<p>I believe Ken was referencing a blog and so I am not sure but that may be why it didn’t post as a link. But since I just read where he posted it somewhere else, I am going to take a chance and post the contents here, hoping this is indeed the one he mentioned:</p>
<p>How Grad School Changed (and Didn’t Change) My Life by Jason King Jones
APRIL 27, 2012 | BY Jason King Jones
For the last three years I have participated in that sacrificial rite of passage that so many theater artists have undertaken (and so many more theater artists have questioned): an MFA program. In my twenties, I was cobbling together a living as an “NYC-based director” (which means I lived near Manhattan and was predominantly working out of town). During that time, I saw several of my friends head off to get an MFA then return to the city. For some, the experience was positively transformational, but several of my friends simply returned three years later older, poorer, and more disillusioned with the profession than when they left. Many were quietly humiliated to have to return to the temping or the barista counter—the only difference now being the three letters behind their name and a percentage of their infrequent artistic paychecks going to union dues and their new-found agent/manager.</p>
<p>Am I being unfair? Perhaps.</p>
<p>You see, as Clayton Lord points out in his Intrinsic Impact essay, any time you try to apply an economic model to an art form, the results are disappointing. Going to grad school merely to “improve your career” is like starting a theater company merely to spur economic growth in a community. It’s missing the point, and for a long time, so was I.</p>
<p>But let’s face it, you don’t commit to a life change like graduate school without some expectation of a better life at the other end. I always am more apt to participate when I am hopeful for a reward. However, it took Jim Petosa, director of Boston University’s School of Theatre, to set me straight. In my application interview with him, he responded to my talk of future jobs with a version of the following statement (forgive me, Jim—it’s been three years): “The goal here is not to satisfy your career opportunity needs; the goal is to radicalize your directing.” I can’t remember if he said anything after like, “your career will take care of itself,” but once I realized I was dealing with a guy who wanted to “radicalize” my work, I wasn’t so worried about how to grab the next gig.</p>
<p>If you’re reading this with some level of suspicion, I don’t blame you. If you think I was foolish for deciding to commit to a program based on a seductive and abstract idea—an idea that after three years offered nothing concrete, that’s okay. By the time I had this conversation with Jim, I was looking for a big idea, not a big promise.</p>
<p>I went to grad school because I needed a big change. I needed to jump back into an environment with structure and deadlines. I needed room to experiment with some aesthetic ideas that had begun to worm their way around my brain. I needed a new mentor who didn’t know me from my teenage years. I needed to remove myself from my familiar surroundings and practices in order to transform my approach to text. I needed be around people who were paid to help make me better at what I do. I needed to study under these great teachers and work on my own teaching skills too. And, certainly, I needed more opportunities that come from committing to an expansive and connected network of working professionals.</p>
<p>Did I really need all this, or was I simply convincing myself that I needed the structure because I feared being without it? Could I have found all this without a grad program?</p>
<p>For the past couple of months, I’ve been reflecting on the big lessons I’ve learned in the last three years. For better or worse, I have learned the following:
My greatest strengths are also my greatest weaknesses.
Knowing better who I am empowers me to make stronger, more intuitive choices.
To find value in even the most misguided of productions.
I am far more creative when I viscerally engage in the work.
Being alone with myself is very difficult.
I am often the most productive when I have very little free time.
The right seven words are profoundly more effective than the approximate twenty–seven words.
After three years of grad school, my wife’s feedback is still right.
I suck at life/work balance. (So far, it’s been like life/work pendulum swing, only the pendulum has been like that ship at the fair that thirty people ride on and it swings a few stories up in the air and as it hurtles to the earth it induces that nauseating sense of free fall.)</p>
<p>Three years of concentration on my craft allowed me to define my deficiencies in my process, explore alternative approaches to working on plays, exposed me to a host of new work and new ways of working, provided me a laboratory to test new approaches, and immersed me in a rich creative environment. Now, I read scripts differently now, ask different questions, speak differently to designers and actors, and differently approach my duties in the rehearsal room. If this is what Jim Petosa meant by radicalization, it happened.</p>
<p>Now, I find myself in another new city, making new friends and armed for whatever may happen. I feel optimistic and empowered. I know this sheen will eventually fade. The economics of a freelance directing life haven’t changed; neither has my responsibility to my family. I’ll still have to hustle. But, na</p>
) I post this not to discourage caucasian students, but to not discourage all other students reading here!! Yes, some things are specifically non-ethnic, but casting today is often color-blind, and there are also fewer non-caucasian actors out there, so they have a higher % chance of success.</p>