When I tell people that I’m an English major, the most common reaction is confusion. What are you planning to do with that? People have asked me, their foreheads furrowing in puzzlement. So, what made you decide to go into the humanities? Unlike other more seemingly “clear-cut” majors like finance, biology, or engineering, English and other humanities majors are not so easily defined by a specific career path or professional interest. Many people whom I’ve spoken with view writing more as a hobby than a career, and certainly not as a viable position in today’s post-grad job market. Indeed, in previous job interviews for summer internships, I have had to repeatedly justify my English major and its relevancy within a world increasingly dominated by technology and analytic, numbers-based, thinking. Such is the plight of the humanities major today, where the market for creatives shrinks by the hour and we must fight to justify our relevancy. But, hey, this article is about why it’s okay to be an English major, so enough with the negatives.
My career as an English major started simply because I enjoy reading and writing; as an English major, that’s basically all I do every semester; last fall, I stacked up all the books I had read over the course of three months and it almost reached my waist. (I’m 5’3”, by the way.) I had a few vague, nebulous notions of what I wanted to do with my English major post-grad, but as a young freshman straight out of high school, that was something that college seniors worried about, not a brand-new university student. Some seemed alarmed that I had picked a humanities major and had given little thought to what I was going to do with my degree four year down the road, but I trusted in myself that I’d figure something out in the ensuing months. Although I had other academic skills that I was mediocrely good at, I could not imagine marrying myself to a major that I would come to hate by graduation and enter a professional field equipped with all the wrong skills to make me happy. In hindsight, I’d abided by the now-clichéd phrase, “Do what you love, and the money will follow.”
Three years later, I sit writing this article in my bedroom for the summer in Brooklyn, New York. I’m interning for a large technology company in Manhattan within their marketing division, and am currently about halfway through with my internship. Would I have thought that I would have ever ended up here? Not really. It was a series of happy accidents that led me to where I am today. Along the way, I studied abroad, picked up a double major in marketing and a minor in French. With English still as my primary major, I still receive the same reactions that I did before. People ask me why I’m not just a marketing major if I want to go into the marketing field post-grad. I mainly shrug it off. I have a paid internship with the opportunity of the position turning into a full-time job, so why worry about those who tell me about the tough market for humanities?
Every one of my friends who have graduated with humanities majors have found excellent jobs in fields that they love. I’m not trying to dismiss the huge problem of college unemployment that continues to plague this country; humanities majors do have to do a bit of extra legwork in their professional fields to get to the careers they want. However, all I’m trying to say is that it really is okay to be a humanities major. You’re not writing yourself a death sentence by doing so. It is possible to be an English major and get a great job in a variety of fields post-grad. You bring a unique set of skills to the table that a business or engineering major may not have. Leverage those skills to your advantage to continue to do what you love.
