How My English Major Made Me Successful After College
It’s worth more than you may think.
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Since I was accepted to my university as an English major, I’ve experienced a lot of strange criticism: casual questions from family friends asking me what I’ll do if I don’t want to be a teacher, articles emailed to me from concerned loved ones about how English majors don’t make any money, or complete strangers wondering if I’m only good for making lattes.
I’m amazed that people are so often unwilling to see the utility of a degree in English. My English major has made me a compassionate, well-read, articulate adult, and I don’t regret it for a moment. To all the people who doubt that an English major has any use to society: read on.
Make not your thoughts your prisons.
I graduated a few months ago with a degree in English, Creative Writing, and French. My English major has given me a leg-up in the freelance world and in applying for jobs; since graduating, I have made thousands of dollars in just a few weeks on Upwork as a ghostwriter and editor, and I also landed a full-time job as a documentation control assistant at an astronomy research facility — all because of my education.
Here’s why:
I know how to proofread and edit.
Thanks to the vast number of reading/writing assignments I completed as an English major, my eye for proofreading and editing is incredibly sharp. (Here’s where I apologize, sheepishly, for any spelling errors in this piece. If I write “written on my iPhone” at the end of this, will you forgive me?)
On my first day at my current job, I was given a document to move along in our online system. I noticed that its grammar was inconsistent, so I offered to proofread it. Now, I’ve been lauded as the most thorough editor that the project has ever had, and I was able to tailor my work to fit my skillset. Win-win.
I learned critical thinking and reading comprehension skills.
Because I’m a competent reader, I’m able to apply that skill to my full-time job at the astronomy research facility. I can work through technical documents about telescopes and their instruments without batting an eye, despite having no formal training in optical physics or astronomy (besides my gen-ed freshman year; shout-out to Dr. Fleming).
I can think critically about a text regardless of its topic, and this has been incredibly useful.
I essentially have a degree in writing research papers.
For every literature class that I took, I wrote 3-5 long research papers and 5-20 short assignments (be they weekly responses to prompts, in-depth discussion board posts, etc.).
These assignments prepared me for ghostwriting in “real life.” My first big break on Upwork was a series of articles for a company involved in the American casino industry; after a phone call with the hiring client, I was given the opportunity to write a preliminary article. Out of the three journalists who wrote one, I was chosen because of my ability to work with existing content and give new insight to the topic, to write logically and to understand my audience. I was chosen because of my research skills.
I understand the value of language and storytelling.
I could go on forever about the utility of the English major, but the last thing I’ll say about it is perhaps the most frequently overlooked. Through studying English literature, I have been surrounded by people who understand and respect the value of language and storytelling, and that’s invaluable.
Stories are exemplary of our humanity. Acclaimed writer Neil Gaiman says it best:
“Ideas, written ideas, are special. They are the way we transmit our stories and our ideas from one generation to the next. If we lose them, we lose our shared history. We lose much of what makes us human. And fiction gives us empathy: it puts us inside the minds of other people, gives us the gift of seeing the world through their eyes. Fiction is a lie that tells us true things, over and over.”
I’m lucky that I got to spend my undergraduate years immersing myself in stories and learning how to be a better person — whether actively or inactively — because of them.
I’m proud of my English major, and that’s never going to change.
