I'm particularly piqued by one of his poems, “Harold and the Purple Crayon: Twenty Years Later." Harold is a little boy who creates his own reality, literally making it all up as he goes along.

And no, I can't imagine that Clemson is going to be thrilled if there is no IAP...

Posted May 19, 2004 12:30 AM by Madeleine Robins

I found this link to a Santa Barbara IAP award for composition, which led me to a page mentioning the Individual Artist Program, run by Santa Barbara.

There are many hits for Santa Barbara Individual Artist Program. Since at least one source of Todds says he is originally from California, might this be the source?

I've been googling all his other references, too, because I love a good googlemystery, to be solved with a thorough googlebash.

Posted May 19, 2004 12:32 AM by Zara Baxter

And according to one webpage he's specifically from Santa Barbara, so . . .

Posted May 19, 2004 12:38 AM by Molly Moloney

International Advocate for Peace.
Incentive Awards Program (lots of those).
Indie Acoustic Project.
Institute of Architects of Pakistan.
International Academic Program (again, lots).

But [on preview: as noted by others]: the Santa Barbara Arts Commission offers an "Individual Artist Program" award—I found a cite for composition, and via that photography. Googling that phrase + award + fiction turns up enough noise to make it questionable. It could be a tiny and terribly localized award; perhaps it's a grant; the aggressive genericization of the acronym definitely carries a whiff of resume padding about it—but it's not necessarily pulled out of thin air, or any of Pierce's orifices.

Posted May 19, 2004 12:46 AM by Kip Manley

He does appear to be from Santa Barbara -- witness this page at Webdelsol, which is linked throughout his older pages at geocities.com. Webdelsol also appears to be the original place that housed the FSU creative writing pages Todd wrote (advice sections and all), and strangely Webdelsol.com also appears to be the server housing at least two of the online literary journals Todd mentions in his credentials.

"Todd Pierce grew up in Santa Barbara, California, a place he still considers home and which serves as a backdrop for much of his fiction."

He says elsewhere, on pages dating from the same period, that he hopes he can stay in So. California to complete his education -- this before his move to FSU for his Ph.D. program. Guess his alma matter at Irvine didn't see fit to have him take his Ph.D. there.

I note that on his old geocities.com webpage, Todd says in his bio that he has lived in Sydney, Australia. A mention that may be surprising to those who have noticed his not-terribly-accurate descriptions of that fair city.

Posted May 19, 2004 12:49 AM by Nancy Hanger

As a side note, according to the Santa Barbara County website, the Santa Barbara Arts Commission does indeed exist... but has no web site. Pity.

Posted May 19, 2004 1:02 AM by John Y.

I found one possible Wisconsin connection. According to several hits, Pierce cowrote a book on the short story with a fellow Clemson professor, Ryan G. Van Cleave. Van Cleave did teach at University of Wisconsin's creative writing program. Odd thing is none of the links for Van Cleave mention an award or grant. And only a few hits pop up for the book to be published. The info given in Van Cleave's bio is Behind the Short Story: From First to Final Draft, a fiction textbook. Allyn & Bacon/Longman, 2004.

Posted May 19, 2004 1:04 AM by Julia L.

More to the point, the only Google hits for "Charles Angoff Award for Literary Excellence" are copies of his own bio.

I think Clemson University might find that, combined with his advice on how to fake awards, very interesting indeed.

Posted May 19, 2004 1:28 AM by Janni

True, Janni, but a google of "Charles Angoff Award" without the extra stuff pulls up quite a few winners, including George Looney and Renee Ashley. Looks like it's awarded by The Literary Review, which published the Australia stories by Todd.

Posted May 19, 2004 1:32 AM by Zara Baxter

Ah--yeah, it does look more real when entered that way.

Posted May 19, 2004 1:34 AM by Janni

I think The Individual Artist Program briefly mentioned at the link found by Zara Baxter is a good candidate for the IAP Fiction award. Zara Baxter's link mentions that it is administered by The Arts Fund of Santa Barbara.

There are several web pages that appear to contain details for the The Arts Fund of Santa Barbara. The best descriptions I could find are 'Arts Fund-S.B.' and 'The Arts Fund'. The first of these two links says that "The Individual Artist Award is an annual program that gives solo exhibits and cash awards of $2,000 each to Santa Barbara County professional artists working in the areas of visual arts, performing arts and literary arts." I suppose the truly curious could send an e-mail to The Arts Fund and ask for a list of prior award recipients.

Posted May 19, 2004 1:43 AM by Richard Parker

Hrm. There used to be an ISP in australia called iap.net.au.

Oooh! I like this one: Intracarotid Ambobarbital Procedure
What Is An IAP?

The purpose of the IAP (Intracarotid Ambobarbital Procedure) is
to find out where language and memory reside in an individual's brain.
The test was designed to evaluate each side of the brain separately.
The IAP is often called the Wada test.

The Islamic Association for Palestine while interesting certainly doesn't seem to be the right place...

... and then there's "IAP" as "Internet Access Provider" - and that could be a remarkably broad award.

I somehow doubt that the Institute of Architects of Pakistan (IAP) award for contribution to architecture is what he's listing.

Looking further, it seems that Todd's also good at contradicting himself elsewhere. He's posted to a fair cross-section of newsgroups, including misc.writing, alt.video.* [where he's not very popular], and soc.christian.* among others. Oddly enough, he also seems to enjoy selling Disney videos for prices that I'd find surprising, even to a collector.

He seems to have the unfortunate habit of showing up in various newsgroups, asking questions, and requesting that replies be sent back to him via email [just bad manners, plain and simple]. Worse yet, it seems that he's in the habit of regularly saying "I normally wouldn't ask this, -but- ..." about sending replies back via email. obGrouse: My time is as important or more than his, he should read the newsgroup

Poking about further, it looks like his literary obsession is comparitively new - starting in late 1999, or thereabouts. By the looks of it, the alt.video.* crowd haven't missed him.

The Southeast Review appears to exist - it's departmental, and edited by those in the department [FSU, of course].

I do seem to be wandering about rather obsessively here.

Hrm. Well - before getting to FSU, his agent page was at: [dead link] embers.xoom.com/tjpierce/litagent.html ... and it seems that he also still has a page at: http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Nook/9082/toddpierce.html [~1999] - and he's also been known as toddpierce@iname.com

... and that references a somewhat stale link at webdelsol, which says that it was the "IAP Award for Short Fiction". It also mentions that he was published in "Nimrod: The Australian Literature Issue". I've found "Nimrod Australian Literature", published by Council Oak Books Staff". It's out of print. Helpfully, there's another publication called Nimrod International Journal of Prose and Poetry out at the University of Tulsa.

Hrm. I take that back. His desire to be published isn't new - and he's been handing out advice since 1997.

Yow! A search on "Todd J Pierce" shows that a lot of people have opinions about the gentleman.

Back to the IAP :)

The SC Book Festival has
Todd James Pierce, winner of the IAP Award for Fiction, a Kingsbury Fellowship, and the Charles Angoff Award, Todd James Pierce currently teaches at Clemson University. He is the author of two novels, The Sky Like Tamara Blue (2004) and The Australia Stories (2003). His nonfiction has appeared in books published by Penguin, Harcourt Brace, and NCTE Press and in magazines such as Poets & Writers and The Iowa Review. http://mailer.fsu.edu/~tjp4773/toddpierce.html

Theres a note about the IAP of 1996 and 1997 - but nothing helpful there.

