<p>So that's pretty much my question. I really like french, but what can I do with it later on in life if I major in french? Thanks!</p>
<p>Red Cross work in Africa, International Business in France, French teacher (generic response). Lots of things, actually, and it’s an extremely useful skill to have for whatever field you enter.</p>
<p>I would have to agree with BillyMc. You could aso look into Law school, politics, graduate school, translation. I find language majors to be very open-ended. The world is your oyster, as they say.</p>
<p>You could speak and read French!! I’m not being sarcastic, just taking issue with the notion that you have to “do something” with all material you study in college. Some of it is for enrichment and your ability to have a sense of the world beyond your immediate surroundings. In the end you will be a better educated person than many other people and it may pay off in material ways. I know someone who studied French and planned to go to law school. Between undergrad and law school she worked at an airline and used her French, but I don’t think she set out to learn French to work at an airline – her education worked in unexpected ways.</p>
<p>Other than the obvious (translating or being a french teacher), you could go into International Business or International Law. Large international companies need people to do various marketing related things in foreign countries that the business expands to. I had a German substitute teacher for some time in high school who majored in German in college and later went on to work as… something like a marketing assistant or consultant (I’m not exactly sure, so I apologize) for whatever company owns the Jelly Beans products. He often made business trips to Germany, and I believe his concentration was in developing Jelly Bean products for Germany. One day, he came back to my class during his vacation and brought us Jelly Beans in fully German packaging - which he was partly responsible for creating.
Also, if you decide to go to law school after getting a B.A. in French language, you could very well get into a law firm that has a large French-speaking client base. I know someone from Jamaica who’s in law school and claims that some law firms specifically search for people knowledgeable in both law and a foreign language (in her case, it’s the Jamaican language) so that they can reach out and work with clients whose native language is something other than English.</p>
<p>“(in her case, it’s the Jamaican language)”</p>
<p>wait… what?</p>
<p>You can work for a French-based company here in the U.S. My French teacher told us about a student of her’s who majored in Economics (or was it communication?) and French. The girl got a job at L’Oreal with marketing where one of the things she does is translating French to English and vice versa.</p>
<p>Ah, yes, apologies. I suppose it’s more accurate to call it a dialect, since it is a modified version of English. Anyway, I hear it’s quite difficult for a traditional English speaker to discern the Jamaican dialect (wiki tells me it’s called “Jamaican Patois,” so let’s go with that). The point was really just that knowledge of a foreign language or different dialect would open up more opportunities (access to more clients) if one endeavors to enter the law profession.</p>