Why you Shouldn't be an English Major

Lots of people declare English as their major because they think "Hey, I love reading books, I should be an English major!". These people are usually the ones who don't do well at all and decide that they'd rather switch to something more useful (like parks and recreation management). Being an English major is so much more than reading books, writing short stories, and having debates over whether this long dead author meant this or that. English majors have to be prepared to do things like write a 30 page paper on the significance of the paper cut a character got on p. 293 and how this relates to the major theme of the work. English majors need to be prepared to spend all night reading something that they were supposed to take 3 weeks to read.

In short, being an English major means spending time reading and analyzing things that don't really matter. Much.

After graduating many English majors find themselves working in a job that, to them, they are overqualified for. They also find that the positions they were trying to fill with their masters in English are already filled. The market for individuals with English degrees is saturated, and it's not going to stop being saturated any time soon.

Publishers want people with experience as their copy editors, which means your Masters thesis doesn't mean very much to them. Newspapers and Magazines want Journalists, which means average literary John/Jane Doe individuals like yourself are out of luck.

For those English majors that expect to strike it rich by starting their own literary website, or writing that book they always thought they did; they'll find out soon enough that there is a lot more to writing a book than just writing a book.

The publishing industry is a $23.9 billion industry according to the AAP, what does that mean for the writer of a book? Most of the time it means that the publishing company gets most of the money for the books you sell. Not to mention the hurdles that writers have to jump over just to get their book published! Some writers opt to have their books published through a POD publisher "Publish on Demand", which often leads to an easier time publishing, but the writer and their books hardly ever get noticed. Few copies of POD books ever even get sold; those that are sold are sold to family members and friends mostly.

In all actuality, the stigma against being a "writer" is often true. Few writers ever actually gain the popularity that we see in a select few. Being a writer just doesn't bring home the bacon.

Ok, so you decided to be an English major anyway and now you've got your Masters in English. What now?

Well, you could go work at one of those jobs your overqualified for that I talked about (McDonald's anyone?) and pursue your dreams of being a famous author anyway. You could also try your hand at the saturated market that is the English world. My advice? Be creative when looking for a job. You could go back to school and study to be a librarian. You could be a Technical Writer. You could be a Copywriter. You could write on the internet. You may have a (very) difficult time finding a job or getting your content published and looked at, but you could at least try.

Or you could just not be an English major at all. (I recommend this option!)