English Majors?

[AliceLover]

Did anybody here major in English?

I am a junior in High School and I really want to major in English. What I really want to do is teach English at a High school level. Maybe even a middle school level (Secondary Education). I like to read and write. I write for the school newspaper, doing mostly movie reviews.

So for any of you who did major in English I have some questions:

1. How was your experience?
2. Was it hard?
3. What were the exams like?
4. What did you eventually end up doing as a career?
5. Do you regret majoring in it?

Just a few things there..but I am curious!

[mylittledemon]

I'm not an English major, but I swear that one of my college English profs said he "couldn't do anything else with his degree but teach."

[AliceLover]

Originally Posted by mylittledemon

I'm not an English major, but I swear that one of my college English profs said he "couldn't do anything else with his degree but teach."

Well thats what im aiming for!

[JazmenFlowers]

Originally Posted by AliceLover

Did anybody here major in English?

I am a junior in High School and I really want to major in English. What I really want to do is teach English at a High school level. Maybe even a middle school level (Secondary Education). I like to read and write. I write for the school newspaper, doing mostly movie reviews.

So for any of you who did major in English I have some questions:

1. How was your experience?
2. Was it hard?
3. What were the exams like?
4. What did you eventually end up doing as a career?
5. Do you regret majoring in it?

Just a few things there..but I am curious!

me. I have a BA in English and a minor in Spanish.

1. How was your experience?
- loved it, but you must learn to regurgitate hundreds of years of popular beliefs about what a poem "means" or what the author was thinking. I know it sucks and it's stupid, but you're not likely to be able to use a lot of your own opinions
2. Was it hard?
- it wasn't hard if you like to read and write; that's basically all it is
3. What were the exams like?
- 90% of the time they were all essay questions exploring certain themes, etc.
4. What did you eventually end up doing as a career?
- ended up as a paralegal and my degree really helps me. I went to graduate school because I wanted to teach college but dropped out b/c I was tired of being told how to read something and what to get out of it. I'm not sure I want to be a paralegal forever, but right now, it pays really well, I enjoy it and am really good at it.
5. Do you regret majoring in it?
- not usually; sometimes I wish I had majored in nursing or medicine, but I can't stand blood or bodily fluids so there's no way I could have done that

I'll be glad to help you any way I can, just let me know.

[David]

Originally Posted by AliceLover

Did anybody here major in English?

B.A. & M.A. in English here

I am a junior in High School and I really want to major in English. What I really want to do is teach English at a High school level. Maybe even a middle school level (Secondary Education). I like to read and write. I write for the school newspaper, doing mostly movie reviews.

So for any of you who did major in English I have some questions:

1. How was your experience?
2. Was it hard?
3. What were the exams like?
4. What did you eventually end up doing as a career?
5. Do you regret majoring in it?

It's almost impossible to generalize about most of this, & my experience may not be anything like your experience may not be anything like his experience may not be anything like her experience. My experience as an undergrad English major was about the same as my friends' experiences in other departments. A lot of the same problems (some professors dislike you & make your quarter or semester miserable, grading that seemed unfair or quirky at best, crowded lectures at many universities, a job market glutted with applicants with the same degree you have, etc.) & even some of the same good points (some professors that like your work & encourage you, upper division courses are more enjoyable because they're generally smaller & the professor or grad student instructor is often a little more interested in the students & the subject matter, etc.).

Was it hard? I would say yes. In general, getting a four-year degree in English requires some hard work: not just reading plenty of material but working at becoming a literary researcher--which is essentially what an English major does. If you want an in-depth view of what that means, ask the English department chair of a university near you or read Jacques Barzun's "The Modern Researcher" (still in print).

You can't generalize about exams, Jimmy. It all depends on the class, on the instructor & on you. Just like the rest of us, you'll have easy exams, moderately difficult exams & horrific exams--the same mix everyone encounters in college. Probably the majority of your exams as an English major will require you to write essays (of varying length). If you prefer other formats of exams, English may not be the course of study for you.

