English Certainly Gets A Bad Reputation

There are so many different majors available to college students.  Many students follow a desired path and know that a job will likely open up to them in the future because they will have been preparing for their future career in college.  A student can go for science, math, engineering, history, language, or law among countless others, but then there is English.  Out of all the academic departments, English has the worst reputation of all.  And if you think about it, it is quite strange; we use English every single day of our lives.  But to an outsider, a person majoring in English simply means that we have no intentions of getting a job in the future, or that have no passions that we wish to pursue.

As Moran states, “English does not make a strong connection between education and training for future careers” (Moran 18).  This is entirely true.  But is that really a bad thing?  It just simply means that we don’t have a set plan for what we will be doing after we earn our degree.  In my opinion, that makes an English degree that much more desirable.  Your options are endless; you can do anything that you want once you take the right steps to earning the degree.  You are not tied down to being just an engineer, for example.  You will be able to use the skills and knowledge that come with an English degree that will lead you to your own unique path.  The things you learn in English are used on an everyday basis, which will be very beneficial for those majoring in English.

With an English degree, everything opens up to us, so why does being an English major often come with an array of jokes?  Why is an English degree viewed as a joke itself?  No one will ever know.  Therefore, we must continue to face the classic McDonald’s joke of “What do you say to an English graduate?  Big Mac and fries, please.” (Moran 19) until we can educate others on the value that an English degree holds.  But we shouldn’t let it get under our skin anyways, because we know that English can open up several doors to us that other degrees can’t.  We are not tied down to solely one outcome.  Since it appears that the jokes will never subside about the lackluster jobs that are in our future, nor will the bad reputation that English majors receive, all we can do it try to teach others of the importance of an English degree and encourage the youth of our country to not get roped into doing something they aren’t passionate about because someone told them, at one time or another, that if they pursue their love for English, it will only lead them straight to a dead end path.  When in actuality, we are simply taking the ‘path less traveled by.’

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