It was clickbait, as was the first line of the article I quoted. But I work in the industry that created the term “clickbait”, despite having been a Sociology/Women’s Studies double major
10%-ish doesn’t seem like such a huge difference that should steer someone who is truly interested in the humanities away from it. It certainly doesn’t sound like $100K engineer vs $20K barista difference that seems to be the prevailing wisdom on CC.
This doesn’t seem like the big huge “OMG you have to live under a bridge” difference either.
It seems to me that an intelligent, driven individual is always going to do better than one who is one or the other or neither, regardless of major.
Well, while I have the attention of people interested in English and writing, any suggestions of colleges for a high stats aspiring writer? Ideally with an actual writing major but also strong overall academics in case she changes her mind or wants to double major. She would probably prefer not in a super-conservative or very rural area.
University of Iowa. The Iowa Writer’s Workshop is considered one of the more prestigious writing programs in the country, although I believe it is graduate level. However, since Iowa is home to this program, I would assume that the undergraduate programs would be strong.
I don’t know how good your poet friend is, lookingforward, but I think the view that “you do it for yourself” is true of real artists. The advice to write things for a market is good advice, in terms of supporting oneself, but most things that are written for the market are quite ephemeral. Poets are a rare breed. Aside from the issue of being able to support themselves, they have to contend with rather clueless people saying things like, “I used to write poems in middle school.” At least I do not have to contend with anyone saying, “I used to do quantum mechanics in middle school.”
Already aware of the strong graduate program in writing at Iowa but wondering whether anyone can speak to the undergraduate writing program. I didn’t realize MIT had a writing major but I’m guessing when I tell her she will veto that.
mathyone: I don’t think Iowa’s undergraduate writing program is thought to be particularly great. The faculty who make the graduate program incomparable spend most of their time talking to each other, their agents, and their publishers; they’re not teaching undergraduates what a point of view is. I’m not sure any of them are teaching undergraduates at all. The Writers’ Workshop offers some undergraduate courses, which I believe are mostly taught by graduate students (who are, after all, the cream of the crop).
Here are some places that mix strong academics with strong writing programs: Brown, Johns Hopkins, Princeton Penn, Kenyon, Columbia, Yale. Maybe NYU, maybe Sarah Lawrence, maybe Bard, maybe Bennington, maybe Stanford. (Obviously, there is some variation in the “strong academics” involved.) At some of them, it’s very competitive to get into writing classes. Princeton has unbelievable faculty – stalwarts in the past have included Toni Morrison, Joyce Carol Oates, John McPhee, Jeffrey Eugenides, Jhumpa Lahiri – but that doesn’t mean everyone gets to work with them. Brown’s program is very large, Kenyon’s a point of pride going back decades, Penn has “Kelly Writer’s House” to provide extracurricular support and networking.
Another interesting idea is the professional screenwriting BFA at USC. It’s ultra-competitive for admission and not a liberal arts program at all, but more than any other program I know of nearly 100% of its graduates earn their livings as writers from the get-go. And, as almost anyone will tell you, it’s the Golden Age of long-form television narrative. That’s where writers can actually get paid.
