Family gatherings, graduations, and basically the entirety of your senior year of high school, teenagers are bombarded by the questions: “What school are you going to? What’s your major?” At a certain point, your answers become
“I’m going to _______ for nursing” “Good for you, there’s always a job in nursing.”
“I’m going to _______ for engineering” “What a good choice, my uncle went there.”
“I’m going to ________ for English” “So….what do you want to do?”
Being an English Major, you’ve probably suffered through the same stereotypical questions, notions, and comments concerning your career. Here are 5 annoying comments every English Major gets sick of hearing.
1.“You’re an English major, you should know how to spell”
Sigh. Just because I’m an English major doesn’t mean I’m the equivalent to spell-check. What do you think an English major spends their time studying? We don’t take spelling tests and we type all of our papers on Word or some other platform that does all of the
2.“Go read a book or something”
It’s because I study English? Isn’t it?
Sure, for many of us, books were the outlet that brought us to become the English majors we are today, but for some of us, myself included, “reading a book on the beach” isn’t our cup of tea. Also, we're assigned a kajillion and a half things to read, it's not hard to believe that we get sick of it after a while.
Assuming we read books 24/7 is like assuming a nursing student checks people’s heart rates 24/7—When’s the last time you saw someone use a stethoscope on the beach, hmm?
3.“You don’t want to make money, huh?
We most certainly do want to make money. Money is nice. We like money just as much as the next person. Is it likely that each one of us will become a renowned Author? No. But an English Degree can open doors to so many other opportunities. The content covered in English makes us well versed in critical thinking, metacognition, and communication, to name a few. We’ve been trained to take a concept and twist it into new perspectives, challenge it, flip it upside down, and ponder upon it for hours, sitting in a chair wearing a beret, thinking “hmmm…”
Basically, we’re good at writing and we’re good at thinking. These skills can land us jobs in many fields. One of my professors is always saying, “Many CEOs of companies have degrees in English.” And, as I’ve been trained to do, I didn’t just take his word for it; I found out for myself. What’s not surprising is-- he was right. In one article alone from thebusinessinsider.com, I found out that icons such as Steven Spielberg, Conan O’Brien, and Barbara Walters, to name a few, were all English Majors. Now, I don’t know about you, but I think Barbara Walters is one powerful woman (and a little scary) So take that!
http://www.businessinsider.com/successful-people-w...
4.“Is this grammatically correct?”
What I’m about to say might surprise you—we actually aren’t formally instructed in grammar. I can only speak on behalf of what it means to study English at SUNY Oneonta, but a course in grammar linguistics is not required for my degree. I am, however, being formally instructed in grammar because of the secondary education degree I'm also pursuing. But as far as being a plain Jane English major? Nope.
You’re probably confused by this; I am too. English majors are kind of just expected to absorb grammar like a sponge and learn from the marks in
Doesn’t make sense to me, but if understanding auxiliary verbs isn’t crucial to obtaining an English Degree, so be it. I don’t decide this stuff. (Who does?)
5.“You basically major in storytelling.”
What bothers me about this is not that we work with stories; we do, a lot. What bothers me is the implied notion that this is easy work, even child's play. Don't knock English 'til you try it; it can be harder than it looks. Also, there's far more to our curriculum than "story telling" and furthermore, stories are how people make sense of the world. Essentially, what you're saying is that we major in understanding the world. Now THAT doesn't sound half bad.
