What comes through in your letter is that you don't seem to have a handle on your goals. A Ph.D. is not an end goal. It is a journey which you may enjoy or you may suffer through, but it is not a professional goal.

If you are in a partnership and are in love and plan to stay together with this man, you all should be making your plans together. My husband would be very unhappy if I told him that just because, for my enrichment, I wanted to move far away and put geographical distance between us. And I wouldn't do that. It is a priority for us to be together. That is me and my relationship. But think about yours. Is it a priority for you?

What your professors have told you is true. If you go to one of these low level schools, afterwards you are extremely unlikely to get a tenure track job. So what is your goal? Is it to find a tenure track position? Is it to teach at a high school?

It is especially important for you to think about this in terms of end goals because while getting an MFA you already struggled with depression and burnout. The Ph.D. is not going to be easier, and it will be harder for you to stick with it because you will know that there is probably no payout.

So if I were you, I would think about the end goal a little bit. If I were you I would probably go with the boyfriend to the Southern school and find out about teaching opportunities open to me because of the MFA. Getting your feet wet in that way would let you know if it is really a goal you want to pursue, and if you also spent your off hours writing, maybe you could get a novel published, and if it were good you could have other options open to you. Or if the school he teaches at has an English program, how much further down the list could it be? Either way you are not looking at a stunning credential. You would probably be better off trying to make yourself more attractive to the top tier schools and reapplying.

But, if you feel that your boyfriend is not a priority, and you are not sure that you want to be together, follow this passion as far as it takes you.

I didn't really understand the ivy league connection : )

Hi LW,

Like you I also just finished grad school, although not in writing. I arrived in a new city afterwards and there was a lot to do for the move. Then I had to start looking for a job. But sometimes I got unmotivated and just felt like reading mystery novels. I still had loose ends to tie up from what I was doing while in grad school, but I didn't feel like taking care of those things.

I did what I've done in the past when I have had to look for a job. I started volunteering and exercising. Now I have started to pick up the things that I need to take care of and look more productively for jobs. It has happened with very little discipline on my part--I found myself wanting to tackle those things again. I got sated with mystery novels.

My point is that we can force ourselves to do some things, but not all things. Writing in your free time is something that right now somewhere deep inside you don't want to do. Maybe because you are decompressing from grad school. Maybe because you have too high expectations for yourself.

What I would tell you is this--I have had to write in every job that I've had--a newsletter, a press release, articles for journals, proposals, articles for local newspapers, instruction manuals, letters, emails... So your M.A. in writing is a good qualification for a lot of jobs. If you want to write fiction professionally or be a freelance writer, that's a whole nother ball game. That will take a lot of internal drive and self discipline, or else a lot of desire that you don't currently have. So if you want to find a job that involves writing, when you move, look for one. If you need to find something right away, you can always do the fitness thing part time. But look for a full time job whose description involves writing. And there are quite a few jobs in many disciplines that would meet that description. You could write grants for a nonprofit, you could teach writing at a community college, you write for a a local newspaper, you could be a technical writer, just to name a few.

If what you want is to get into the artistic zone, not to change fields like that, then do a writer's workshop like Cary suggests. Or take another writing class. Good luck!