accepted a space in The University of Nebraska’s Quilt Studies Certificate Program. I did almost no research I just saw the words Quilt Studies and thought yes this is right for me. It was almost immediately incorrect, but I quickly saw how much I had been desiring school and it made me realize I wanted to get an MFA. I didn’t know in what or why I just felt the call and the pull and the desire to be in grad school.
I looked around a bit and found Goddard’s low residency MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts program and was quick to decide to go there. I am quick, at decisions, if you didn’t know by now. Five planets in Gemini tornado person.
Alas, a few weeks ago in the middle of the semester the college closed announced it would close its doors, which has left me in an existential crisis the last few weeks of what to do next. This left little warning for students farther along in their degrees, faculty found out at the same time as students, and it has just been an overall nightmare to watch unfold.
Perhaps this was god winking at me telling me I don’t need to go get an MFA when I already have a career writing and teaching art. This is an easy story to smash, I know my reasons are for wanting more of a container around my textile and art practice and to write more. I am glad that when I was seventeen years old I decide to get a BFA in Dance and didn’t think about if that was a “good career option or not”. I knew I was a dancer, and therefore I danced. I wanted to study dance, I wanted to dance, and so I took out loans and that is what I did. Improvising through movement continues to be an integral part of my practice, even if it is no longer at the center.
This pause in school also made me quick to think I should go back to school for writing. Writing making up about 1/3 of my job and even more of my job when I am writing a book. Writing the Personal was also the class I taught to the most people I ever have - over two hundred students signed up. My mind really swirled in capitalistic thinking, or maybe you could call it good investment thinking, or somewhere in between. What is the “smartest” choice for my job? An MFA where I dig into my writing craft, or one where I dig into my textile craft and how I write about it?
While selling art has never been my job, teaching art, writing about creative practice, and hosting artists has always been my job. And wanting to go deeper into that study feels like a worthy endeavor. This helped me decide between writing and art, feeling like writing is really an extension of how I talk about and teach about my practice.
So I spent some time totally freaked out that I should not go to school for art and only for writing and then I switched back to thinking yes yes art school feels good.
Do you feel like you are in the Gemini swirl yet?
My eye is on The University of Nevada’s MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts which is also a low res program but a bit more focused on visual art then I had originally intended. I am pretty sure I can slowly invent my roadside stand there too, and write, and sit outside, and be with other students.
The last few weeks have really showed us the power of students and faculty coming together to protect each other in the face of police brutality for the sake of divestment and solidarity. I don’t think school is the only answer, in fact everyone I know who loves their master’s degree usually has something to say about the institution they went to.
My desire for school stems from my desire to be a student again. To be a learner amongst learners and bring it back to my students. To keep inventing new and interesting classes and courses and to bring more of them to real life.
Perhaps paying for an MFA seems like a waste of money but I feel like it is a worthy investment in the spirit of my growth as an artist.
I don’t know that these decisions ever feel totally clear - sometimes I think thats why I try to move so quickly, like that erases self doubt. So it’s been interesting to have the forced pause.
I am open to your experiences with getting a masters degree in your field - Are you happy you did? Is the debt insurmountable and pointless? Was it hard to decide where to go and why? What mattered more to you - faculty work or alumni work? All experiences welcome in the comments
Here I go! Into the unknown, undecided and floating in the what ifs, a place of deep discomfort. Trying to trust the trees, myself, and those closest to me.
Sending a lot of care in these times, we need art we need art!
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this week <3 It has been so healing and powerful to write a prayer every day
I appreciate getting a window into your contemplation and exploration of this, Cody.
I have an MA in one field (Arab Studies/Middle East politics) that helped pay for a 5-year Doctor's of Traditional Chinese Medicine program (through work as a freelance Arabic translator)...and now have been using my Chinese Medicine income to pay bills while I do what I really want to do: write!
I've considered going back to school (again, at age 49) for an MFA in part because I thrive in formal educational settings. I throw myself into school, enjoy going deep in a subject area, appreciate the accountability and teachers, etc. Being a student gives me a clear purpose and focus, which greatly alleviates my existential, big-picture anxiety. But it's all so expensive, and I'll never repay my student loan debt at this point.
I too chose a bachelor's that didn't necessarily mean future abundance. I got a BFA in painting from the Milwaukee Institute of Art and design in 2011. I could paint, so I painted. I have regrets about that time of life, but not the people that I met or the experiences that I had. That was a wildly expensive thing to do, but it's turned out that it hasn't truly weighed me down. I shifted gears in 2021 and went for an MS MFT. Moving into the mental health field was a big shift, but also not so much because really I was just looking deeper at something I already knew really well by being a person in the world. Sure, there's more debt, but there's also more purpose. More daily enjoyment. More clarity. More possibility. And even further understanding of my own life.
Getting a masters made all the difference in the work that I do. In the money that I make. In the people that I see. In my creative processes. I actually feel like I want to make art again, to write, to pull tarot cards, to go on long walks in the woods. I didn't feel that when I didn't know my purpose. And I think choosing to go to grad school, at least for me, opened up that door. I hope that it will open up for you too!