What's Next?

I feel like everyone goes through a few semesters in which school is stressful and life doesn’t seem to cooperate with your goals and your personal deadlines. I have to say that for me, this semester (Spring 2019) has been the most hectic. In about four months, I feel as though my life has taken a complete toll on me – for the first time, dropping out of school had actually become an option. But I could only imagine that, if I did drop out, I’d only be adding more stress onto myself, and the million-dollar question, “What am I going to do after graduation?”

In a way, writing this post was like searching for answers as to why, as an English major, I frequently find myself wondering what comes after graduation. And although I couldn’t find an answer to that specific question, I did find the earnings of a person with an English degree as well as some of the occupations of students who graduated with a bachelor’s degree in English.

I’ve learned that in the last few years, the English program at GGC hasn’t taught me to just know what to do. Through classes regarding criticism, research, extensive reading, and writing, the program has taught me to know how to figure out what to do. After realizing this, it wasn’t very shocking when I found that those who hold an English degree actually have salaries that compare favorably with the salaries of their colleagues in other fields.

“The Wall Street Journal citing data from Payscale.com, reports a salary number of $38,000 for new English degree holders. That is more than for hospitality management, film, criminal justice, psychology, and sociology. The median salary of degree holders in English at midcareer, also according to the Wall Street Journal, is $64,700, which is almost identical to salaries in biology and higher than those for graduates in criminal justice, education, forestry, graphic design, health care administration, hospitality and tourism, etc.” (Raynie).

So, in completing this, I’ve come to the conclusion that we, English degree seeking students, are perfectly fine where we are. Having an English degree is having been through four years of gaining knowledge, passion, humanity, and humility through words and their deepest meanings – qualities that can be used in any professional field.

Sources:

Raynie, Stephen A. "Selling the English BA Program." South Atlantic Review, vol. 78, no. 1/2, Special Issue: Sustaining English Programs in the Twenty-First Century, 1 Jan. 2013, pp. 76-94.