Ask Your Question today
I keep hearing about how useless English is as a major... which really bums me out considering how much I've been struggling to find out exactly what kind of major I should consider.
Is English really that useless of a major? Or is just underrated?
| Yes | 28 | |
| No | 15 | |
| Depends on what kind of job that you want | 33 | |
| I don't know | 4 |
I have two friends with English degrees and both are now English teachers. It was useful for them. It's not a bad one to have even if you're not going to use it as the primary focus of your job, because the English language impacts in nearly every job (in English-speaking countries) apart from, well, mime artists.
It's a better option in general than, say, getting a degree in criminology and then working in a sausage factory. Although, to be fair, what they put in sausages actually is pretty criminal.
My cousin got a degree in english, then she is doing a masters in speech therapy.
I have a BA in English, and my biggest pet peeve is when people always ask, "Oh, so you want to teach?" Um, no...I've been trying to get into something within editing, publishing, copy/tech writing, etc...but all of those job postings require 2-3 years of experience working in said fields...errg...ok so where do you expect me to get this experience from?? lol..
even though most people don't care about proper English, i know that there are jobs proofreading for the internet to make sure they make sense and that the newspapers could use a couple more people who know english
If you like it then do it. There's nothing worse than studying something you don't like, apart from being in a carrer you don't like. Do it and see where it takes you. However you ought to speak to a careers adviser to try to discover something that would appeal to you so you have a goal to work towards.
Plenty of majors are useless, english being one of them, let me list some others that are useless just to help you.
Communication
Psychology
History
Liberal Arts
Anything in art in general
No degree is useless, but it does depend on what you want to get out of it. I know two people who have both English degrees and jobs. One is my uncle, who ended up as head of his department in a fairly large corporation and did very well for himself. The other is my best friend, who is working herself to the bone making next to nothing as a retail manager. Neither of them work in their field, but my uncle got an opportunity and took it, and my friend is waiting for such an opportunity to appear.
Of course it depends on the job you want. If you want to become a game programmer for example, English as a major would be completely useless.
If you, however, wanted to teach English, then... Big surprise! English as a major would be useful!
It could be more useful depending on hat career you would like, but regardless, I still think it would be useful.
I guess it doesn't really matter which subjects you choose or what career, the best thing to do (in my opinion) is to take whatever you have chosen and aim to be at the top of it? :)
Well, that doesn't really help if I have no idea what I want to "chose" to do.
Hmm, seeing as I don't know you, the best answer I can give is to choose something you enjoy doing. As for english, I think it IS useful depending on the right career choice... Maybe a lecturer? I hear they get paid a decent amount and there isn't too much stress.
If you really like language, you can choose something like linguistics or interpretation if you learn a foreign language as well... I hope this helps somewhat. :/