This is a bit more promising - IAP 2002 Houston Book Festival", which seems to be "Independant Authors and Publishers" - but it's a new group.

MIT has an Independant Activities Period, which does appear to have writing courses of various sorts.

... at any rate, the only links that I'm regularly finding that are an exact match belong to Mr. Pierce.

yrs, obsessively

Posted May 19, 2004 1:50 AM by xeger

For what it's worth, theliteraryreview.org is also owned and hosted by webdelsol... it seems that all roads relating to Mr. Pierce lead back there.

Posted May 19, 2004 2:09 AM by John Y.

I lost interest in tracking down the awards, but thought I might read the on-line chapter to see if the Amazon reviewers were right to praise him so much. I found it wooden and dull, with irritating factual errors -- the ABC was the "Australian Broadcasting Commission" when the national network started; the C word is now Corporation, but he shows it as Company.

One snippet at the start had me really puzzled:

My grandparents had two children, a boy and a girl. They both attended The Christian Brother's School, were baptized in the Anglican faith [...]

He's uncomfortable with capitalisation; unable to put his apostophes where they belong; doesn't explain how a girl got into a boys' school; or why these Anglican kids went to a Catholic school. I'm glad I (partly) read this chapter; I know I don't want to buy the book.

And now, having read all that I've seen here, as well as seen his web site and his writing, I'm happy to believe the worst.

Posted May 19, 2004 2:51 AM by Greg Black

Glorioski. You guys have too much time on your hands.

Posted May 19, 2004 4:52 AM by Mick

Mick, have you ever watched wolf or tiger cubs playfully doing the things they'll do in earnest later when hunting? Identifying fraud and deceit is part of the job for many of the folks here, and discovering unsuspected cool stuff is part of the Weltanschauung. This sort of exercise is how we keep fit.

Posted May 19, 2004 7:36 AM by Bruce Baugh

It will be an interesting day when Todd does a regularly scheduled ego-surfing Google search and finds himself here.

Posted May 19, 2004 7:41 AM by Jill Smith

I find it interesting that he lists his Humanities grant (but which Humanities grant?) immediately following the mysterious IAP Award. I suspect that "IAP" has something to do with the money he has received from the university as a grad student. From my own recent experiences in a PhD program, I was instructed to list my teaching positions as "awards" on my CV. Could IAP stand for "Instructor's Assistant Position"? It's not a lie because it is an award from the university for his work and his efforts, and there probably is stiff competition for those teaching assistantships. It would be very interesting, however, to see what slut work he did as a grad student.

Posted May 19, 2004 7:43 AM by Amanda

... as if I needed any more reasons to be glad I'm not a student in the Humanities.

I'll be starting grad school this fall in electrical engineering, and the only apparent measure of worth for grad students (and indirectly, their advisors/professors)???

If it doesn't show up in an IEEE journal, it doesn't count.

Posted May 19, 2004 8:37 AM by Bill Blum

I'm just fascinated to learn that there exists an academic career track for novelists, and it produces assistant professors of this degree of competence. Damn it all, the whole reason I qualified as a pharmacist and then ended up as programmer #1 at a dot-com was because the careers department at the school I went to said it wasn't possible! Just think of all the unpleasant life experiences I could have missed out on if I'd known that all I needed was an MA in creative writing and a sensibly planned academic career ...

I'm half-tempted to apply for a teaching position at FSU or Clemson, just so I can frame the rejection letter informing me that I'm unqualified for the post.

Posted May 19, 2004 8:52 AM by Charlie Stross

Many a university will see these assistant positions as awards, considering they really *don't* have to give tuition waivers or stipends, however small those actually end up being. I haven't looked into his publication claims, but in all fairness, if he had an assistantship, there probably was at least somewhat of a valid reason that he received one (of course, the department may have had a slot that they needed to fill so that they could continue to have it). There is stiff competition for these awards, weird as it may seem after reading this man's CL, and the choice for who receives one usually does rest on proven academic ability, tests scores, valid publications, etc.; once one has a teaching assistantship,though, it doesn't mean that one can continue to have one in the future if the duties are not performed adequately. I know in my department, as well as a number of others in the humanities such as Comp Lit, the languages, and history to name a few, there were always too many grad students for the TA positions that were available. I do wonder what the state if his department is/was when he wrote this.
Any assistantship very rarely allows a grad student to have their own class. Rather, grad students run discussion groups for large lectures given by a professor. He could be a brilliant TA with choice classes to teach, but if that's the case, wouldnt he want to say so? What he actually taught might not have looked so good if he 'fessed up: "I taught remedial English" or "I photocopied books out of the library for my professor so he wouldnt' have to buy them".
And these issues are just as real for the sciences, if not as obvious.

Posted May 19, 2004 9:28 AM by Amanda

Charlie Stross wrote:
Damn it all, the whole reason I qualified as a pharmacist and then ended up as programmer #1 at a dot-com was because the careers department at the school I went to said it wasn't possible!

Our career center at my school borders on worthless, since it's assumed everyone is just going on to a graduate degree program, or to a professional program such as law school/med school.

They'll try and offer advice on getting into grad school--- assuming that you're proceeding in the same discipline that you studied while at Wittenberg. Heaven help you if you're a physics major trying to apply to engineering schools and the like...

Posted May 19, 2004 10:13 AM by Bill Blum

Can we have a show of hands of people who actually work in the field that their education "qualified" them for?

Me: Syracuse University, Theatre BFA (nope - not an actress any more).

University of Maine Law School (nope - not practicing law).

I got nothin'.

Posted May 19, 2004 10:19 AM by Jill Smith

Jill, that's a fun game!

Me: B.A. in music + grad work -- quit working on my master's degree when I got a good job in the semiconductor field. Actually, my music degree and the extra classes my voice teacher required (diction and such) come in very handy for my work at church.

Posted May 19, 2004 10:27 AM by Berni

I have actually met the gentleman in question and visited his department. At the time I was there, he was a relatively new assistant professor. As far as I know, he was brought in on what's known as a "spousal hire," which is when a university will hire the spouse of someone who has already been hired in order to keep the couple in the area. I don't remember his wife's name or department, though, and I think she has a different last name. If I am misremembering the spousal hire bit (and I may be; I met about 40 faculty members that day), there was definitely a strong impression that he got the job through nepotism rather than through a stern consideration of his credentials.

He did not seem terribly arrogant, but he did seem a bit clueless and not particularly adept at playing the academic game. The impression that I got was that he was not terribly attached to this job, but since his wife was here, he was making the best of it. His fiction did not come up except in passing, and he didn't mention any awards. Had I but known...

Sadly, this guy's problems are just the tip of the iceberg for that particular department. I couldn't get out of town fast enough.

Posted May 19, 2004 10:36 AM by anonyprof

Maybe it's just me, but doesn't it seem a bit odd to call a novel, "The Australian Stories"? Will his short story collection be titled, "The Australian Novel"?

Posted May 19, 2004 11:02 AM by rea

Jill Smith writes:

"Can we have a show of hands of people who actually work in the field that their education 'qualified' them for?"

I have a bachelor's in philosophy. There may be a more worthless degree but I am hard-pressed to think what it might be. Even a degree in basket-weaving entails a practical skill.

Posted May 19, 2004 11:04 AM by John Scalzi

I have a bachelor's in philosophy. There may be a more worthless degree but I am hard-pressed to think what it might be.