An English major is suitable for a bunch of different careers. I went to graduate school for more English work because I wanted to be a teacher, & for the kind of teaching I was interested in, a graduate degree is generally required. But I also got interested in newspaper copy editing, so off I went in that direction. I copy edit to this day, but not for newspapers, which pay you little & work you hard.

Do I regret majoring in English? Not really, although there are some other fields I'd have preferred jumping into.

[Jyqm]

Originally Posted by AliceLover

Did anybody here major in English?

I am a junior in High School and I really want to major in English. What I really want to do is teach English at a High school level. Maybe even a middle school level (Secondary Education). I like to read and write. I write for the school newspaper, doing mostly movie reviews.

So for any of you who did major in English I have some questions:

1. How was your experience?

Oh, just lovely for the most part.

2. Was it hard?

Obviously this will vary wildly depending on what universities different people attended, but does the answer to this question really matter?

3. What were the exams like?

Exams?

Outisde of large survey courses, I don't think I ever took a literature course that involved an exam. Half the point of studying literature is to learn how to write about it; all of my classes involved papers (of varying length).

4. What did you eventually end up doing as a career?

That's a very good question. I'll let you know as soon as I have an answer.

5. Do you regret majoring in it?

Regrets are such silly little things.

As far as the knee-jerk response of "You can't do anything with an English major": obviously anybody who decides to study literature isn't doing so strictly for the career or money-making opportunities; you're doing it because you love literature. But that aside, there are plenty of careers available to people with English majors, especially those who go on to study something more specialized, like law.

[GypsySorcerer]

I got a BA in English and public relations.

1. How was your experience?
-I enjoyed most of my English classes. At my college, you had to choose one of four concentrations - literature, creative writing, secondary ed, or technical writing. I chose literature. Many of the classes overlapped, but some were specific to the concentration. I can give you specifics on what classes I took.
2. Was it hard?
-As Jason said, liking reading and writing is key. That is pretty much all you do. I would not call it an easy major, however.
3. What were the exams like?
-Mostly essay, and most classes required at least one major paper and then a few shorter papers.
4. What did you eventually end up doing as a career?
-I went to grad school and got an MA in communication. I'm an adjunct at a college now, but in communication. I will probably stay in academics.
5. Do you regret majoring in it?
-At times I wished I would have graduated college trained for a specific profession -- accounting, nursing, whatever. But I am just not cut out for it. I will say that it would be highly difficult to get a job with that degree if you don't want to go into education. Editing and publishing jobs are hard to come by, and the degree isn't specialized enough for most other professions.

If you want to know anything else, just ask.

[Jyqm]

Originally Posted by JazmenFlowers

1. How was your experience?
- loved it, but you must learn to regurgitate hundreds of years of popular beliefs about what a poem "means" or what the author was thinking. I know it sucks and it's stupid, but you're not likely to be able to use a lot of your own opinions

Damn, Jason, far be it from me to denigrate anybody's college experience, but what kind of awful institution did you attend where English majors were expected to regurgitate "popular" opinions? God forbid a student at my alma mater should write a paper that simply reiterated what somebody else thought or wrote. If you didn't have your own opinion or argument to make about a text, your paper was more or less worthless. Which is of course more or less the crux of any academic writing; there's no point in it otherwise. I'm sorry if you really had to deal with that kind of narrow-minded demagoguery.

[JazmenFlowers]

Originally Posted by David

B.A. & M.A. in English here

very nicely put.

I think a lot of it depends on the size of the college you attend. The smaller the classes, the more, I think, you will get out of your studies. A lot of what I learned came from class discussions and working things out in study groups.

[JazmenFlowers]

Originally Posted by GypsySorcerer

-As Jason said, liking reading and writing is key. That is pretty much all you do. I would not call it a easy major, however.

-At times I wished I would have graduated college trained for a specific profession -- accounting, nursing, whatever. But I am just not cut out for it. I will say that it would be highly difficult to get a job with that degree if you don't want to go into education. Editing and publishing jobs are hard to come by, and the degree isn't specialized enough for most other professions.

totally agree here.

