By Laura Townsend
I pocket-dialed my mother last night while I was heating up packaged lasagna in the microwave. I heard a tiny “Hello? Hello?” coming from my jeans and took a second to realize that my mother was trying to initiate a conversation with my leg. When I finally pressed the phone to my ear, an accidental phone call turned into a 20-minute discussion in which she pressed me about job applications. The longer we talked, the dizzier I felt. Between the anxiety that coincides with applying for “real world jobs” and the rhythmically spinning plate of lasagna illuminated before me, I thought I might be sick.
I will graduate from college in two months with a B.A. in creative writing and English. I will graduate with two full-length plays under my belt, about a dozen 10-minute plays and one-acts, a plethora of nonfiction essays, an hour-long television pilot, a few sit-com scripts, and a musical. It’s nearly impossible to graduate with a B.A. in creative writing without an impressively sized portfolio. I have spent my entire college career writing, all the time, no matter what. And yet, I feel embarrassingly unprepared to embark on a career as a writer.
When my mother asked about my job applications, I was overcome with a wave of anxiety because I did not know what to tell her. My writing classes at the University of Iowa have done an exemplary job of helping me develop my craft. What they have failed to do, however, is prepare me for a career as a writer following graduation.
The fact is there are a myriad of possible careers for writers. A writer could be hired as a copywriter for an advertising agency or a contributor for a magazine or newspaper; she could write for television, land a gig as a speechwriter, or enter the nonprofit arena as a grant writer. The possibilities are endless because there is not a single field that does not employ the written word in some fashion.
Even so, as a fourth-year writing student, I have yet to have a teacher address the class about our futures as writers. I have yet to have a professor show me how to create a writer’s résumé. I have yet to hear the words “cover letter” mentioned at all.
When I began applying for writer’s fellowships last month (all of which I discovered on my own; I had never had a professor mention fellowships before), every application asked for a link to my writer’s website along with a résumé and cover letter. I am now in the process of creating my own website, but in my four years studying writing at one of the top writing programs in the country, I did not even realize I needed one.
My writing classes have immensely helped me to grow as a writer, and I am forever grateful for the superior education I received here. Still, it is the job of the university to prepare its undergraduate students for life after college. At the end of each semester, I should leave my creative writing, classes not only with a finished piece of writing but also an idea of what to do with it.
All we ask from our teachers is for guidance regarding our futures. When my mother interrupts my late-night snack with questions about my future, I should be stressed because of my understandable anxiety over being on the cusp of entering a competitive field, not because I am feeling clueless about where even to begin.