Rewriting the Value of the English Degree

I always knew that my undergraduate degree was going to be in English Language and Literature.

Well, that’s not true for a handful of reasons. There were a few times I thought I might go into anthropology or archaeology, but then I found out that my uncle had a degree in anthropology and here he was working for his father selling arcade machines because the job market for them is so tight.

Then there was the time I thought that I’d be a veterinarian, but once I realized I would have to euthanize large swaths of animals that weren’t sick that dream was firmly retired.

And when I think about wanting to be a writer, I don’t think about studying the English language specifically. I think about Literature and writing, reading stories from across the world and having fun discussions about our favorite fantasy series and when the next Game of Thrones book is finally going to come out (Probably some time next year, if GRRM has anything to say about it.) Of course, it’s not nearly so much fun. It’s a deep dive into literary and philosophical theory. It’s a social critique on a grand scale and you will dive into grueling material to see how Foucault and his friends viewed the world and how that affected everything from medieval biblical translations to what drives Voldemort in Harry Potter. It’s branching out into the genius minds of Borges, Marquez, and Murakami for magical realism one day and studying the monolithic Tolstoy, Shelley, and Woolf the next. It’s about challenging how big the world can be by reading authors you’ve never heard of while stripping the ones you love to the spines of their books. It is like psychiatry without the knowledge to diagnose yourself; you will know you are going crazy, but now how or why. You simply have to keep reading until things start making sense again.

I think the greatest detractor to the English degree right now is its reputation as a useless arts major.

That couldn’t be further from the truth. Admittedly, I was only offered three career-oriented college courses in my undergrad years – Journalism, Technical Writing, and B2B Communication. We should be seeing more Copywriting, Copyediting, UX Design, and Writing for Marketing Campaign courses available to give students a taste of what power they can have while still holding on to their passions. However, this doesn’t take away from the plethora of skills that an English major gains from their work. These are individuals who can be incredible analysts, powerful researchers, critical readers, careful planners, and meticulous craftspeople when given the right opportunity.

When you have a website that needs to be populated with text, wouldn’t you like a professional writer to create accessible, easy-to-read text that moves your product? Or, if you’re a legal agency, don’t you want to ensure that you have a firm-handed legal writer to ensure that your documents are without a single flaw?

Written Ads? Grant writing? Web content? Product descriptions? Educational briefs? Movie scripts? Business proposals? These are things that can elevate your business to the next level.

So yes, I got my Bachelor’s in English because writing is a way of feeling for me. It’s a language. It’s a display of who I am, of all my honesty and beliefs and faults all at once when saying something out loud doesn’t do it justice. It’s something innate, it’s wretched torture, and yes, sometimes it’s boring. Sometimes it’s nice to remember that boring can actually be a good thing, too.

It’s also a job. Sometimes it’s my dream job, but some days it’s just as much of a pain as any other career. You don’t always like what you write, and sometimes everyone you know thinks that what you’ve written is garbage even if you think it’s great. Sometimes it really is garbage and you have no choice but to throw it away and start all over again, but it is also rewarding to see people’s reactions to something I’ve written well.

Have you ever written an application for a grant and got to see the joy on someone’s face when they won? Or pushed away from your keyboard proud of how your site looks? Or felt that fuzzy feeling when you published something and see people interacting and having fun? Writing is a job that can alter the very environment of a company and is a powerful tool for creatives and right-brained entrepreneurs alike.