When I tell people that I'm an English major, the overwhelming majority have the same response: "Oh! You must want to be a teacher!"
Wrong.
There seems to be this crazy assumption in the world that the only thing that you can do with an English degree is teach, which is fascinating because there are so many other things that an English degree can be used for.
Here are some examples:
1. Marketing:
English majors are awesome at marketing, especially online! You want adjectives? We've got 'em! You want to make things sound really awesome? Welcome to our paper-writing techniques!
2. Publishing:
This goes without saying. The stereotypical "Grammar Nazi" English majors flourish in such roles.
3. Grant Writing:
"Please give my organization money" can be approached in words much the same way that "please let me pass this class" was for the past four years.
4. Journalism:
Writing the who, what, when, where, and why into a specific word count is a cake walk, especially when we're used to having to come up with strange speculations based on fictional characters.
5. Law:
We're especially great in regards to contracts and finding all of their loopholes! We love closing the gaps in other peoples' work!
These are just the things I could think of off the top of my head. An English degree requires a lot more skill and dedication than a lot of people realize. We don't just sit and read books—our classes require us to learn to read in context, beneath the surface ideas, and to realize the broader social and historical implications of the work. We have to process complex ideas, and see multiple ways to interpret any given scene or interaction. These are skills that can easily be passed into the real-world job market and adapted to work in many different settings.
Or you could just come up with things like Literary Starbucks. That works too.
Personally, my goal is to use all of my hard-earned skills to eventually, maybe, one day, edit books for a living. This embraces the love of literature that brought me to being an english major in the first place, and also doesn't lock me in a room with children for eight hours per day for a solid nine months of the year.
Please stop assuming we want to be teachers.