I have a bachelor's in nothing.

Posted May 19, 2004 11:39 AM by Dan Blum

BA: Classical Archaeology (minor in Medieval and Renaissance Studies, UM, Ann Arbor, wrote thesis on Islamic glass)
MA: Classical Literature (wrote on the Odyssey)
PhD Coursework completed: Classical Archaeology
Other stuff: 6 yrs. excavation/research experience

I teach middle/highschool Latin, world history, and anthropology, so I would say I am doing something somewhat related to my field. And, I am just starting an online reading group about the Iliad, which I should hope I am able to do somewhat decently, after 10 years of a Classical education. I don't know... the jury is still out.

Posted May 19, 2004 11:46 AM by Amanda

B.A. Theatre, concentrating in stage management. Which, I think, is how I got away with keeping Tor running for four years...keeping Tom Doherty on schedule is nothing to moving a travelling opera with forty castmembers around the state. Not directly related, but the skills were similar.

Nowadays, of course, all I do is write and chase the kids. Not very related, no.

Posted May 19, 2004 12:03 PM by Madeleine Robins

I have a BA in Linguistics, from a time when that was a Master's Lite, with General Ed requirements.

While it doesn't help to qualify me for any of the jobs I've had, I've used what I learned in every single one. Stratificational Catalysis Information Counting? Used it to improve the efficiency (and comprehensibility) of the tables in reports at the bank.

Also, since I know what kinds of sentences are hard for non-native speakers of English to understand, I can avoid such sentences when speaking to non-natives. Knowing something about phonology helps me "listen through" accents. And on and on.

Posted May 19, 2004 12:04 PM by Xopher

I currently work as a computer programmer (MATLAB and Fortran) at Wright-Patterson AFB. My academic background actually helps me get along at work-- electromagnetic modeling and such.

Background:

- Associate of Arts, Mathematics, Purdue University (Fort Wayne Campus)
It's a consolation prize, really. Long story behind it.

- B.S. in Physics, Wittenberg University
( degree requirements complete, awaiting professor's final word on an overdue project to resolve a non-required class with an 'Incomplete' grade )

- Beginning coursework for the M.S. Engineering (Electrical) degree this fall at Wright State Univ.

Posted May 19, 2004 12:11 PM by Bill Blum

Xopher: While it doesn't help to qualify me for any of the jobs I've had, I've used what I learned in every single one.

Oh, absolutely. Theatre training is useful for a host of reasons (being able to get on my hind legs and speak clearly without fear is only one of the more obvious ones). The legal training, ditto.

That's why I specifically asked the "qualification" question. It's surprising how many people want to stuff you into the box that your education "qualifies" you for, even though a vanishingly small number of people seem to go in a straight line from school to career.

Posted May 19, 2004 12:11 PM by Jill Smith

I have a bachelor's in philosophy. There may be a more worthless degree but I am hard-pressed to think what it might be.

B.A. in Mythology, final coursework on ancient Near Eastern mythology. Even French Literature majors cower in fear of my degree-uselessness!

Posted May 19, 2004 12:13 PM by mythago

Bill Blum: Electronics Letters counts as well, and that's the IEE not the IEEE. If you're in one of the physics/EE borderline areas such as photonics, Physics Letters, Applied Physics Letters, and similar publications will also count, as will publications in conferences, etc. of the SPIE. I'm sure there are equivalent publications on the more pure-math related side of the field, but I don't know of any of them.

(Side note: I love electrical engineering. I have the same diploma from the same department of the same university with this lady in the office across the hall from me, but after a couple of years of specializing on top of it from both of us, and we can completely talk over each others' heads.)

In principle, though, you are right. What will count is only refereed publication, preferably in a journal/conference heard of by more than fifteen people. (Dissertations don't impress anyone that much, either, once you have one.) Maybe it's that I'm not creative enough, but I really don't think it's possible to successfully make up credentials in this field and not raise eyebrows way, way high immediately even if your evaluator is not possessed of a fine-tuned Baloney Detector.

Posted May 19, 2004 12:17 PM by Zeynep

You know, it occurs to me that there's another reason why Pierce's advice to lie about credentials is not only unethical and likely to get you found out, but also stupid on other grounds.

Credentials of the "obscure non-professional market no one's ever heard of" type just aren't that hard to get legitimately. (It's more a matter of not wanting to sell to most such markets, since the quality is often so awful.) If you can't find some market like that that will buy your work and have to invent one instead, you're probably not ready to be submitting anyway.

Posted May 19, 2004 12:22 PM by Janni

BA in Zoology, but I've also completed about a thousand hours of massage training and I'm definitely using that to make some money (and soon, with luck, much more!).

Posted May 19, 2004 12:26 PM by Tom Whitmore

That's a really good point, Janni. "I got published on my friend's sister's literary weblog!" is not going to impress many people, unless your friend's sister is (say) Joan Didion.

Posted May 19, 2004 12:56 PM by mythago

BS in Art (glass) from UW-Madison, with a second major in Creative Writing. I have at various times been able to make a living within the broad confines of my qualifications, but sadly not very often. Now I drive a cab in New Orleans, which occasionally utilizes some of my skills at story-telling but isn't terribly satisfying. How's that for useless degrees?

Posted May 19, 2004 1:20 PM by Nevenah

Hrm. Since my highest formal education is high school diploma (with minimal college courses), and currently my job is slowly being automated to the point where I am basically turning into an exceptionally bright button-pushing monkey, I believe I am working a job for which my education qualified me.

In other news, I am looking for a job. Preferably somewhere not in California. At least vaguely apropos of this discussion, anyone got any tips for breaking into the editing field? With no solid experience? And no degree, relevant or otherwise? And insufficient savings to live off of while I intern?

I sha'n't hold my breath waiting for the responses to pour in. :)

Posted May 19, 2004 1:43 PM by Tina

BA Anthropology, with the requirements for a minor in Comp Sci. I use both everyday. Having a degree that essentially consists of explaining unsavory and unusual habits to unsympathetic audiences is a wonderful introduction to helping geeks and management communicate.

Although I'm not at all a writer, I also like to think that a degree that requires the submission of vast numbers of papers improves your ability to communicate information in a written format. Then again, thinking about some of the papers that I've had the unfortunate fate to mark and edit, perhaps that's not such a valid conclusion after all.

Posted May 19, 2004 1:47 PM by xeger

BM in Jazz Studies. I now write manuals and online Help for specialized engineering software. Although I also play music in saloons and nightclubs fairly regularly, and try to show the younger musicians how to recognize a dominant cycle or a minor plagal cadence.

I do think that a useless bachelor's degree is rather less impressive than a useless graduate degree. A tech-writer colleague of mine has the notorious MFA in Art History. A bit of a cliché, so no points for creativity, but all the more useless considering the cost.

Posted May 19, 2004 2:07 PM by HP

B.S.: Computer Science
M.F.A.: Electronic Music
Work: computer music systems

That sounds really focused, but it took me ten years, six colleges and four majors to get that B.S.

Posted May 19, 2004 2:15 PM by Tim Walters

Tina:

My non-music career started with Macmillan Computer Publishing in Indianapolis. They were looking for in-house proofreaders. I applied and took a test. I got hired as a proofreader, worked closely with and learned from the copyeditors, and within a year moved into copyediting and then eventually started developing titles. I had a hand in introducing the Idiot's Guides, which are now a certified publishing phenom in the field of "competing successfully with the Dummies books."

