The Embarrassment of Being an English Major

“So what are you going to do with that?  Teach?”

These two questions always seem to be the follow up to my answer of the dreaded question:  “What’s your major?”

As I sit with my friends, I always think about how much cooler their answers to this question sound.  Wow, you are a Biochem major with a pre-med concentration?  Wow, International Development and Social Change?  Getting a Master of Science in Finance?  Completed the Mathematics major and now wondering if you should add a double with Physics, and if there’s time, possibly a minor in Computer Science?

What’s my major again?

Repeatedly, I’m told that my degree is not very substantial:

 “The guy who changes tires on my car has an English degree.”

“It will make a nice coaster someday.” 

 “The waiter at the Olive Garden has an English degree.”

And then, there are some pretty weird stereotypes I have to work with too:

“Oh, so you’re one of those book people who sit around trying to think of something original to say about Shakespeare, right?”

“English major?  How do your parents feel about that?  They let you go off to college to get an English degree?” 

“You speak English though!”

                There seems to be an assumption that my English degree is pretty useless and rather lame.  Especially when compared to those science people who are making the future for us all.  Or those finance people who are rolling in the cash.  Or those international development people who get to travel to all kinds of different places.

                What am I going to do with my English degree?  Teach?

Maybe. 

Maybe I will end up teaching English.  Maybe I will end up abroad, teaching English in refugee camps in Jordan.  Maybe I will be working at a private school in Java.  Maybe I’ll end up teaching in inner city schools in D.C., helping children be the first in their families to graduate high school. 

Or maybe I’ll end up being a chairman of a hydroelectric and mineral company in Laos.  Maybe I will end up as a CEO of a major financing company in New York City.

Maybe I’ll be a lawyer.  Maybe I’ll be a lawyer working in a small claims court.  Maybe I’ll be an internationally renowned lawyer specializing in human rights violations. 

Maybe I’ll be writing speeches for political figures.  Maybe for Nobel Prize winners.  Maybe I’ll be working as a translator for the CIA or the FBI.  Maybe I’ll be a journalist for National Geographic.

Maybe my potential is not limited to words written on a piece of paper or defined by the answer to the dreaded question:  What’s your major? 

Maybe most companies don’t care what you got your degree in, but about whether or not you can produce a ten page paper, or a memo, on whatever subject they ask you to write it on.  Maybe experience will be a deciding factor.

And when my friends with their cool sounding majors need help writing their research proposals, applications for research grants, publications, scholarship applications, etc., who do they ask first?