English Academia v. English Careers

Breathing heavily and watching my best friend’s hand turn a concerning purple in my own, I was sitting in an airport terminal at the end of my first semester of college. I had never been on a plane, and as I prepared myself to fly home for winter break, I considered my imminent death and the pointlessness of my life as it came to its inevitable close.


An older flight attendant with hair dyed bright red came around to impatient passengers as we waited for our delayed plane, and handed out smiley face stickers. She would stop and ask the kids my age, “Oh, are you in school? What’s your major?” Distracted, I responded absentmindedly to her typical questions, and when she asked my major and I murmured, “Um, yeah, I’m English,” she winked and said, “Oh, would you like fries with that?” And then, with a laugh, “I was an English major too when I was in school.”
I couldn’t tell if this was the world’s way of telling me that before I died I should change my major to something more prestigious, or if I lived I would be this same woman in 40 years.
I began to think of how open an English major appears, how it does not tie concretely to a career path as some other majors do. English is open and interdisciplinary, and thus can not claim the exclusive prestige of another more focused major. As Moran writes, English “is generally accessible to those working outside the discipline” and thus being an “English person” seemed to completely lose its prestige and importance (19). However, this wideness in scope both adds and detracts to the strength in English’s “interdisciplinary” and “disciplinary” nature. While the study of English requires a focused and centered analysis of literary text and criticism, it also allows for an examination of other humanities and pursuits and the world at large.
English is so all-encompassing that when the major first emerged, “one college dean… said that he failed to see why a new discipline needed to be created in order to study the books he read on the train to work” (21). While English has seemed to establish itself more firmly in the world of academia since its start, it also seems to have lost its respectability in a time where job searching is no easy task. Is it possible that English has become more respected as a pursuit of academia, but less respected as a real world career path? Will English truly ever establish a “clear professional footing”? (38).

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