Real Talk: I Majored in English & Didn’t End Up Living In a Cardboard Box on the Side of the Road
English majors. They’re the scarf-wearing dredges of our society. When people find out that you’re an English major, they typically respond in one of three ways:
- “What are you even going to do with that?”
- “You’re paying $30,000 a year to sit around and read poetry?”
- “So I guess you’re going to be an English teacher then.”
To which I would usually respond with “I don’t know. Something, probably,” and “Pretty much,” and “No, because children are sticky.”
So why become an English major? There’s no clear-cut career path, like with pre-med or pre-law, and after four years of overanalyzing Chaucer, all you’ll get for your trouble is a piece of paper with a hastily scribbled “I can do words good” to go with your unchecked caffeine addiction and your minimum-wage job at Target. Right? Well, I can’t speak for anyone else, but I personally became an English major because I can’t do math, I’ve read one or two Shakespeares in my time, and I own a lot of pretentious beanies.
But seriously? I became an English major because I wanted to. It was as simple as that. When I looked ahead, I didn’t see myself becoming a lawyer or a doctor or an astronaut, except that’s a lie, because I totally saw myself becoming an astronaut (and if NASA could do something about space being so big and freaky, I’d still consider it). Mostly, however, I saw myself writing. It’s all I’ve ever wanted to do. I figured an English degree was one way to go about it.
An English degree equips you with skills in critical analysis, communications, and public speaking, in addition to reading and writing. And while it won’t prep you for any single specific career, an English degree can catapult you right into an exciting vista of broad possibilities. Editorial. Publishing. News media. You name it.
Full disclosure: I double-majored in English and Creative Writing, so I have BAs in both. When I wasn’t reading books, panic-writing essays at 2 AM, or living off the kind of junk food that I suspect will ultimately kill me, I was freelancing. I did some writing and editing for a local commercial production company. I interned for two summers at a film festival where I started off as the official festival sandwich intern (that statement is completely factual) and eventually wound up snagging the role of writing intern/general humanoid catastrophe. My duties included insulting the celebrities, winding up in the emergency room, and Photoshopping the faces of my fellow interns onto movie posters even though nobody asked me to. When I graduated, I scored a job as a copywriter for a marketing agency that wanted to spice up their brand’s presence with humor, and for reasons that I’ve yet to discern (I suspect government conspiracies), they thought I fit the bill. Obviously, I’ve also been writing for SparkLife this whole time about things like superpowers and Snapchat and Voldemort. They have not yet fired me, but I can only assume they’re keeping a tally of how often I talk about diarrhea and will be using this against me forthwith, so stay tuned.
Now, let’s get something straight right off the bat. I’m not saying getting a degree in engineering or astrophysics or doctor science isn’t worthwhile; I’m just saying there are lots of worthwhile degrees. I’m also not saying BE AN ENGLISH MAJOR, IT’S THE MOST LUCRATIVE CAREER PATH YOU WILL EVER WRANGLE AND YOU’LL BE WIPING YOUR BUTT WITH CRISP HUNDRED-DOLLAR BILLS IN NO TIME AT ALL.What I AM saying is… well, you should do you, regardless of whether or not people are going to scoff at your life choices.
Here’s the thing: college gives you a big heaping platter of opportunity, whatever your major is. And in my experience, success has less to do with your degree and more to do with what you make of that opportunity. An education will only get you so far; the rest is up to you.
Not everyone has the chance to go to college, and not everyone wants to. I’m up to my haunted eyeballs in student debt, but I wanted to go and I recognize that I’m fortunate to have had the chance. And whatever the cultural zeitgeist has to say about it, I don’t feel like I wasted those four years. I’m not a jobless hobo languishing away in my parents’ basement. (But I am languishing away in a basement, but that’s because I’m a goblin of darkness and I prefer the solitude.) If you’ve got the skillz to pay the bills, and you’re determined, then you also have the capacity to make things work out for you. That might mean becoming a lawyer or an astronaut, in which case tell Matt Damon I said hi, or it might mean majoring in English—or communications, or philosophy, or history, or some other so-called “useless” major.
But only you know what your options are. Only you know where you want to go and what you’re willing to do, so don’t let other people divert your life path. Study English if you want to. Go ahead and rock that pretentious, oversized beanie with pride.
And can I give you one final tip? Don’t correct other people’s grammar in casual conversation. Just trust me on this. It’s how I got to where I am today. (See: goblin of darkness.)
Do you know what you’re going to major in yet? Are you stocking up on beanies and scarves and potential windowless basement dwellings as AS WE SPEAK?
