Are some "paid" career advancement opportunities reserved for the wealthy?

On fellowships and residencies that claim to compensate but won't pay your mortgage.

I’ve made it a point recently to look for and apply to fellowships and art residencies. I call this “giving myself opportunities.”

Last month marked my first interview with a fellowship program. The six-month, full-time program was with a national organization I’ve historically admired, and having such a fellowship under my belt—not to mention rubbing elbows with the people at that organization—would have likely offered my career a significant boost. I was beyond excited. There was just one little problem: the fellowship paid just a couple dollars over minimum wage. (For non-US readers, our minimum wage is nowhere near a living wage, which actually pays your bills and puts food on the table.) There was no way I, with my fairly low living expenses, would be able to survive on the fellowship alone, if I were lucky enough to receive it.

I’ve juggled multiple jobs before, so I figured this wouldn’t be a deal-breaker; if I received the fellowship, I’d continue freelancing on the side to make ends meet. Confident in my game plan, I went into my Zoom meeting with the organization’s editor with unbridled enthusiasm, ready to show off my above-average interview skills and my passion for the subject at hand. Everything went well at first. But when I floated my idea to continue freelancing throughout the fellowship, the interview fell apart.

“The idea is for you to focus on the fellowship full-time,” the interviewer-slash-editor said, pursing his lips in obvious disapproval. “I worry that you wouldn’t be able to put your full self into the magazine.”

I went into damage control mode, clarifying that I was great at time management and that any freelance work would be performed outside of the fellowship’s working hours. I wouldn’t continue my full freelance workload, just take on enough to pay my mortgage. But the good vibes we’d shared at the beginning of the interview were gone. The rest of our meeting was, I could tell, a formality.

I was crushed. Afterward, I attempted to eat lunch and instead cried into my bowl of leftover butter beans, discouraged by the choice I would potentially have to make in order to advance my career. Here was an opportunity to become a known quantity in an industry I cared about—but if it was offered to me, I’d simply have to obliterate my emergency fund to accept it.

The longer I thought about it, though, the more my discouragement turned into anger. This was an opportunity reserved for those with a “master’s-level education or equivalent work experience,” the latter of which I had. It was one with a massive organization, a household name. It would involve contributing multiple pieces of writing per week—pieces that would cost the organization tens of thousands of dollars if they were billed at a freelancer’s rate. Hell, it was a fellowship aimed at people living in New York City, where the cost of living stretches far beyond what we complain about here in Phoenix.

This has to be an exception to the rule, I naively thought. I began looking for other writing fellowships for comparison’s sake. I was wrong. One university’s year-long, full-time fellowship offers a one-time $15,000 stipend (a word I’ve found is often used when “salary” would be too laughable). A journalism fellowship at my alma mater charges fellows to partake in the three-week program.

Well-paid fellowships do exist, particularly at Ivy Leagues and a handful of large media brands. These opportunities aren’t just few and far between; their scarcity also ensures they’ll be difficult for any individual writer to secure. After all, who doesn’t want to receive an $83,000 annual salary for a fellowship at Harvard?

There are some writers who can get by on minimum wage (or rates just above minimum wage) without taking a serious hit to their finances: writers who live with their parents or a well-paid partner, writers with unfathomably low rent and zero debt, writers with passive income sources that wouldn’t offend a magazine editor who thinks he’s Miranda Priestly. But it’s safe to say that most writers don’t fall into any of these camps. Most of us have bills to pay and no benefactors or YouTube finance guru “passive income streams” to speak of, meaning it’s near-impossible to ditch a fairly healthy income source in favor of an opportunity, however short-term, that won’t even put a roof over our heads.

This means the folks running low-paying fellowship programs like this one are looking for one of the following:

1. Someone of modest means who is so hopeful about the long-term benefits of partaking in such a program that they’re willing to dramatically degrade their financial wellbeing in order to be included;

2. Someone of such great financial means that they can drop their current work (if they have it) on a whim to write for a popular, award-winning magazine for extremely low wages.

The first option is predatory; the second is exclusive. The first allows a massive organization to dangle writerly success over people’s heads like a carrot, promising recognizability and lifelong connections with influential editors—as long as the writer runs until their feet are blistered and their legs give out. The second mimics MFAs and other pay-to-play career boosters, ensuring those who already have a leg up are able to step even higher.

Both are really freakin’ gross.

Worse, I’m having trouble imagining a world in which influential organizations compensate their fellows appropriately. These organizations—universities, popular nonprofits, and fancy-pants artist collectives—are never going to be short on applicants, no matter how little those applicants can expect to be paid. Maybe that’s because of the power these organizations hold; everyone wants a big name and an exclusive fellowship on their resume. Maybe it’s because the “starving artist” narrative teaches writers to expect pithy wages and gaps in their income. (The irony of this, of course, is that low-paying fellowships perpetuate that narrative.) Either way, it’s tough to figure out where to go from here.

Have you applied to, been offered, or attended a paid fellowship or residency? If so, did it pay enough to survive, or did you support yourself via other means? I’d love to know more about how other creatives have made these opportunities work within the context of their own lives.

Until then, I’m off to write another cover letter.

What’s been inspiring me lately:

✰ Summer Salt’s new album, Electrolytes. Each song is so sweet and earnest that they made me misty-eyed on the first playthrough and made me crave more unabashedly honest art.

✰ Pathetic Literature, a collection of short stories, novel excerpts, essays, and poems edited by Eileen Myles. I’ll be honest here and say that it’s less the contents of this collection that inspire me and more than concept behind it: Myles seeks to recontextualize the term “pathetic” as “work that acknowledges a boundary then passes it.” In a world full of cool, Gen Z nonchalance, this degree of raw feeling is a breath of fresh air (see above).

✰ Radiant Vision, the Keith Haring exhibition currently installed at the Long Beach Museum of Art in southern California. Beyond recognizing his funky figures and bold style on strangers’ tote bags, I previously knew embarassingly little about Haring, and I’m grateful I got to see so much of his work in person while on vacation last weekend. I’m particularly touched by his penchant for rejecting snobbery and bringing art to the masses.

✰ This incredible piece by Jenna Barton, an American illustrator who also goes by the social media name Dappermouth. I often stare at this piece for minutes at a time, feeling that it reflects how I feel inside and about myself.