Novels, poems, non-fiction essays, and plays offer spaces for engaging with difference — an urgent task for our society. English literature is produced and consumed around the world. Non-Anglophone nations are now offering university classes conducted in English in response to the globalization of our language and the rise of the new English-speaking populations around the world. The skills you acquire will put you in a position to thrive in this complex, multinational, transcultural world of English.
Online, on tablets, smartphones, and e-readers, we read constantly. This is not the first media revolution in the history of writing; there was literature before there were books, and there were books before print.
In courses on the history of the book, on new media, on literature and technology, you will find in our department new ways to understand the dynamism of a written world that has always been in flux. As we find ourselves inundated with media, your ability to read critically and with an eye to form will become all the more essential. The chance to analyze the literary space of a novel or poem is a chance to engage with a microcosm of the world as great writers see it.
By learning to recognize themes and motifs in literary texts, one practices reading them into our own material world. Your passion—not your mind, not the grade—gives your writing life. For him all doors are flung wide.
The critics of English majors have a point. I know you love writing. Writing is not a skill everybody has. And the fact that articles like this one are published every day on countless corporate websites proves that there are jobs out there for writers. In order to make yourself more attractive to potential employers, learn skills that pair well with writing. Journalism is hungry for storytellers that understand both politics and the mind of the reader.
Writing sales copy for a direct mail marketing campaign is different than writing sales copy for a website which is different from writing a post for social media designed to boost brand engagement. Developing skills like these demonstrates an ability to adapt your writing to be applicable in a business setting.
Additionally, by preemptively learning these skills, you add extra value to yourself as an employee, which gives you an advantage over other English majors who are after the same job, but only took creative writing and poetry classes in school. Not just because earning your degree depends on successfully completing the project, but because the capstone is your last real opportunity to separate yourself from the crowd and get an edge in post-college life. Choose a project that showcases your skills or helps you learn something immediately useful.
For example, in the future I intend to start a publishing house. I have a passion for stories, and being an author and a publisher is a long-standing dream of mine. As a result, my capstone project was about how marketing principles could be applied to fiction writing in order to reverse the general downward trend in reading across the entire population.
Sure, it sounds a little dry based on that description, but this project gave me valuable insight into realistic, and immediately applicable techniques for getting more people to read what I write. Real-world application should influence what you choose to pursue in college. It would be irresponsible to ignore the opportunities that some degrees would open up to you.
However, choosing your major based solely on how the world sees its value is a quick path to misery. Without passion, motivation suffers and resentment rises.
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Alison Griswold. The major provides an excellent preparation for careers in business, public service, education, law, and many other areas. Some students major in English because they plan to become teachers, but most English majors pursue other career paths.
In fact, in The Wall Street Journal reported that communication, the ability to clearly articulate your point of view, would be the most valuable job skill in The development of analytical thinking, evidenced-based writing, and editing skills makes English not only an extremely marketable major, but the perfect minor for all other majors.
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