(It was only later that I discovered the financial benefits of suckling directly from the corporate teat, writing boring manuals and Help for software companies. But I do miss the energy of publishing.)

So, here's what worked for me: Try to get work in the production department--proofreading, layout, project management. You'll learn all kinds of things about books and how they get made. Develop positive working relationships with editors and wait for an opening. Also, decide that money's not that important to you.

OT: Speaking of good ol' Macmillan, do any of you folks in SF Fandom know Barry Childs-Helton? Seven-foot-tall filk singer? Tell him Howard says "hi."

Posted May 19, 2004 2:23 PM by HP

I do think that a useless bachelor's degree is rather less impressive than a useless graduate degree.

Absolutely. A B.A. can be dismissed as one's young, aimless years; a graduate degree implies a serious financial and time commitment to uselessness.

Still, I do win the "most useless pre-law degree" dick-swinging contest whenever I get together with law types.

Posted May 19, 2004 2:30 PM by mythago

BA in English. Started out as a French Lit major, though. Lucky I quit when I did, eh?

I actually work as an editor, in the trade publishing industry. In fact I went back to college, after 3 years away, to get the degree that proved I was qualified to get the job I wanted. Although the irony of that is, I got hired because of my breadth of computer skills, none of which I learned in William Jewell's English department.

And as far as a degree equalling qualifications, I am continually amazed at how my coworkers, English majors all, do not understand what passive voice is.

Posted May 19, 2004 2:32 PM by Holly M.

That's the voice that says "whatever you want...I don't care...can't be bothered...I'm just going to lie here..." right?

Oh, no, that's the Apathetic Voice. :-)

Posted May 19, 2004 2:36 PM by Xopher

Tina, from Electrolite:

As some of you are aware, I have basically no educational credentials. I stopped attending high school before my senior year, and I never went to college. I’ve done all right with my life anyway. I have no real complaints.

Posted May 19, 2004 2:42 PM by mythago

B.A. in Classical Studies, additional courses in Linguistics, Art History, and Egyptology. I'm an editor. Today I fact-checked Olympic history, parsed a complicated sentence using sentence-diagramming techniques I used in Latin Grammar, simplified said sentence to make it much more readable. My formal education qualified me perfectly for both these activities. Of course, while I was getting my formal education, I thought I wanted to be a museum person. And my job has me editing things that have nothing whatsoever to do with what I studied in school. This year I've worked on textbooks (computer science, claims adjustment, and language arts), a reference book, corporate annual reports, employee benefits packages, children's books on science and nature, and a board game.

Tina, there is no one definitive career and training path for editing. PNH just finished telling us all that he didn't finish high-school. You do need to be willing to train, somewhere---either with an editor or through a school. It helps to take courses such as those offered by Ryerson University in Toronto (I mention it because Ryerson's core editorial courses are offered via distance ed., and are therefore accessible to those who don't live in Toronto, and who may have a day job). Sometimes you can take the twisty route that I took: show up at the Editors' Association, volunteer, work at whatever comes up (temping, admin., cartographical research, desktopping...), until somebody notices you and takes you under their wing. Everybody will tell you that you need to intern, and this may be true if you want to go into traditional book publishing. You will probably need to train somewhere. But not interning and finding several mentors through volunteering worked for me, though the entire process took about two years. My current employer wouldn't have cared if I'd dropped out of seventh grade---he knew my work, loved it, and was willing to hire me on the strength of my volunteer work. This is a good place to find out what worked for others. If there's an editors' professional association wherever it is you're situated, that's another. Good luck!

Posted May 19, 2004 2:51 PM by jennie

M.A. in theater here (hello, Madeleine), emphasis in directing. So although I'm not trodding the boards in Manhattan, staging Waiting for Godot in a loft above a Starbucks, or teaching high school drama (anymore), actors do keep popping up in my fiction. When writing, I have all the control, the stage machinery always works on cue (in the final draft, at least), and the only prima donna I have to cope with is myself.

Actually, the theater degree has been very good for me professionally, if serendipitously. Through happenstance (and a little hands-on help from Ray Bradbury) my degree work led directly to a career in the planetarium field, which welded my love for astronomy to my background in theatuh and my lifelong fondness for SF, handing me a chance to write scripts that blended it all for public consumption. All the stars a stage, etc.

Posted May 19, 2004 2:56 PM by Mark Bourne

HP: I can do proofreading. I'm strange enough to actually enjoy proofreading. And, er. If money meant much to me, I wouldn't be interested in a career as a genre fiction writer. :)

But I've perused the want ads for proofers from time to time and they always seem to want experience. If it is sometimes not the case, that's good to know. (Interestingly, Indianapolis is actually the city to which I want to move, and I was thinking about the fact that Pearson was there.)

I am now wondering if I should be talking about embarking on an editing career if I am going to continue to begin sentences with "but".

mythago: So, what you're saying is that I should become Patrick. :)

Posted May 19, 2004 2:56 PM by Tina

Thanks, Jennie. I should check out the distance learning, definitely; I like such options.

Also, to keep from having to spam the thread with "thank you" posts: I do greatly appreciate any and all tips, present in this comment thread or to be conveyed in the future via post, e-mail, telepathy, or messenger flying squirrel.

Posted May 19, 2004 2:59 PM by Tina

Jill Smith said:

"It will be an interesting day when Todd does a regularly scheduled ego-surfing Google search and finds himself here."

It should be later today, since I sent him an e-mail about the hot Dog-Pile-on-Todd-Pierce action here (I also noted my additional comments on his advice on my own site). No point not letting him wander around in ignorance.

Posted May 19, 2004 3:30 PM by John Scalzi

Tina: mythago: So, what you're saying is that I should become Patrick. :)

There are much worse things. (You could become me, for example: working a high-paying and utterly thankless job, never having time or energy to pursue the least of your dreams, writing only in blog comment threads, trying hard not to remember exactly what the dreams were, because remembering them is like eating glass, and occasionally telling a coworker, as I did last Thursday, "anyone who admires ME is a fool." Avoid this. Patrick is not a bad model at all.)

Posted May 19, 2004 3:36 PM by Xopher

Oooooo, the plot thickens. I can't wait to read what this guy has to say about all of this. Juicy, Lucy.

Posted May 19, 2004 3:42 PM by Randall P.

BA, Chemistry. (Harvard -- my AP Chem teacher said Brandeis was better, but I was tired of being out of reach of a city.) That got me my first computer job (at a software company with an EPA contract to juggle chemical information), but I haven't had to think of chemistry professionally in almost 20 years.

OTOH, I later completed a night-school program in Comp Sci, unlike some of the sharp types who learned enough on the job to keep moving up -- so I haven't ventured as far from my paper qualifications as many here.

Posted May 19, 2004 3:43 PM by CHip

I'm inordinately pleased (though I shouldn't be surprised) to see so many fellow theatre majors among the Making Enlightened.

(BFA in Playwrighting/Directing/Stage Management, here. And one of the last at WVU to receive that unwieldy bastard title as well.)

I've never used it professionally, and am somewhat horrified at the thought of trying.

But I've been working on my spiel, now that I'm getting serious about looking for a new job, that theatre folk are the best people to hire for any position: We know how to make stuff out of nothing, we can produce on impossible deadlines, we're good at improvising, we have work ethic like no one else, and we're all about cooperation and teamwork. I'll probably leave out the tendency to do funny voices and recall blank verse at the drop of a (feathered and sequined) hat.

