What can you do with a degree in English?

Isn’t that a question you should have asked before you chose it as your major??

Haha, well maybe, but it seems to be my strong suit. I thought about computer science, but higher end math makes my head hurt. Besides, I asked the question to start a discussion about English degrees and graduate school, because I already know I have a bad track record in personal choices.

well best of luck to you then. I am a CompSci graduate, so I have no idea what kind of job an English degree gets (other than English teacher)

My sister got a masters in English. She is now the Web Content Administrator for a small, private college in my home town. She makes sure everything is grammatically correct before the world sees it.

If you keep going with English into more advanced degrees, the only place you can probably use your education is in academia. You could pick a related field in grad school that will use some of the skills of analysis and writing that you learned as an English major, maybe like communications or marketing. You could also go to law school.

Read a book?
Write a grammatically correct sentence?

seriously, those skills are more in demand than ever. They are applicable in almost any kind of employment that interests you. Don’t be overawed by the importance of an undergraduate major. It’s really not that significant in most cases.

Teach English seems obvious. If you don’t want to get an advanced degree depending on the state you live in you might be able to teach high school and go for the necessary teaching credits. With strong English skills seems like you might be able to go into editing as well or possibly wiritng copy for topics you are interested in.

I think you should think about what else interests you, if you are not inclined to teach. Having a degree in anything counts. You can start at the bottom in an industry you are interested in and having a strong English background will only help.

My ultimate goal is to become a professor. It is a big goal, and maybe it is an insane idea given that I am working full time with a wife and two kids. In case it is too big of a goal to accomplish, I was just wondering about others with experiences with English degrees and/or graduate school.

English is a versatile major in that students with the degree are usually good communicators (typically written, if not verbal as well). You’d be surprised at how many people just don’t know how to communicate ideas effectively in a large variety of jobs. That’s where you come in. You probably have an endless number of administrative and office-type jobs available to you in a number of different fields. My brother works as a transcript evaluator at City University of New York. Another brother ended up going to medical school (through a program that didn’t require pre-med courses). I’m on the path to law school. We were all English and Comparative Lit majors. Basically, you need to think of what field you’d be interested in and I’m sure you can can find something for an English major to do there.

When I was considering continuing with English in graduate school, I learned that you have take the GRE test and most schools expect you to have taken enough courses in a modern language to be almost fluent (like French, German, Spanish, etc). I believe you are tested on your fluency before admission.

My I have a B.A. in English Lit and work as an Administrative Analyst in a document control and records management department. The pay is very good. Obviously I had a lot of on-the-job training, but my background in English is what made me successful in this work.

@MrBr00ks

It’s funny; I’m currently at school as a Professional Writing major, and the head of the writing department is a British professor by the name of Tim Brooks. Anyway, the program here is all about practical free-lancing, so even though I aspire to be a novelist, I also have classes in travel writing, restaurant critiques, copy-editing, poetry and memoir/non-fiction writing. I’m not sure how many of these appeal or apply to you, but I’m sure your degree will help you get a foot in the door of any of them.

Discover a more elegant formulation of the question “would you like fries with that?”?

My father majored in English. He is now a lawyer. That is the extent of my knowledge of English majors in the workforce.

@ratboy gee, I haven’t heard that one before.

My sister got a degree in English. She later went on to get a Master’s and a PhD. She is a poet and currently a tenured associate professor.

She was for quite a while a member of the drywall union. She worked as a mechanic for a while. She spent several years working for Kinko’s, eventually becoming their roving copy machine repair person. She did freelance carpentry off and on. She also did freelance writing, mostly for Outdoors Magazine, and editing for the Record of the New Mexico State Legislature. She also did translations from Spanish, French, Norwegian or Portuguese into English, advertising her services online. She taught English as a Second Language in several of the pueblos, and she designed the first online classes for the college where she is currently employed.

Somewhere in there she also sold several poems and published one book of her poetry.

Teach, law school (they like people who can write and think), many jobs that require writing, editing and so on. Public relations and other jobs that require a lot of writing.

How did you get a degree in English spelling “a lot” as one word?? Oof.

@sliceswiththings Ever heard of a “typo?”

Very nice.

I was just on the phone with my English major daughter when I opened this question. This is what she said:
Anything in the Communication realm:
Get your credential and teach.
Teach ESL overseas
Writing
Editing
Get a credential and teach High School or college
Government jobs that require a degree

First, Gonzaga is a great school—that will really help you in whatever you choose to do next. I went to EWU. I would have loved to have been able to afford Gonzaga!

Anyway, I earned my B.A. in Lit, and then I got my M.A. in Linguistics. I teach full-time ESL now in an Intensive English Program at a large University.

A few things: If you want to be a professor down the road, you’ll need to get your MA and most likely your PhD (unless you choose a field in which an MA is the terminal degree).

You can get your MA in lots of different things, and jobs will be flexible after that. For example, I was offered a few full-time composition lecturer positions after graduating with my MA in Linguistics, and I had only taught comp during grad school.

Unless you want to get stuck teaching lower level comp classes to first and second yera students, get your PhD. And avoid adjunct positions at all costs if you can. UGH.

Some friends of mine who also have BAs in English are now working as tech writers and they loathe it. But it’s an option.

Also, I’m not sure about what Judi wrote, above. It seems that most high schools actually hold out for applicants with teaching degrees. Plus, depending on the state, you might have to get an extra teaching certificate.

M.A. or bust?

@juniper There is a program (which I’m considering) in many states where you can take a course and become a teacher without having an education degree. Its a one year practicum and then you’re good to go. They take what you already know how to do and tell you what you’re qualified to teach (middle school social studies, English, business, marketing for me) and then you can work on getting into a school teaching in one of those areas.

this instantly reminded me of what can you do with a b.a. in english? by avenue q.

i don’t know, but i’ll probably have the same problem. haha.

Thank you for all the positive responses. GA’s for you. I appreciate it, and this was by far the most successful topic I have started yet. =)