My 11th grader and I have been having a lot of conversations about the path she is choosing to take–foreign language. She is from a family where her siblings have opted for majors which lead directly toward their career objectives: chemical engineering, physics, occupational therapy assistant.
The path she wants to pursue is far more open-ended with, at this point anyway, hazy long-term goals. She excels in her areas of interest and loves it as well, but she is equally aware that her aspirations are going to take her on a different sort of journey than her siblings. The end goals are wide open toward so many different options. She is going to have to take more directed action toward forging the actual destination than simply following a 4 yr plan that starts the propulsion from A to B. She is going to have to define B herself.
Those who rant against liberal arts pursuits should take some time to contemplate the interior strengths of someone who actively and thoughtfully pursues a path leading into the unclearly defined. The character strengths of an 18 yr old pursuing an undefined career outcome via a path our society discourages are of a different sort than those pursing a clearly laid out 4 yr plan, incorporating co-oping/research, leading to job offers/grad school. I personally think it is not an easy choice when entered into with eyes wide open. Knowing that the responsibility for building your own career out a degree is probably enough to prevent many from even starting that journey.
If you want to be a writer - write. Write all the time. It’s the practice of writing that makes you a better writer, not your major in college.
I know two people who now write fiction for a living. For one (a geology major in college), writing is a hobby he pursued after retirement; the other writes “serious” novels full-time and has made a good living doing so. He was a business and philosophy major in college, when I knew him best. One of his own children is also a novelist whom he discouraged from majoring in English. His reason? “If you want to write, you write and you read. Your college major is superfluous to your writing career.”
Even though he’s a very good writer and supports a family, there were lean times when he worked odd jobs (and yes, one was writing technical manuals). He never “gave up,” but at times he did have to adapt.
I calculate that salary to be about double what someone making minimum wage at a fast food joint is making, assuming a minimum wage in the neighborhood of $8 an hour. (federal minimum wage is $7.25)
My English major D graduated 3 years ago this December and has never moved back home. She has had jobs in publishing since graduation. She doesn’t make a ton of money but she makes a decent amount and loves her job.
OTOH, H’s english major niece was never able to find a job and ended up returning to school for nursing. One of the big differences is likely the fact that D lives in a city (NYC) and niece was not willing to relocate from the small town area in which she was raised and has very limited employment opportunities.
Being able and willing to relocate can be a major factor.
Many famous fiction writers started by writing fiction on their own time. She gets paid if she gets published. It’s a hard field to break into. And that’s just that. Your D needs a day job.
In the meantime - to get a good day job in the English field - she can also major in secondary education and teach high school; she can get a Master’s and teach community college; she can get an MFA in Creative Writing (she still may never get paid writing fiction, but she could teach writing); she can get a PhD in English.
One thing thing we should impress upon Humanities majors is that, if they do really want to work in their field, they need an advanced degree, or an education certificate to teach.
This. ^ This is KEY, imo. I have talked with a few people from my hometown (small city with few white-collar jobs) who majored in Sociology or English and complain that they cannot find a job besides factory work. Yet, they refuse to move. I had no problem finding a job just after graduation - in Chicago. That was over 25 years ago - probably more necessary now to be mobile.
People change careers all the time. It’s not like it used to be where you stayed in the same job/company your entire life.I do think it’s important for students to understand what the average pay is for the field they are intending to major in BEFORE they take out a ton of student loans.
I’m wondering whether the internet has made a substantial difference in the ability of young writers to get started on a career. It seems like musicians have a lot more options now for making a name and marketing their work. But is this happening so much for writers? We all know that Harry Potter was turned down by about 20 publishers, so it’s questionable how well the professionals can predict a popular success.
On the other hand, there do seem to be more avenues for self-publishing low volume books now than before (e.g. Lulu, Morris, Cafe Press, iUniverse, etc.).
The problem with young people’s dreams of being a writer is that they start with just thinking they like to write. What you produce matters. I tell kids all the time to understand marketing. I’ve written for corporate, for the U, and on my own. It’s not just about your own satisfaction. Or, if it is, don’t expect to make money. I have this argument all the time with my acclaimed poet friend, who says you do it for yourself. I say, you need to know trends and audience expectations, how to reach into their pockets, so to say. She makes maybe 2k/year on her writing. The issue isn’t her English major (and she has a grad degree from a solid writing program.) It’s her approach. This is no different from many fields.
Or maybe it’s the fact that she writes poetry? Seems pretty hard to have financial success with that no matter how talented you are, unless you are going to get into songwriting.
My daughter, now 7 years out of college, was exactly like that. By the time she went to college, she had hundreds of pages of stories she had written, a few publications, some prizes, selection to a prestigious and intensely selective (because free) residential summer writing program. She is a planner, and she was very realistic about her prospective career. She talked to a number of writers about how they supported themselves, and studied the careers of others. The number of people who support themselves writing fiction is infinitesimal; the number of those who write “serious” (vs. genre) fiction is a rounding error. So she understood from the get-go that wanting to write serious fiction meant, in all probability, that she would be earning a living doing something else for a number of years, at least, if not forever.
