During high school and even now, I still get the occasional question “Are you sure you want to be an English major?”
My mom is a nurse and my father works in marketing. I thought I wanted to be a doctor until I realized that hospitals are the most depressing places and math wasn’t my calling. I thought that maybe I could be a marine biologist, but I just wasn’t happy taking all of the upper level science classes.
When I was younger, I loved to read. As I got older, it just didn’t interest me as much as it used to. A teacher challenged us sophomore year to go a week without technology. During this week I fell head over heels in love with reading. Every since then I knew I wanted to be an English major.
You can do anything with an English major. My dad was an English major and has done marketing for Harvard and MIT. You can be a teacher, or a journalist, a writer or editor, or work in publishing. English is also a super easy transition into law. The opportunities are endless.
English is a good option if you want to go into education or journalism because it doesn’t lock you into those careers if you decide to change.
It also looks good to have an English minor, even if you’re pursuing science. It shows that you have the ability to write and read complex work, diversity of thought, and that you have interests that exist outside of the scientific world. It will also make you stand out because it’s unusual.
Being an English major is not easy by any means. Everything you do from reading to writing is time consuming so it’ll teach you how to not procrastinate. The work you do is interpretive so it requires an open mind. You need to be comfortable with being wrong and receiving constructive criticism. You’ll learn how everything from Shakespeare to the Bible to Chaucer is still relevant in literature today. English is all around us.
English provides foundational skills that are important for everyone to know. And who doesn’t love a good story?