Incidentally, I did win a writing award when I was in college, though I couldn't remember what its name was with a gun to my head. (It was for a genre-related work, too - a short essay on the importance of food in The Hobbit.) I even got prize money out of it, making that my first and only piece of paid writing, for an even hunnert bucks. Which to my starving-student lifestyle at the time looked like a veritable fortune in used paperbacks and Taco Bell.

I still can't imagine putting that in a cover letter, though.

Posted May 19, 2004 3:49 PM by Dan Layman-Kennedy

Bachelors in biology with a minor in chemistry, followed by a year or so working at the public library I'd worked at to fund the degree, followed by twenty years or so writing software.

These days I surf the Web and write words instead of code. I keep up with my sciences by reading the latest and spending every Presidents' Day weekend at AAAS -- wherever it may be -- finding out how songbirds learn to sing, learning about the physics of ice cream and watching Paul Serrano talk about dinosaurs.

Posted May 19, 2004 3:51 PM by Sal

mythago: So, what you're saying is that I should become Patrick. :)

You'll have to take that up with Teresa. And Patrick, I suppose...

Posted May 19, 2004 3:56 PM by mythago

Amanda,

I curious where you teach. I got my BA in Anthropology/Archaeology from the University of Arizona and am currently finishing my Master's degree in English Education from WVU. (I hope to teach high school English/language arts classes). I would love to teach an anthropology/archaeology class for a public school (along with English), but I don't know any schools that would be willing to let me do so. Let me know how (and where) you fell into your teaching placements if you get a chance. Thanks.

Posted May 19, 2004 3:58 PM by Mark

Xopher, I wouldn't have to "become" that, I'm pretty much already right there with you. Except I'm not sure if my job counts as "high-paying" given the housing costs in CA.

Oh, and, people should admire me. They should. They should admire me and buy my writing...

...if I ever have time to write again.

And thus, why I want to embark on a career change. Yes, I think editing would be a lower stress job than the one I have. No, I don't think I'm underestimating the potential stress levels of editing.

Less seriously: but I don't want to be a man. Although I suppose that being married to Teresa would not suck. ^_^

Posted May 19, 2004 3:59 PM by Tina

Hi all, I've been lurking for awhile and just want to decloak to ask, is anyone else on tenterhooks about the provenance of "Hugged it like a brother?" Please, Theresa, please please please I waded through nearly 200 posts hoping for the answer. Don't leave me hanging! Thanks. Cloaking again now.

Posted May 19, 2004 4:02 PM by Gen

Gen, we've asked in that thread. Nothing doing. Sometimes Teresa just likes to leave us in the exquisite tension of unending speculation.

She's a cruel goddess, but fair.

Posted May 19, 2004 4:09 PM by Xopher

I got a BA in English Literature. That, while fun, didn't do much to set my feet on the path of the wage earner. After graduation, I still didn't know what to do with my life so I got a BS in industrial engineering at a different college. (Engineering school seemed like it would be more fun than a graduate degree in English.) By the time I finished the engineering degree, I knew damn sure that I did not want to be a college student any longer.

Following that surfeit of education, I borrowed money from my family and started my own ISP, a concern which, in addition to giving me broadband and cool toys to play with, has kept a roof over my head and food in my mouth for the last eight years.

Posted May 19, 2004 4:25 PM by teep

Engineering school seemed like it would be more fun than a graduate degree in English.

Fly, you fool! (Spoken as an undergrad at Imperial doing Aeronautical Engineering - colloquially known as 'the hard course'.)

On the other hand, I may yet get to build shiny shiny flying machines...

Posted May 19, 2004 5:49 PM by Jakob

Dan L-K: I played up my theatre-tech experience when I was looking for a part-time job that summer. I got the job, but I'm not sure whether my enthusiastic explanation of how, after dealing with the spoiled rotten diva of my last show, handling unhappy customers would be a piece of cake had anything to do with it.

As for useless degrees, I don't really qualify. My current project is a BA in Psych, which is one of those majors that you can relate to almost anything. Not terribly useless, but most of my friends are in CS, and they think I'm crazy. The thing about psych is that it's a generalist's degree at most schools: There are few required classes, so you have lots of room for packratting. "Ooh, dairy management, and paleontology, and urban geography... fun!"

Posted May 19, 2004 5:50 PM by abby

The year I was in college I majored in Voice and Drama, but that was just because my parents made me go to a college where I comped out of all the required courses except Religion (and that was because you couldn't comp out of religion, no matter how much you knew). I first performed professionally when I was five, so if I wasn't going to have math and science, I'd have performing.

I spent most of my career working on communications software for computerized weapons and intelligence systems, but I *did* learn to program in a g&t program when I was six, so I had some formal education in that area.

I don't think there's any programs that lead to a career in "retired on disability."

Posted May 19, 2004 5:57 PM by Marilee

I got a BS in Jouralism from the William Allen White School of Journalism, University of Kansas, Lawrence. I've worked in the KU libraries(until determining if I wanted a promotion I'd have to go get an MLS, AFTER buying a house), for an animal health manufacturer and an advertising agency. My current position, with a trade show publisher (we do the exhibition floor guides, we have a group that does daily newspapers at shows, etc.). I have to edit, proofread, contact exhibitors on some shows. prepare data for layout artists, a wide variety of stuff. It's great fun actually. Oh, and I get to work at home about 80% of my workweek (sometimes more, sometimes less). Salary and benefits. Wooohoooo.

Posted May 19, 2004 6:15 PM by Paula Helm Murray

I have a BA in Communication, majoring in Advertising and minoring in History. (The combo made more sense when I started out in journalism.) I also did a Multimedia Certificate in web design. Have used neither education in my job experiences, other than some simple HTML formatting.

Paula: I can completely relate with the library experience. I've been working temp jobs as a library technician for several years, mostly govt and law libraries. I'm really resisting getting the MLS. I've discovered I like working *in* libraries, doing research and such, but necessarily *for* one. And reference work doesn't have the same appeal as historical research. Probably pays better, but not much.

Posted May 19, 2004 6:35 PM by Julia L.

BA in Psychology and Creative Writing.

And I do data entry for the IT department at Diamond Brand Outdoors.

I have no complaints about the job, but it's NOT what I went to school for. If I'd known that I needed to brush up on my computer skills and move to Asheville without getting $50K in student loan debt first, I would've cut out that 4-year-period of my life.

And would've never met my husband.

It's a tough call.

But I've already ranted about this one elsewhere on some other thread.

I just wanted to mention that I know Clemson. It's nearby, though I couldn't say exactly where. It's my boss' alma mater, and his niece just graduated from there. I'll mention this to him.

Strangely, it won't be the first time I've mentioned Making Light to him; I told him about "This is stupid. Now I have stupid all over me," earlier today.

He was amused.

Posted May 19, 2004 6:48 PM by Alice Keezer

BS in English Literature. Currently working as a freelance web programmer and small businesscritter.

Tina: I don't think enjoying proofreading is all that strange. Sitting down with a pile of paper and a red pen makes me pretty happy, too :P My dad used to have me proof his reports for work when I was in middle school.

Posted May 19, 2004 6:55 PM by cyclopatra

BA in Philosophy (the diploma says Liberal Studies -- they didn't stand up the official Philosophy major until a year after I left CSUS) and all but 3 comps (I think) towards a masters in Public Administration. However, I was a theater major (design, mostly) for a couple of years.

