Exactly. And OP is an international/Canadian citizen, here on a visa, which makes it even more difficult. Many schools won’t hire internationals as adjuncts…sponsoring someone who is part-time doesn’t make sense financially and it’s hard to meet the various legal requirements.
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As an FYI, deeper conversations can be held with high schoolers as well as some upper middle schoolers.
You can certainly seek to do this in higher education, but you may want to be involved in helping students to get to college. There are a number of organizations that focus on trying to support disadvantaged high schoolers get to college and stay in college. Because if higher ed was so impactful for you, it could also be meaningful to help get students into postsecondary options.
This is a great attitude and I wish you the best of luck with it. If this is part of your goal, there’s more than one way to achieve it. In addition to working with programs to get students into college (like Upward Bound as one example), there can be other organizations that help with advocacy for higher ed and resources for individuals to access higher ed.
Publishing is another very competitive field. But many large universities have their own university press. If you were able to start working with one of them, then it might be able to help strengthen an application to more commercial publishers.
Stability is an important attribute and also helps lead to improved outcomes in terms of mental health, and full-time jobs are often the most affordable way to access health insurance in the U.S.
If you’re looking for an MFA, I’d start looking for a job at a university that offers an MFA, and then check to see if the employee benefits include taking courses at the university. That is likely to be a less competitive way to access an MFA than seeking a fully funded seat in a program.
I’m not aware of appropriate fora for this type of question. You may want to reach out to some of the schools that you’ve applied to before. Odds are you may not get a response, but you may want to ask whether your application was competitive but not picked that year, or if they found it unlikely that an application of that caliber would be successful at gaining entry to their school. Those responses may help you to gauge whether you keep on trying again and again hoping you get lucky, or if you realize that you may need to rethink your goals.
Just because you’re new to the area doesn’t mean that this can’t be an option for you. Many areas (outside of popular coastal cities) are looking for people to come in, be entrepreneurial, and start things. They may have some entrepreneurial hubs or resources for people interested in start-ups. Reach out to the Chamber of Commerce and see if there are any resources that they know of. Look for others who have done similar programs and ask for an informational interview and see how they were able to get started, find funding, etc.
There are people who are able to successfully support themselves in publishing, academia, and in writing. But the ones who end up doing so are very much a small minority of those who hoped to do so. To make it more more understandable, it’s like the number of people who want to be professional actors and support themselves by acting. It’s possible, but the odds are very much against people interested in that field. The same is true for some of the fields you’re interested in.
Because the fields you’re interested in have far more people interested in them than there are positions, the pay can be low if one is lucky enough to find a position. But if one wants a stable job, one needs to do something that someone is willing to pay for. It’s one of the reasons why probably most people are not passionate about their jobs..the things they’re passionate about they can’t get paid to do. So you will need to think about how important stability is, how important a living wage is, and how passionate you want to be about the work you are paid to do.
I don’t have any other advice, but I wish you the best.
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I am into math, physics and computing, not writing.
However, I spent over 30 years working for the government.
What I have seen is people with the intention of doing further study start at an entry-level job and study part-time for degrees (often Master’s and Doctorates) that their employer pays for. Also, when they finish, they often find a job that suits their qualifications, with help from where they are working (I worked at an entry-level job, but before I graduated, I was headhunted for another government job). Since you already have a degree, you are likely not to remain in the entry-level job for long. It is certainly something to consider.
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