As readers of a site that welcomes and encourages submissions, there's a decent chance some of you want to be writers. Several months ago, I wrote an advice column on how to go about freelancing for the Internet and magazines, but some readers have their sights set on short fiction or even novels. And right now, some are contemplating education choices like picking a major or attending graduate school to get that MFA.

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"MFA" stands for "Master of Fine Arts" and should not be confused with the old porno Master of Fine Ass still available on VHS.

Let me be clear: Education is wonderful. There is nothing you will ever learn that you will not ultimately use. Conceptually, I am fully in support of a liberal arts education, even when there is no obvious and immediate application of that knowledge to daily life. However, with rising costs in an appalling economy, racking up that debt seems harder to justify, and I find myself agreeing more and more with a column Robert Brockway wrote years ago questioning the need for college. I'm not going quite that far yet, but I have soured on graduate programs -- particularly MFAs. (Brock's still wrong about Nirvana's cover of Bowie's "The Man Who Sold the World" being superior, by the way.)