I'm currently database administrator for a very large food processing plant in California. One could argue that database work is somehow an application of (predicate) logic and phenomenology, and all the org theory is still useful.

Of course the theater experience is still useful when handling all the drama kings/queens in the user community . . .

Posted May 19, 2004 7:04 PM by Claude Muncey

Still trying to figure out how to score "ran out of money before declaring a creative writing major." (The most important thing I learned: if you're the writer in residence, don't blow off your class's end-of-semester reading because your girlfriend's up from New Orleans. The things those kids will say about you...)

Posted May 19, 2004 8:12 PM by Kip Manley

BA in Art History, and I'm now a graphic designer, so I stayed rather close. Even closer if you consider that one of my grad school papers detailed a proposition for a computer-based database of subjects in Chinese painting. The computer bit was rather important - when I was in grad school, they were still putting information like this on index cards.

Uplist someone expressed surprise that an Anglican girl would go to a Christian Brothers' School.

Some member churches of the Anglican Communion have religious orders and I would not be surprised if some of those orders ran schools.

However, I think it's more likely that it's the Roman Catholic Christian Brothers in this instance as they are known for running schools.

It's still not very surprising, however. Many Roman Catholic schools are coed, and at least on the West Coast of the United States, it's not surprising to find Episcopalians attending them. I would suspect the same would hold true for Australia and Anglicans for much the same reason - not enough Anglican/Episcopalian schools, so if you wanted your child to have a religious education or go to a private school, the local Roman Catholic school was pretty much all that was available.

My youngest brother, an Episcopalian, attended the local Roman Catholic school.

Posted May 19, 2004 9:18 PM by Margaret Organ-Kean Durocher

BS in Information Systems, Drexel University

Currently unemployed...

Posted May 19, 2004 10:31 PM by Jon H

Jill, Mr. Pierce may thank you for distracting everyone from the hunt. :)

I have a BA in Mathematics and a MS in Computer Science. (The latter is from Clemson, no less, with years spent slaving away in a cave right next to Strode Tower). Currently I copyedit video games for a living, although in my defense, I was a systems administrator for several years. My current job does not pay nearly as well, but it is much more satisfying and much, much less stressful. Oh, and then there's that "play games for a living" part.

Tina said, I am now wondering if I should be talking about embarking on an editing career if I am going to continue to begin sentences with "but".

That reminds me of my favorite scene in Finding Forrester. Time to watch it again.

Posted May 19, 2004 11:19 PM by Jeff

Alice, Clemson's located down near Greenville, SC; about an hour/hour and a half drive (it was about an hour from Brevard, but I believe Brevard's between Asheville and Clemson on the most direct route, unless taking I-26 towards Spartanburg would work).

I actually hung out at Clemson a fair amount my senior year in high school as I'd managed to hook up with the chess club there and, well, it was the closest place I had contacts that was well and truly out of Brevard. Still, both it and Florida State are generally considered the overall educational laggards in the ACC. It's an adequate school, and I believe pretty good in agracultural courses, but no one's going to mistake it for the Ivies, or even UNC-Chapel Hill in terms of academics.

B.S. Comp Sci, M.S. in Comp Sci with concentration in Artificial Intelligence. Strong correlation to all my post college jobs, save that writing has been the major component for the past decade (but without the CS knowledge, I wouldn't be doing it). Ironically, my undergrad CS degree at UNC-CH probably led to more improvement in my writing that anything else. Y'see, I think posting a fair amount to Usenet improved it, just by sheer volume and feedback, and I first got onto Usenet due to it being invented at UNC-CH and Duke when I was there...

Posted May 19, 2004 11:28 PM by Tom Galloway

I'll play. Double bachelor's in English Lit. and Psychology from Gordon College before it became a fundamentalist stronghold (don't get me started). Most of an M.A. in Children's Lit. from Simmon's in Boston, before they kicked out Betty Levin and a bunch of the others who founded that program and repopulated it with a bunch of academicians who had never written or edited children's books (again, don't get me started).

So currently I'm a freelance editor and production editor (copyediting, line-editing, etc.) and book production person (design, typesetting, etc. from ms. through finished book) for various companies. Do I get to edit children's books? Once in a very blue moon, if I'm lucky. But that degree in psych does help out once in a while when I'm stuck talking to freelancer of mine (usually a proofreader) down off a ledge, and in convincing a printer that they really want to give us extra time in the schedule.

But how and why did I get my first job in publishing? (Not counting my internship, long ago.) Because I could make computers my b*tch.

Posted May 20, 2004 1:06 AM by Nancy Hanger

Well, I've never been to Clemson,
But I went to Indiana;
Didn't finish my degree there,
Sorta slipped on a banana.
Sys. Anal. lost me,
I guess it's cost me,
And does it matter?
Heck, maybe it matters.

I haven't got certification
And I guess I'm overreaching
I'm sucking air above my station,
But I don't make like I'm teaching
Full marks for trying
But not for lying
That's what it matters,
Yeah, that's what it matters.

Posted May 20, 2004 1:09 AM by John M. Ford

What qualifications?

Yes, I have had stories published, a long time ago in fanfic zines that nobody had ever heard of. It's hardly a selling point, but somebody liked the stories enough to type them onto stencils.

Looking at bookshops, it is apparent some people have strange literary tastes.

Posted May 20, 2004 2:22 AM by Dave Bell

Scene 1 Act 1:
The open dusty road, a large motorcycle gang is riding along, as the camera pulls in closer we realize this is not just any motorcycle gang but one composed of editors, writers, and English professors. They are all yelling at once, to be heard over their hogs, but the noise of the motorcycles and their yelling makes a harmonious whole.

Editor 1: SASE with the short story! SASE with the poetry! SASE with vignette, limerick, personal anecdote!!

Writer 33: whereYAsubmit, whereYAsubmit, whereYaSubmit?!?!

Writer 7: You can submit all you wanna, you can do follow up contacts, schmooze at conventions, you can submit all you wanna but it's different than it was.

Writer 18: no it ain't, no it ain't but you gotta win a contest.

Editor 15: Why it's the intarweb made the trouble, the intarweb the intarweb, the intarweb made the trouble made the people wanna slash, wanna comment, wanna read non-linear fiction with legolas and kirk in a love triangle.

Editor 3: no it ain't the intarweb at all, ain't the intarweb at all, it's the dumbing down of america, dumbing down, dumbing down, and the lack of standards in our educational system, nobody wants to know about Dante Alighieri anymore anymore.

Writer 33: whereYAsubmit, whereYAsubmit, whereYaSubmit?!?!

Writer 7: You can submit all you wanna, you can go online to the professional forums, schmooze at conventions, kiss critical ass, you can submit all you wanna but it's different than it was.

Writer 18: no it ain't, no it ain't but you gotta win a contest.

Writer 53: Ever meet a guy named Todd James Pierce?

PIERCE?,PIERCE?,PIERCE?,PIERCE?,PIERCE?,PIERCE?,PIERCE?,PIERCE?,PIERCE?,PIERCE?,PIERCE?,PIERCE?,PIERCE?,PIERCE?,PIERCE?,PIERCE?,PIERCE?,PIERCE?,PIERCE?, NO!!!!!!!

Writer 53: Now he never wins a contest.

NEVER WINS A CONTEST?!?

