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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/34144
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/34144
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

# NO, do not go to college _for that_.

I spent twelve years in college, I have five college degrees and the last is a PhD, I was a professor (and I am currently a research scientist at a university).

I did that because I loved school and college, and I've never encountered a course in any topic I found difficult.

That said, this is NOT the place, IMO, to find commercial contacts like agents and publishers. Professors that cultivate such contacts share them sparingly, so as not to be ignored by these contacts. Some professors will be professional and successful authors, but they are rare: If a writer made millions from a book or series, they would likely not be teaching full time at a university; for two reasons: PhDs in universities make a comfortable living but not a lavish one. Second, teaching full time and the other duties of professorship are more than a full time job. Prepping for class and questions, coming up with slides and examples and tests, grading and counseling and staff meetings and departmental service requirements eat time like crazy.

For new untenured professors that tend to teach freshman and sophomore students the joke is the job is a half time position: the other twelve hours in a day are yours to do with as you please. (More senior professors tend to take the higher level courses, when the dropout rate has leveled off, to look for graduate students they can recruit into Master's or PhD programs.)

For the professors likely to be your teachers and mentors, all that time is time they could spend writing, if writing was paying the bills.

### Go to college to learn something they explicitly teach.

To me this is not the place to make contacts outside the academic world. Here is where you can learn tips and tricks for creative writing by taking some courses in that.

Of course if you are a self-starter, you can learn this from books, and free online blogs and videos: Search "Brandon Sanderson" on YouTube, a well published fantasy and scifi author, he teaches a course at Brigham Young University (Mormons). It is the same course every year, but slightly modified by his experience teaching it, so I'd grab the latest year he has up.

The same is true if you don't have tens of thousands of dollars to spend on college tuition. I can only speak for the three colleges I have been in extensively, but **You do not have to be a student to walk into the bookstore and buy a textbook.** Those can be expensive, I've paid $110 for one, but most professors teach from the textbook (and not even all of it).

There are various series of teaching books that are also useful; I liked "The Elements of Fiction Writing", books from "The Writer's Digest", and other specialty books, aimed at comedy, sex scenes, conveying emotions, etc.

Visit [Agent Query](https://www.agentquery.com) or google for other literary agent services. There is online help for writing a good query, as well.

You can teach yourself, to write, to query, and to get a real literary agent (not a fake one; **anyone** can claim to be an agent and there is no license or test to do that, and no real agent will charge you for their services: They are paid by commission when you sell. Watch Brandon Sanderson's 1 hour course, he usually combines the lecture on Dialogue and the lecture on Agents into a single hour).

Original score: 4