English Majors Don't Get Jobs

It's funny how you can be [insert my age here] years old and still not know what you want to be when you grow up.

And when I say "funny" I actually mean mind-blowingly annoying.

I have never known what I want to be when I grew up. When I was a kid I would mostly say "teacher" because that's what all of my little girl friends wanted to be and that's what girls were supposed to say. Boys were supposed to say "firemen" and girls were supposed to say "teacher". Which now when I look back on it is really weird that I thought that because my father was a teacher. Hmmm....

Anyway, when I went to college I still had NO CLUE what I wanted to do with my life.

What to major in, what to major in..........how about Psychology? My friends tell me I'm a good listener and I think Freud is on to something, so why not???

Then I learn of the Stats for Psych requirement and I know I am totally screwed. Math and I do not play well together.

So I fail the statistic class.

Okay, now what? I clearly couldn't retake it because that would have been a whole new level of HELL. I needed a new plan.

What major doesn't require any math????

English.

That's the ticket!!!

I'm a decent writer, my dad is a college English teacher, I like words, I'm fluent in the language. This has to be good.

And it was good. Except for the tiny little fact that was lost on me at the time: English Majors Don't Get Jobs.

I mean, it's not like I'm a "nursing" major or an "education" major. Those people will actually get jobs in their chosen fields, most likely.

For a while I thought about going into journalism and even took a path in that direction. But between a seriously bad relationship that I had with the one and only journalism prof at my college and a lack of any kind of REAL drive to do what it would take to actually land a job in journalism after college, I sort of gave up on that.

And I really never wanted to be a teacher, despite my canned answer from childhood.

This is a lovely picture that I paint of myself, isn't it? Unfocused much?

I am actually known for being responsible and organized to a fault. But when it comes to my career decisions, as I have said many times in the past on this blog, I just seem to lose my focus.

It's not entirely true that English majors don't get jobs. I have a job. And several of my good friends who were English majors have even better jobs. But THIS English major has her sights on much more than the path I am currently on.

Even more embarrassing and unhelpful? My minor: German. Ach nein!!!