It’s the last day of my Contemporary Memoirs English course. The class air is stuffy, pulsing with that unmistakable end-of-classes edginess we know so well. Rather than test our tired brains, my professor lightheartedly asks the class seniors their plans post-graduation—what their lives will look like in a slim 2 weeks. A few mention law school; others cite paid positions. The majority shrug their shoulders, explaining that yes, the job hunt continues. “Well of course you don’t have a job,” my witty professor says with a laugh. “You all chose English!”
As a fellow English major, I laugh along, brushing my professor’s comment off as yet another poke at his favorite students. But I can’t help feeling uneasy. I selected English my freshman year, and considering how I can’t ever decide what meal to order, the choice was fairly easy. I considered the energy that bubbles inside me from fiery literature discussions. I weighed my love for writing, literature, and twisty metaphors. I flipped through fall English classes and knew I would take any and all of them. Basically, it was a no-brainer.
I added History to the mix sophomore year, recognizing my budding interest in how our favorite predecessors carved our lives today. And there’s my shameless love for historical scandals, of course.
So I filled my time with Shakespeare, Wordsworth, and King Henry, never really doubting my colorful lectures and discourses. Until moments like this. Would an English/History combo land me a job in the real world, brimming with your standard lawyer, banker, and doctor? Should I have chosen something more, well, safe?
It’s hard to escape the stigma of English and other “liberal-artsy” majors that don’t come with a set post-college plan. The ones you respond to with “oooh” and “ahh,” all the while envisioning a starving-artist type begging for scraps. Once I proudly echo my major to expectant adults and peers, I get that same automated answer. “Oh why that’s fabulous. But what are you going to do with it?”
Well sure, our college majors are important stepping-stones in our career searches. Chances are, what we choose to study will say something about our interests, skills, and professional goals. But all the while, we’re caught in that misleading assumption that our college major entirely determines our career paths. If we think like this, of course it’s going to be frightening.
But I soon began to breathe a sigh of relief. My dad tells me about the English major at his firm who had a knack for business and, whaddya know, is now running his own company. I speak to a joint English/Latin American Studies major who completed a Bank of NY Mellon business program, worked for Fox News, and finally found her niche at a swanky NY business magazine. Every day, I hear more and more stories about lawyers turned bankers turned writers turned (fill in the blank here…). It doesn’t have to be so black and white.
Through these relieving anecdotes, I’ve realized that our majors aren’t a formulaic, one-way street into our professional lives. Instead, the role of the college majors is to shed light on our developing interests, mold our skills into academic success, and ultimately, prepare us for success out there. Chances are my profession won’t require me to recite a full-blown analysis of Hamlet. But, the skills I’ll have acquired through these analytical exercises, coupled with writing and penetrating dense text, can in fact come in handy in the professional world. Future employers care less about your actual major than about what it says about you, your potential for job success. They don’t search for a set major per say, but a certain skill set, expertise, and attitude—often acquired through extracurriculars and internships—that speaks to the position in question. It’s our work habits and transferrable skills that dictate success, not that stressful, last minute choice of course load.
So, stress of our future careers aside, how should we go about choosing our college major? The simplest piece of advice I offer is to choose something you, well, enjoy. Pry away the stress, put the pro and con lists aside, and dig up your often-ignored gut feeling. Recall the types of classes you’ve been stimulated by, the kind of work and assignments you’ve thoroughly enjoyed. Consider your range of extracurricular activities and outside hobbies—important testaments to who you are and what you find meaningful. Speak to department faculty, students, deans, and career services counselors about your interests, skills, and the majors that can bring it all together. Your course load and major should speak to your interests and curiosities, the stuff that perks up your ears and arouses genuine excitement.
So all in all, consider you major an opportunity to hone in on your interests, sharpen your skills, and add to your brain-storage of knowledge, expertise and understanding. If you’ve got all that, the rest should fall comfortably into place. And that’s coming from a frazzled and fairly directionless English major.
