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Author: |
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Anonymous |
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Date: |
January 14, 2007 |
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English Language and Literature, General:
Certainly the first thing you must consider if you wish to earn a degree in English is, do you actually like to read? You will definitely be reading a lot, both of prose documents and secondary materials. Liking to read is a good first step, but you also should think about whether you like to analyze literature. If going in circles discussing the motivation for a character or what caused the writer to have the particular world view they have doesn't interest you, pick a different major. The best kept secret of the English major is that our classes generally are fun, and you get to discuss and write papers on the fictional lives of fictive people--AS IF IT WERE REAL.
Now, you might be wondering, that's all well and good, but is this marketable? If your first question is "Is this marketable?", avoid all humanities majors like the plague. While the earning power your degree has is of course important, worrying exactly how this degree will help you make your millions is the biggest indication that you are too literally-minded to do well in this field of study.
A degree in English gives you the tools for teaching yourself anything. You'll be the smartest person in your social circle with the most persuasive rhetoric. That in itself is worth the price of the degree. |
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Anonymous |
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Date: |
January 10, 2007 |
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Creative Writing:
English Literature in general is a subject which has limited direct applications, largely in academic fields. When I chose it as my Major I knew I was choosing my own enjoyment over fields that might be more practical to study. By adjusting my curriculum to a creative writing emphasis, I developed a number of skills which have been useful throughout my various positions as secretary, office manager, and now help desk services.
If you do choose to pursue creative writing, whether you intend to become a writer or not, I would suggest that you vary the nature of your classes as much as possible among available options. Take courses in technical writing, story writing, poetry, non-fiction for its essay work, and related fields such as speech, debate and editing to round out your communication skills. Take courses even in types of writing you do not enjoy; perhaps especially in these types of writing. For someone not planning to be a full-time writer, the greatest benefit of an English curriculum is to help train you in clear and effective communication, with logical presentation, and every type of writing has a clear use and benefit. These skills are useful in a range of fields including advertising, judicial work and other government work, general administration and clerical work, and management. I also find the ability to write clear instructions useful in my current position as a computer services help desk administrator, when assisting customers by email.
An English degree of any kind is not a ticket to a stellar financial future; but it does provide a solid foundation for whatever else you learn and how you choose to express that in your future career. My degree does not guarantee me any job, but it does guarantee that I have the words needed to convince an interviewer of my knowledge and ability.
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Author: |
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Anonymous |
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Date: |
January 07, 2007 |
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Creative Writing:
The best piece of advice I can give to anyone pursuing writing is to be 100% honest with yourself and your work. What you write should be the uncensored voice in your head, and while its good to accept guidance, develop your writing in your own way. Also be honest with your commitment to writing and whether you're just doing it because it seems easy or whether you're actually interested in it. Remember, the key to being a writer is writing, and sometimes just writing is the hardest part. You don't need to be a professional writer to major in creative writing, it has applications in the vast workforce as few people really know how to write well. Law Schools, in particular, love people with extensive writing experience.
I loved my classes in this major, and though the workload is heavy, it isn't really work since I enjoy it so much. I would love to get to go to school and be in and run writing seminars again! |
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Author: |
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Anonymous |
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Date: |
January 04, 2007 |
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English Composition:
The degree of your own natural love of language, ideas, philosophy, poetry and their complex intersection with the "human condition" will determine your success or failure in the field of English Literature. Your destiny is your own to make or break. Alone among all professions, literature may come nearest to offering the unencumbered pursuit of freedom of expression. The ability to read, speak and write is central to our humanity. Without these, what else are we? More than a couple of millenia later, we still remember what Artistotle said of "the unexamined life" -- it is not worth living! How else then, could we live as conscious human beings without literature?
What luck that the necessary tools for the literary life are little more than those required to maintain one's eyesight and hearing. Keep your body well so that you can read and think, and perhaps carry a share of the water from that inexhaustible well to other thirsty souls by writing and talking and listening. A folk saying from the Tibetan Buddhist culture of the Himalayan Mountains goes: What luck to have been granted this precious human form!
Literature is the most humane of human endeavors because it is the most human of pursuits. Saying something that means something to another is as natural to human beings as "fishies swim in the water pool" -- which happens to be the first full sentence this writer's eldest daughter spoke, at least within his hearing. Almost as beautiful as her declaration that summer day from a tent in the Appalachian hardwood forest named for the Shawnee Indians who lived there in peace for centuries is my memory of it, and my delight that she created this image that I remember over thirty years later from her wonder at the marvelous world. This is literature then: a crystalline utterance that communicates a moment in time when the blessing of that moment made time itself disappear. When my older brother, a strong silent type given to football and no idle chatter, consoled me when I had been banished to my room without dinner with "stones walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage," that was literature. That it happened to have been penned by an 18th century English Romantic poet, Richard Lovelace, was informative, but incidental. The truth of the free mind opened in me then and has ever since. That is literature. And it cannot be taken from me nor can I be prevented from realizing its power, over and over again.
Who wouldn't want to be the medium of such splendid utterance? Perhaps some who value the material over the spiritual, the hungers and satisfactions of property and wealth over the soul's longing do. For there's not much of that sort of wealth to be gained in the practice of literature. That the dedicated poet and story-teller will most assuredly live by modest means may be taken for granted. But as one of the greatest story-tellers of all recorded history suggested to his handful of followers, "look to the birds of the air and the lilies of the field, are they not as beautifully attired as all the kings and princes?"
Perhaps like love, literature chooses you for her career. The world is in dire need of humanists, of seekers and sayers of truth, messengers of beauty, because hunger, war, pollution and the corruptions of power are within sight of cutting short our relatively brief sojourn on this planet. Literature grants us the ability to travel through time, to see through another's eyes, to grasp and understand the vast inter-connectedness of all living things. Without it we may well be lost.
Literature is the perpetual motion machine of human understanding. It is self-sustaining, an ever renewing resource that ripens and deepens with age. If it's money you want, seek elsewhere. But if a continually expanding sense of delight in and gratitude for your precious human existence sounds like your deepest need, seek no further. The world and all of its sorrow and joy is yours to have and to give. Welcome home! We've been waiting for you. |
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Author: |
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Anonymous |
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Date: |
January 04, 2007 |
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Creative Writing:
Getting an English degree is a tricky thing, not because it's a hard major, but because of what comes afterward. The program itself was fun. We wrote short stories, poem, novels, and even stage- and screenplays. Then we'd workshop them in class. We'd pass copies of our work out to everyone in class. Our work would be read and commented on and then, in class, feedback was given, verbally. It toughens you up to criticism. You learn how to take feedback and give feedback in a constructive manner. Your writing improves easily as well if you work at it and take the feedback you're given.
The hard part comes after graduation. Getting a job as a writer is not an easy thing to do. First, you have to actually write something. Then you, in most cases, need an agent to even submit your manuscript to a publisher. Then you get to wait and wait and wait for either a rejection letter or a letter expressing more interest in your work. It's time consuming and not for the easily discouraged.
I almost would reccommend getting another major to complement your English degree. After graduating with my English degree, I went back to school to study Design. Design couple with English is something that should come in very handy down the line. |
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