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First, let me say that this is not an attempt to convince my mother that her investment in my MFA will pay off any time soon. Really.
I've put this into a FAQ, using the questions I get asked most often when I, very shyly and with no hubris what-so-ever, sneak into any conversation with a stranger the fact that I have an, ahem, MFA.
What is an MFA?
MFA is one of those academic acronyms that everyone bandies about because they are too embarrassed to actually ask. M is for Masters, F is for Fine, and A is for Arts. It's one degree above a Masters and just a half-step below a PhD (which stands for Doctor of Philosophy – backwards isn't it. The other fun one is ABD – which means All But Dissertation. ABD is a state you can exist in for years and years. You've done all the course work but haven't actually written anything.)
How does an MFA differ from a Masters?
Coursework for a Masters asks that you become just that – a master. You read, digest, regurgitate and know cold the information in your field. You have mastered the work of others. Usually you name a specialty – such as Emily Dickinson, Early-American Female Writers, Minor Poets of the Minoan Period, etc. Your Thesis and Dissertation (the work you produce at the end to prove you've Mastered what you set out to do) tells the world all about your hither-to-unknown supposition that the Minoans were actually early Deconstructionists. The end result is usually a very gripping beach read.
Coursework for an MFA goes further. You master every single writer that ever produced anything noteworthy in your chosen field, such as Poetry. You can talk wittily about the caesura and how the earliest ballads, written for a Saxon audience, were mere propaganda machines. You are very popular at cocktail parties, believe me.
Concurrently, you are also producing your own fine work, be it in Poetry or Fiction. Sometimes even that mongrel of a beast: Creative Non-Fiction. When you have taken eighteen hours of exams and written six twenty-page essays in thirty minutes or less about whatever mundane topic the powers-that-be decide to test you on, you have to then produce a Thesis of your own work. That work is then read by your Committee and they rejoice at the Artist they have produced, pat you on the back, and introduce you all around to the other Poets and Writers. Money then rains from the sky at your feet.
I can only speak for an academic MFA. There are other programs out there that give you the acronym without, IMHO, the blood, sweat, tears and gallons of wine a more rigorous program requires. The most famous and desired MFA is from Iowa. You don't even have to say where or what in Iowa. You just say, “I did my work at Iowa,” and doors literally fly off their hinges opening for you. I did my work at Georgia State University, sometimes that opens a window – just a crack, but that's all I need.
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