[JazmenFlowers]

Originally Posted by Jyqm

Damn, Jason, far be it from me to denigrate anybody's college experience, but what kind of awful institution did you attend where English majors were expected to regurgitate "popular" opinions? God forbid a student at my alma mater should write a paper that simply reiterated what somebody else thought or wrote. If you didn't have your own opinion or argument to make about a text, your paper was more or less worthless. Which is of course more or less the crux of any academic writing; there's no point in it otherwise. I'm sorry if you really had to deal with that kind of narrow-minded demagoguery.

tell me about it. that's the main reason I dropped out of grad school. I was fed up with it. I got in many arguments in class in college and finally gave up just to complete the program. I had a couple of profs who encouraged creative thinking, but the majority wanted to explore the same opinions of Paradise Lost or A Red Wheelbarrow that have been considered for years. it sucked.

not to mention the chair hated men. seriously...gay, straight, indifferent...didn't matter - she hated men. I fixed that bitch good tho - more on that tomorrow.

[GypsySorcerer]

Originally Posted by JazmenFlowers

tell me about it. that's the main reason I dropped out of grad school. I was fed up with it. I got in many arguments in class in college and finally gave up just to complete the program. I had a couple of profs who encouraged creative thinking, but the majority wanted to explore the same opinions of Paradise Lost or A Red Wheelbarrow that have been considered for years. it sucked.

not to mention the chair hated men. seriously...gay, straight, indifferent...didn't matter - she hated men. I fixed that bitch good tho - more on that tomorrow.

Don't ask me why, but for some reason I thought you were pursuing a graduate degree in math.

[JazmenFlowers]

Originally Posted by GypsySorcerer

Don't ask me why, but for some reason I thought you were pursuing a graduate degree in math.

girl PLEASE! if you could see my checkbook ledger. omg.

girl, I used to round off everything to the nearest dollar (don't laugh too hard). 2 months into that I was way in the hole. why I did that I'll never understand.

[GypsySorcerer]

Originally Posted by JazmenFlowers

girl PLEASE! if you could see my checkbook ledger. omg.

girl, I used to round off everything to the nearest dollar (don't laugh too hard). 2 months into that I was way in the hole. why I did that I'll never understand.

I'm the same way; my checkbook is rarely accurate. I round everything down, so there's always a little extra.

I guess we don't do much to dispel the stereotype that English people are bad at math, huh?

[Jyqm]

Originally Posted by JazmenFlowers

tell me about it. that's the main reason I dropped out of grad school. I was fed up with it. I got in many arguments in class in college and finally gave up just to complete the program. I had a couple of profs who encouraged creative thinking, but the majority wanted to explore the same opinions of Paradise Lost or A Red Wheelbarrow that have been considered for years. it sucked.

That's awful, I'm really sorry about that. Of course any professor I ever had had his or her own opinions about whatever we were reading and tried to steer discussion toward certains aspects of the text, but critical thinking and individual opinions were mandatory in all of my classes. If you didn't ever have anything constructive to say in class, or if your papers just included the ideas of old literary theorists without a single new twist or idea or suggestion of your own, there's just no way you'd get a decent grade.

Although I do think some limits on "creative thinking" are a good thing, especially in these days of post-modern/deconstructionist/structuralist/post-structuralist/feminist/Marxist/race/queer theories. I mean, some people will just make **** up and quote Derrida and think they're all smart even if there's absolutely nothing in the text to support their ideas.

And it's always important to narrow the focus of a class enough so that people aren't just talking about everything and nobody's learning everything. I took a wonderful class on Paradise Lost (or P.Lo, as I prefer to call it) with a decidedly old-school professor who made it clear on the first day that he didn't want to talk about feminist theory or deconstructionism or any of that crap - we were going to be talking about P.Lo in the context of when and why it was written. If you really wanted to talk about those more modern theories, no offense taken, but this class wasn't for you, so drop it. Which I think is totally fair, as long as you announce that kind of thing right off the bat.