More Advice for the College Bound: On Career-Readiness
I'd always planned to follow my How to Choose a Major post with one on the fact that English is not a career-ready major, but thanks to a busy couple days of bugfixing and an even busier weekend of weeding, cleaning, furniture-moving, and toddler-wrangling, Pioneer Woman and Sheryle have managed to give a preview of my point in the comments on the Major post. Sheryle writes:
...just take courses that you like until you've run out of time and are absolutely against the wall to be able to to graduate at all. So what major? Well, of course, the one you took the most courses in, just because they were so interesting and you're running out of time. This works well if you plan to go to graduate school and your major doesn't have to fit exactly or if you want multiple jobs in your life because they're interesting and not because they're part of your life track that included a specific, practical major.
A "specific, practical major" was exactly what I wanted to talk about. If the reason you are going to college is so that you'll be able to get a good job—or a job in a particular field—right out of college, then my method of scanning the course catalog for what interests you (or Sheryle's method of just taking the classes that interest you as they come up, rather than circling your options ahead of time) is probably NOT the best way to go about choosing a major.
It's probably worth noting that not many majors are "career-ready" in the sense that they'll prepare you for a high-paying, high-responsibility job right out of college. Yes, I know it'll come as a shock to many a 22 year-old, but chances are that not many experienced executives are going to give your brilliant insights much credence until you've tempered your enthusiasm with experience and maturity. Graduates of every stripe have to work their way up, no matter how smart they are. (As a matter of fact, the smarter you are, the more you probably need to be told to shut up and listen.) It's less about "paying your dues" than about gaining perspective and learning from those around you. Having said that, though, liberal arts (and even science) majors will likely have a tougher time getting on a career path than, say, computer science or landscape architecture majors.
Why? Because there's a big difference between education and training. As a liberal arts major, you'll have been educated, but you won't have been trained to do anything other than write well and think logically. (Yes, these are skills that everyone should have, and if you're an English, history, or philosophy major, you'll be appalled to find, when you arrive in the work world, how few of your colleagues can write a coherent sentence. At least you've got a leg up there.) The computer science major, on the other hand, has received the same basic education you have (i.e., she probably took the same core classes that you did), but she's also been trained in a specific field. She'll be able to put the programming languages, object-oriented design techniques, or systems design principles she's learned to immediate use somewhere, if she wants to. Yes, she'll start at the bottom, too, but an obvious career path (or at least, several obvious choices of career path) will be open to her.
You, the liberal arts major, on the other hand, could do just about anything—you just need a little training in a specific area to get started. For some, the thing to do is to put all you've learned about reading, writing, thinking, and studying to good use in graduate school, where, if you're lucky, you'll receive some training in a field as well as further education. For example, an English or philosophy degree is a perfect foundation for law school. You might even be able to go to medical school with such a foundation, provided you also took actual biology and chemistry courses and not just the botany and chemistry-for-non-science-majors courses that I took. You could get an MFA in creative writing, which is a good option if you really have no interest in a career at all, if you have a trust fund, or if you believe it's the best way to coax that million-dollar novel out of you. You could also do what everyone you meet asks if you're going to do—teach—and either get certified with just a B.A. or get an M.Ed. (For what it's worth, most teaching jobs require the Master's now.)
If more schooling is not for you, your next task is to determine what *is* for you. If you opted for Sheryle's method of just taking whatever classes seemed interesting each quarter/semester—or my similar method of determining ahead of time where your interests lay—because it suited your personality, you're probably in for a bit of floundering. That's not necessarily a bad thing; in fact, I'd recommend embracing it as enthusiastically as possible so that the hours spent whining about your shit job are kept to a minimum. (I'd also recommend that you don't move to an expensive apartment in a big city with only $100 in your pocket and get a $99 speeding ticket on the way, as I did. It will severely limit your options.)
My point is, you're not going to be able to walk out of college and hit the ground running with an English degree. Just as you did when you entered college, you're going to need to take some time to discover what suits you. You might even discover that lots of things suit you, or that different things seem perfect at different times. Keep your ears open, be willing to try new things, and if at all possible, don't go deeply into debt. (Also: By all means figure out what your expenses are likely to be and what you'll need to make to cover them, but avoid justifying your salary requirements based on your expenses. Do some research and find out what the starting salary range is for the job for which you are applying, consider your experience and skills, and base your asking price on that. If the prospective employer expresses surprise at the steep request, be prepared to tell him what you can do for the company that makes you worth the money. Never forget that this isn't about what they can do for you, but what you can do for them.)
This is your chance to discover that there are more jobs in the world than teacher, lawyer, doctor, and police officer. For example, it didn't occur to me until my last quarter of school that I could get paid to do something I did anyway, almost unconsciously—copy editing. Maybe you're interested in health care, biotech, or software development but have only your English or history or comparative literature degree. Consider leveraging the skills you already have—research, writing, editing, analysis—to gain the skills you want by applying for a technical editor position at a biotech firm, a documentation writer position at a software company, or an internal communcations specialist position at healthcare company. (Granted, openings like these often require years of experience, but sometimes there are junior positions, contract positions, or internships available as well. The idea is to do something you're qualified for now while working toward the thing you want to try next.)
I'm not sure I'd recommend it, exactly, but another option is to apply for an administrative or receptionist position at one of these companies. I worked as a temp when I first moved to Washington, DC, and although I felt frustrated and pigeonholed most of the time, it also led to an exciting job at the World Bank, where I gained tons of research, multimedia development, and communications skills, and where I discovered my next calling (something called the World Wide Web). A friend of mine started at Macromedia (now Adobe) as an admin, and 15 years later he's still with the company—as a top executive. Think only a man can do that? Another friend who was looking to change careers after leaving the foreign service took a temp position as the CEO's admin while his regular admin was away. The CEO was like, "what the hell are you doing working as an admin?" She answered simply, "I wanted to move into software, and this seemed like a good way to start." When her temp stint was over, she moved into business development at the company—and totally rocked at it. Lesson here? If your resume doesn't have the skills or experience that you want to highlight on it, swallow your pride, start smaller, and show them what you can do.