alright listen up. i had no idea this was going to be the most popular post i ever made, and i’ve gotten some really nice comments and some pretty condescending ones. let’s get a few things straight:
first, this post is based on MY experiences and MY research in MY geographical area. i don’t know if it really is any different in big cities, small towns or elsewhere in the world, but where i live this is how it is.
second, this post is not about my burning desire to work in a library. i honestly don’t want to, it’s just something that’s been recommended to me ad nauseam.
thirdly, i don’t KNOW what you can do with an english degree. if i knew that, would i be having all these jobs recommended to me? i don’t have a job! i haven’t figured out what i’m doing with my life! i don’t KNOW!
and finally, several people have expressed their confusion about why i or anyone would get an english degree if there are no jobs for it, and i find these comments to be especially tedious.
i. was. told. there. would. be. jobs.
english is the only thing i’ve ever been good at, so i knew that’s what i wanted to study. it was my passion, and i was assured that following your passions was what college was about. i went to a meeting for prospective english majors freshman year and the head of the department told us all that he was constantly getting requests from employers who would tell him “send me all your english majors!” he told us if we majored in english we’d have the critical thinking skills to do whatever we liked. we’d be in impossibly high demand.
these were all, as i have found out, baldfaced lies. BUT, not in the way you think.
it’s true, english majors are not in as high demand as the department head led us to believe. but you know who is in incredibly high demand? NO ONE! there is no major that makes you imminently employable, not a bachelor’s degree or a master’s degree or a doctorate. you are equally unemployable with a business degree, or a law degree, or a degree in marine biology. you could have a degree in any STEM field and you’d still struggle to find a job. the only difference between those degrees and an english degree is where you’re told to “just get a job doing x.”
we are in an employer’s market right now. there are more people than there are jobs to be had, partly because none of the baby boomers will fucking retire, but also because of all the people who have to work two jobs to make ends meet because nowhere pays a living wage anymore. no one is safe, nothing is sacred, and if you think “well if you’d only gotten a different degree this wouldn’t be happening lol” then you need to pull your head out of your ass and look around you my friend. this is not a result of our poor choices. we did not do this to ourselves. it was done to us, by the ivory tower shit-heads who line their pockets with our student loan money.
tldr: major in english. eat the rich.