Writer 53: Doesn't schmooze at conventions.

DOESN'T SCHMOOZE AT CONVENTIONS?

Writer 53: Nope, he never schmoozes at conventions nor worries about the intarweb or ass-kissing critics or a doggone thing, he's just a book-publishing, resume-padding, fib-telling, English language-mangling, real-life Author that Mr. Todd James Pierce, Todd James Pierce.

Writer 18: He's a fake, and he never wins a contest!

Writer 53: He's a tip giver outer! He gives to the newbies, tips online or tips beneath the bar, tips at luncheon, tips gazing at the stars.

Editor 1: Well I don't know much but I do know you can't make a living giving tips, here and there an article for a professional mag, but tips are a sure failure to sell.

Writer 53: Why sure, you and I know it, but it doesn't phaze him, he gives tips at the bus stop, tips to the beat cop, tips to the waitress who thinks that he's swell, he's the kinda guy who'd give tips down in hell, tips till he's loopy, tips to a newbie. He gives tips all day long and he posts them online, and when the man teaches, what else, he gives tips to the class, tips pulled right out his ass. YESSIR, YESSIR, YESSIR, when the man teaches, what else, he gives tips to the class, tips pulled right out his ass.

Everybody but Writer 18: YESSIR, YESSIR, YESSIR

Writer 18: BUT HE NEVER WINS A CONTEST!!!!

Posted May 20, 2004 2:45 AM by bryan

At this point the gang passes by an offramp, one member who has heretofore hung back confidently rides up to Writer 18, this fellow, in contrast to the others in the gang, is riding a shiny red moped.

fellow: Say buddy, can you tell me what the name is of this town we're passing by?

Writer 18: That's Battle Mountain Nevada, the armpit of america, they don't need no stinkin' literary culture down there.

fellow: you don't say, well that sounds mighty interesting, think I'll take a look-see.

Writer 18: Oh yeah, well I hope you don't mind my curiousity but I never did happen to catch your name.

fellow: That's ok, I never did happen to throw it.

the fellow pulls away from the gang who continue on, Writer 18 looking back over his shoulder sees the fellow get on the offramp and notices that his jacket has the words TODD JAMES PIERCE in pink and silver sequines on the back.

Posted May 20, 2004 3:12 AM by bryan

Mark,
Anthropology happens to be one half of a year-long course for 9th graders. The goal is to teach them how to approach the study of history. For the Anthro side, we study evolution and culture, and for the history side of things, we spend 8 days on different units, using no textbook, just primary source documents.

I did, literally, fall into this position out of over 60 applicants, but the position I was applying for was teaching Latin. It just so happened that the school needed an additional teacher for the history course, and with my background I could fill the slots in both departments. I use my training in archaeology mostly in my Latin and history courses.

I found my job by chance using the American Classical League website that posts positions for Latin and Greek teachers throughout the U.S., and am now teaching at an independent school near NYC. You might want to consider contacting a professional service who will schlep your resume or CV to different independent schools, if you really want to use your Anthro background. It may not be free, but the cost isn't very high for you; the school pays a finder's fee once they hire someone. Hope this helps!

Posted May 20, 2004 6:31 AM by Amanda

Jeff: Jill, Mr. Pierce may thank you for distracting everyone from the hunt. :)

If it had been my intention (it wasn't), it isn't working terribly well; however, it is interesting to see all these different backgrounds in a new way.

I hope our hostess does not mind the tangent.

Posted May 20, 2004 7:07 AM by Jill Smith

shit, i spelled sequins wrong.

Posted May 20, 2004 8:01 AM by bryan

BA in physics with a minor in English, plus incomplete MS coursework in physics. It got me my first gigs writing educational material, which were very useful in getting further jobs, so in some sense my physics degree did get me a job writing children's textbooks about Chinese immigration to North America. It's certainly been useful for the set of articles I'm doing right now. An amazing thing, getting to learn things and write about them and then get handed money and author copies.

Posted May 20, 2004 8:19 AM by Mris

BSc in pure mathematics, abandoned MSc, currently thrashing at PhD in mathematics, teaching freshman calculus. (Lecturing, tutor, demonstrator, bully, the works...)

Posted May 20, 2004 8:51 AM by Damien Warman

Scene 3 Act 2: The stripper's dressing room for the Dirty Tub of Guts Casino, Battle Mountain, Nevada. Melanie Mills is walking around the dressing room furiously packing her travelling bag, followed by Ma Mills, who looks none to pleased with this turn of affairs.

Melanie: Now Ma, there's nothing you can say to talk me out of it. I've made up my mind, TODD JAMES PIERCE is the man for me!

Ma Mills: But Melanie!...

Melanie Mills: Oh he's wonderful Ma, just wonderful! He makes me feel more alive than I've ever felt, even when I was ripping off that little old lady with the vanity publication of her dead sons horror fiction I never felt so truly me! He's tall Ma, as tall as a six foot three inch tree, and smart too, like a smart man who is also smart. They don't make them like that anymore.

Ma Mills: Oh Melanie, I just hope you don't go making the same mistakes that i did with your father. Marrying for love and not insurance.

Posted May 20, 2004 9:42 AM by bryan

My BA in psychology does not help me particularly much in my job as a computer/database geek working for a Very Large, Evil Telecom Company, but is a surprisingly successful selling point in job interviews. I can make reasonably believable claims to my psychological experience giving me insights into relations with business contacts, and even User Interface designs and the like.

I've thought about going on and getting a second degree in something CS related with a focus on UI design for exactly that reason.

Posted May 20, 2004 10:42 AM by Skwid

Okay, now bryan there, *he* should get published.

Posted May 20, 2004 11:39 AM by mythago

AA (community college) in commercial art, and I was hired to this place here just before graduation, where I've been crafting art commercially (plus otherdutiesasassigned) ever since. That was at the end of 1990. Jeez, what year is this?

Posted May 20, 2004 12:18 PM by Kip W

My entry in the competition:

BA, Classical Studies, with in inclination toward museums (like someone else who posted), College of Wooster (OH).
MA, Publishing and Writing (as of this past Monday), Emerson College (Boston).

Current job: none

Nancy, are you stil in the Boston area? Need another proofreader or copyeditor (I never crawl out onto ledges)?

Posted May 20, 2004 12:20 PM by Elisabeth

I worked in a museum devoted to archaeology on campus for three years, volunteering as an assistant to the registrar--yay for filing techniques! I did get to inventory the whole collection, though, which was awesome. And most of my overseas excursions were paid for.

Posted May 20, 2004 1:32 PM by Amanda

I never realized that there were so many other people out there whose education and work were totally unrelated.

I took six years to get a BA in Biology (plants) with a minor in Sociology (crime & justice) because I took classes that interested me, and not necessarily what I needed to graduate (Thank God for inexpensive state schools). I currently do software support, and am getting my Master's in Public Health, while also taking classes in history, english, and religion, just because.

My goal is to be a life-long student, which I'm pretty sure will require me continuing to work for a university that offers tuition waivers to its employees, as neither software support nor public health seem to pay awfully well.

Posted May 20, 2004 1:36 PM by Michelle

"Okay, now bryan there, *he* should get published."
damn straight, my tips are a lot cooler

Posted May 20, 2004 1:36 PM by bryan

Amanda: "I did, literally, fall into this position out of over 60 applicants..."

I hope you landed on a large pile of their heavily padded resumes.