Lots of writers work as journalists (although that field is hardly a rich source of employment opportunities now). Lots work in publishing (same issue). Teaching is very popular, since it is usually compatible with having long stretches of time that can be devoted to writing. Relatively successful writers – those who get published – often teach writing to college students; practically every college has one such person on faculty, and many have several. Some get PhDs and teach literature, not writing, to college students. Lots teach English and literature classes in high schools and middle schools. Then there’s advertising, public relations, speechwriting, technical writing. Some do get professional degrees and work as lawyers, doctors, nurses, businesspeople, therapists, even clergy. My (small) law school class has three published novelists, one of whom has been more than modestly successful (writing genre novels, and always holding a full-time – but only 9-to-5 – government law job). If you’re not Stephen King, or at least Cormac McCarthy, and you’re not independently wealthy, that’s what being a writer means. (And note that what is considered McCarthy’s masterpiece, and first commercially successful book, was written while he was supported by a MacArthur Fellowship.)
My daughter made a decision to go to a college that did not have a writing major, or indeed a strong writing program, and thus to major in English Literature. (She never really considered any major that was not literature or writing.) She did a lot during college to give herself a journalism and/or publishing resume – her college career services office was using her as a model of how to use your classes and extracurricular activities to make yourself attractive to employers. She applied for tons of jobs, was competitive for many of them (she made it through the fourth round of a six-round selection process for Pearson management trainees, where most of the candidates had MBAs), and ultimately decided to take an offer from Teach for America to teach high school English in New York City.
During her years teaching, she learned (a) that she could be a successful teacher, but it did not engage her as much as she hoped, (b) that she was less and less interested in writing fiction, and (c) that she was more and more interested in policy issues around education and poverty. Her writing skills, undergraduate record, and teaching experience got her a job working on education reform issues at a large, prestigious foundation, and she recently moved to a more senior job with broader scope at a smaller foundation funded by a group of hedge-fund managers. She got an employer-funded public policy master’s degree while working at the first foundation. She is completely engaged in her work, excited and challenged by it. Her writing and analytic abilities, nurtured as an English major, are central to everything she does; she was hired over lots of other applicants by a group of math-centric finance types, so it’s clear her skills are recognizable outside the English-major bubble. She has supported herself since her college graduation and is able to save money and even to think about buying an apartment in New York City.
So, yeah, I think she’s successful, although not as a writer of literary fiction.
I don’t know that any of her friends with similar interests is successful writing fiction. A couple have clawed out careers in journalism – they have full-time jobs with reputable publications; one is now in law school. One friend works in the publication department of a major art museum. Another, who aspired to be a graphic novelist, is writing her dissertation in Literature and Gender Studies about gothic literature, following a fellowship in France and a period of hipster cookie-selling in Brooklyn. We know a few “kids” who are now in their mid-30s who had similar ambitions. One is now a business reporter for a major newspaper, and just published his first book (business nonfiction); another is an extremely successful writer of celebrity profiles. Both began their careers with a period of free-lance hustling and very meager compensation, but that hasn’t been true for years.
Maybe it is that she’s a poet. But she truly is acclaimed. I have a friend who makes a great amount as a writer for the teen audience, churns out books. And they’re all a vampire theme. Any day now, teens will tire of vampires and he’ll have to shift. I also have a couple of friends who were solid in the editing world and as things change in the publishing industry, are SOL.
Personally, I think if you can write well, you can think well. (You can’t write well without thinking well and having some life experience.) Of course, some people just hit a formula. But combine the writing and thinking skills with some business sense and you won’t be ignored. Nor will you be stuck down at 19k. As the world gets more technical, someone has to put those ideas into meaningful forms.
But what’s all this about jobs one hates or that weren’t their “original dreams?” Anyone who goes out and approaches the world finds so much more than just what they knew in hs or from 18-22. All sorts of interesting ways to plug in.
If you want to major in English, what type of school you go to is important. It’d be very risky to go to a third-tier school, especially with substantial financial burden. In contrast, an engineering degree from any school is a safer bet.
Good for Seattle. But the rest of the state, as far as I can see, as of 1/1/15, is $9.47. And many min wage earners are not getting 40 hours/week. The simple math doesn’t tell it all.
Hzhao, there are a number of threads lately that try to figure out if the higher education is worth it or how much “where” matters. There are surprisingly productive writing programs in all sorts of schools, regardless of the public perception. And many lesser known English programs can offer solid chances to hone critical thinking.
Maybe so, maybe no. As Richard Linklater had Matthew McConaughey observe in Dazed and Confused, “I love these high school girls! I get older, but they stay the same age.” Teens do tire of vampires, every day, but for the past couple of decades for every teen who finally tires of vampires there’s a 12-year-old who is totally gobsmacked by that special vampire mix of sex, sophistication, decadence, pathos, and danger. As a result, vampires have been pretty continuously hot for the past 30-35 years.
