Alicia Hughes and Jackson Gavin are no strangers to the fear experienced by writers surrounding the job hunt. Both graduates of the class of 2017, Hughes and Gavin Zoomed into the Marano 205 classroom on Nov. 30 to give SUNY Oswego students some career advice.
Hughes, who recently visited campus for the 2023 Publishing Festival, is currently an associate editor with Sleep.com. Gavin is currently a freelance writer at WhatPrank.
Sari Fordham, a professor of creative writing at SUNY Oswego, opened the talk by acknowledging a hot topic among aspiring artists and creatives: how to actually make money in their field of choice.
“We want you to think about these big questions,” Fordham said. “Art is art for its own sake, it’s not a commercial enterprise, at the same time, if you ignore the question ‘how do you make money?’ it creates a big barrier for studying the arts.”
The alumni both said they felt that people can and should be paid for their creative work, but not to fear getting another job outside of their dream field.
“You should get paid for your creative job for sure, 100 percent you should never give away your art for free, but it might not be your main source of income,” Hughes said. “And I would say don’t be afraid of that, there’s nothing wrong with that at all, everyone should be living and no one should be starving on the streets because they think their art should be able to support everything they want to do.”
As Gavin and Hughes detailed their post-graduation paths, each painted a contrasting picture to the other regarding grad school and jobs. Hughes found a job immediately after graduation in a field unrelated to creative writing, connecting her to other experiences leading up to when she applied to Sleep.com. Hughes earned a master’s degree in publishing from Pace University, and said that even though she was able to do so with scholarship and assistantship aid.
“It’s so expensive, and it’s not realistic for a lot of people,” Hughes said.
Gavin took a year after graduating and was bartending until he decided to do a master’s program at DePaul University in Chicago.
“I loved doing it, like I met a lot of people, but I’m super in the hole for that one,” Gavin said. “The master’s is an interesting route, because you meet a lot of super intelligent people that can help you on your path to becoming whatever you’re supposed to be, your bliss, but it’s expensive, it’s very expensive.”
After writing a blog for some time, a colleague reached out to Gavin with an opportunity to work at WhatPrank after reading his posts.
Emily McFarlane, Whitney Wilson and Gabriella Brongo were three students who attended the event, and all three are freshmen with creative writing majors. Each described their biggest takeaways from the talk.
“My favorite part was, I found it really interesting how different their experiences were and how they both went to grad school,” McFarlane said. “Like Jackson was found, but Alicia had a kind of climb more, and it was interesting to see that.”
Wilson said she was surprised to hear the alumni encourage not being solely practical, but also honoring dream goals too.
“Maybe it’s just because we’re in college, like you try to think as practical as possible,” Wilson said. “Like, you kinda put things on the back burner and they’re like, ‘no, don’t do that. That’s exactly the opposite of what you should be doing.’”
McFarlane said that she appreciated the practical bits when the alumni advised them not to be afraid of getting an unrelated job to supplement their income.
“It was definitely like, I felt better when they said that because it was more practical,” McFarlane said. “Because not everybody can get found or work their way up the ladder as soon as possible, and it just made sense that we wouldn’t be the only ones who had to resort to that.”
“I found it interesting how Alicia said how grad school could get you further in places a lot quicker, and Jackson said ‘f grad school,’” Brongo said. “That was interesting because both of them had good experiences and enjoy what they do.”