Posted May 20, 2004 2:01 PM by John M. Ford

bryan, so you're saying none of them are hot tips?

Posted May 20, 2004 2:09 PM by Xopher

Dave Bell said:
Yes, I have had stories published, a long time ago in fanfic zines that nobody had ever heard of. It's hardly a selling point, but somebody liked the stories enough to type them onto stencils.

*I've* heard of them, Dave. I've even reviewed one of them. Okay, so I didn't actually connect the Dave Bell in the contents listing with the Dave Bell I knew online until somewhat later. :-)

(And I liked the story.)

Posted May 20, 2004 2:41 PM by Julia Jones

yes they are hot tips, they are hot tips that are cooler than anyone else's hot tips, because they are soooooo hot. Do i contradict myself, very well i contradict myself. 'sokay I package multitudes.

Posted May 20, 2004 2:41 PM by bryan

A reader of the livejournal community Specficmarkets actually wrote Pierce and questioned him about his advice to lie. He wrote back. The response is even more appalling. See it here (you'll have to scroll down a bit.) Note that it's all in terms of whether one would get caught, and not anything about the fact that it's unethical. ::shaking head::

Posted May 20, 2004 2:46 PM by Sheri Stanley

Back to where we were, although I do like reading how others have strayed as far from their degree path as I have, I think Zara's hypothesis is best. The IAP Award for Fiction could be a Santa Barbara Arts Commission's Individual Artist Program award, given for his fiction.

You'll note that in the resume example he gives he says, "Earlier this year I won the Charles Angoff Award for Literary Excellence, and in previous years I received an IAP award and a Humanities Grant."

Somehow over the years "an IAP award" has morphed into "The IAP Award for Fiction" as per his own advice to others.

Posted May 20, 2004 2:55 PM by Sal

From the letter quoted at Sheri's link:
"And if anyone is curious, I've never lied on any cover letter I've writen."
So there you have it! If you can't trust TODD JAMES PIERCE, whom can you trust?

Me: Joint BA in Russian and linguistics; MPhil in linguistics; currently work as editor. Thus not qualified, but in a sense prepared. My original math coursework, however, before I switched majors, was totally wasted.

Posted May 20, 2004 3:23 PM by language hat

The Final Act, scene 1:

The annual Sewage blossoming day festivities comes to Battle Mountain, Nevada. Everyone is excited because they know this is the day that Todd James Pierce's shipment of English Textbooks printed by Radnom Home Publishers will be arriving in town and also the new Atlanta Review which is rumoured to feature groundbreaking new poetry by Todd James Pierce in it will be part of the shipment. Meanwhile Todd and Melanie have been hampered from sneaking out of town by the breakdown of his moped, unsure of what to do next the two schemers join the festivities. Suddenly the mayor is there:

The Mayor: Todd, my boy, I was just thinking about you.

Todd: Ah, Mr. Mayor, you don't know how truly gratified I am to hear that one such as yourself, ever perched on the lofty heights of public policy like a bird of angelic prayer, should condeign his vision on us lowly versifiers and poetasters in the vineyards of literatary papier.

Mayor: Now Todd, I was hoping you could tell me all about how you won that there award again, that big one, that there IAP, I love to hear about it.

Todd: Sure thing Mr. Mayor

Todd steps forward, the lights hit him and the familiar sounds of the IAP tune from the second Act begins to play:

Bah-bah-bah-bah, bah-bah-bah-bah
Bah-bah-bah-bah. bah-bah-bah-bah, IAP!

Well you can exagerate it, defenstrate it
cause you're the one who made it
win the IAP

Ah, let's all win the IAP
let's all win the IAP
I.A.P the IAP
I am Pierce the IAP
Win the IAP

Well you can make a fancy paper
if it makes you feel safer
it's an academic caper
with the IAP

Bah-bah-bah-bah, bah-bah-bah-bah
Bah-bah-bah-bah. bah-bah-bah-bah, IAP!

The song stops, the audience claps, the clapping slowly fades away except for the clapping of one spectator, he walks forward still clapping. It is then that we recognize him, it is Writer 18 from the opening Act! He walks up to Todd, clapping, clapping, then finishes off with one loud clap.

Writer 18: HAH

Todd looks around, the Mayor is looking at him with an expression on his face that says the jig is up, the sheriff and the three villanelle reciting council members have also come up. This looks like a very bad spot, and the expression on Todd's face shows that he knows he will have to do some fast talking to get out of this one.

Posted May 20, 2004 3:30 PM by bryan

John,
Apparently, a degree in Latin American Studies qualifies as credentials for teaching Latin. They must have taken courses from GWB.

Posted May 20, 2004 3:49 PM by Amanda

Don't tell me I've been wrong all these years in following Ring Lardner's advice:

"A good many young writers make the mistake of enclosing a stamped, self-addressed envelope, big enough for the manuscript to come back in. This is too much of a temptation to the editor.
"Personally I have found it a good scheme to not even sign my name to the story, and when I have got it sealed up in its envelope and stamped and addressed, I take it to some town where I don't live and mail it from there. The editor has no idea who wrote the story, so how can he send it back? He is in a quandary."
- Ring Lardner, How to Write Short Stories
Scribner's, 1924

Posted May 20, 2004 4:10 PM by Edd Vick

B.A. in linguistics, M.A. in linguistics, ABD in linguistics. No longer want to be a linguist.

Editing sounds nice. Though, employment in general sounds nice-- I'm looking for jobs to pay the bills while I finish my dissertation and figure out what I *do* want to be and desperately wishing that I had some work experience besides TAing and teaching Freshman Comp. That and an unfinished diss on Icelandic phonology don't qualify one for anything.

Posted May 20, 2004 4:14 PM by Ellen

damn I spelled papiere wrong too. you know it's very hard to write in these little textboxes, and proofreading with preview ain't all that neither.

Posted May 20, 2004 4:25 PM by bryan

'A good many young writers make the mistake of enclosing a stamped, self-addressed envelope, big enough for the manuscript to come back in. This is too much of a temptation to the editor.'
Personally i like going on the editor's blog and filling up their comments.

Posted May 20, 2004 4:27 PM by bryan

Ellen, wow, another linguist yet. What kind? I never went to grad school, and my degree is 20 years old (and then some), but I was and shall ever be a Stratificationalist. A bas le Chomsky, scuse my French.

Probably that battle is like Troy to people in the field today. I haven't kept up. What are the battling theories today?

Posted May 20, 2004 4:33 PM by Xopher

Xopher-- In syntax, I have no idea what the battling theories are; I do as little syntax as they let me get away with. In phonology, the burning issue of the day, at least in my neck of the woods, is whether Optimality Theory is salvageable and what we should be using if it's not.

Posted May 20, 2004 4:44 PM by Ellen

Hmm, in my day (he said, muttering about his lumbago) Stratificational Linguistics covered Phonology. It was the lowest pure-language stratum.

Of course, I've never heard of Optimality Theory. Have you heard of Stratificational Linguistics? My mentor back in school, David Lockwood, wrote the only textbook AFAIK.

The behavior of SG models when simulated actually results in behavior like that of actual humans speaking. Spreading-activation neural nets were the rage last I knew.

Posted May 20, 2004 5:20 PM by Xopher

No, I haven't heard of Stratificational Linguistics, nor done any work with neural nets. (Those, at least, are still being done, just not in my department. The field has not become any less balkanized in the last twenty years.)