The Decline of the English Department (opens in new tab)

Unless you're actually planning to become a professor, a scientist, or a Professional Engineer (note the capital letters!) it really doesn't matter much what you major in as an undergrad. It's only four years out of your 80-year lifespan. (And, since not every course in college is a course in your major, it isn't even that.)

You do have to be careful to take enough science courses if you want to go to medical or dental school, but even that can be fixed after the fact. A friend of mine graduated in English, then decided to go to med school, and her college allowed her to come back and take a couple years of intense science courseload. No problem. (Unless you count debt, of course. Make no mistake: Math and science courses are good investments, even if you're an English major. You never know when chemistry or statistics will come in handy.)

I couldn't have majored in my own current profession -- web development -- even had I known to do so, because the web was invented the year after I graduated from college. My own misspent youth was in EE and physics, but I have colleagues -- many more talented than I -- who majored in English, worked as professional actors, or played in symphony orchestras. They learned their current careers like almost everyone does: A mixture of "teaching yourself in your spare time" and "working your way up from the bottom".

For those who wish to pursue their passion for literature, a lot end up as teachers or indentured servants for the university system. Louis Menand explains the dynamics behind this latter phenomenon in his recent book The Marketplace of Ideas.

I got work as a reviewer at 16, why? Because I love movies, video games, books and people can't get me to shut the fuck up about them. It only helped that I'm a naturally talented writer. In fact the information I gained from doing the job was that taking courses in Journalism and English typically excluded you from doing the work, New Journalism killed any prospects of a classically trained Journalist from hitting it big.

So, usage manuals, reference books, instructional posters, Material Safety Data Sheets, quickstart guides, and so on. Every company that makes anything needs at least one writer (unless you do agile programming, which for some reason shuns documentation being a resource unit and more of a PITA). And, I suppose you can make someone on your development or QA staff write docs, but who would want to? That's where we step in.

I mean, the guy mowing the lawn outside your office complex has his job, I've got mine :D Mine does pay 90k year (and this is in the South), but my colleague in Sunnyvale is just over 6 figures. Yes, solely from writing for a major software company.

Of course, there is the entertainment industry where, if you can get a good "holding" or "development" deal with a major studio, you're well into 6-figures, probably quarter-to-half million a year. Scriptwriting teams that don't get the byline in a movie make about 60-80k a film, depending on overall budgets. That's 2-3 months of work for some, so you can see how that stacks up in a year. I don't want to live that world, though, because you basically must be in Hollywood unless you're a superstar.

Finally, there's game design and story writing, which for the most part, you'll find everyone there are from an English Lit. background. Talk about hand-to-mouth, though. A true feast/famine career. But, if you have a solid track record, you tend to "fail upwards" to bigger budgeted games at major studios. Be prepared to move to Vancouver, BC, though. I like that route, personally, but I don't have anything game-related under my belt (yet).

I'm now a lisp programmer.

I imagine that I would be making more money (potentially anyway) had I gone through a computer science department, but I don't think I would have been as good a programmer. Nothing against computer science departments, especially the good ones. Where I went to school, it seemed like they were teaching a lot of 'how' and not as much 'what' or 'why'.

I would have learned a lot of very relevant and useful math working my way through the computer science department (and probably a working knowledge of Java), but I don't think I would have has as much experience really thinking things through. (I can teach myself the math anyway...)

I also know quite a few English majors, the jobs occupy a pretty wide range. A couple are singer/songwriters (starving, of course), one is an administrative assistant at a hospital, and another is working for a textbook company.

Other potential 'after graduation' things include technical writing, getting a masters in something else (like journalism).

I think programmer is kind of an out-lier among humanities, as it is harder to break into (You have to prove you can write code, whereas the CS major does not...) I started in a sort of technical writing position, and 'apprenticed' until I understood enough of the code to be useful. I also did a lot of learning on my own...

but neither pays well... take it from me. an english major.

Does intellectual achievement or learning happen in the typical English department? Frederick Crews,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Crews

mentioned in the submitted article, is a smart man whose essays are well worth reading, but he is very much of an exception among professors of English.

It's possible it's less fuzzy, but there's still a good deal of fuzziness...

Unless you're going on for further schooling, grades don't matter at all. Employers certainly don't look at them. Study what you love and work hard, no matter the grades.