I did standup in a bar once, and included a bit about being an English major, said I got a degree because I’d planned to teach English in high school, but after graduating realized that high school students knew how to speak English already. I’d told that story for years. In my twenties I used it as a shield to deflect questions and mask my concerns about the choices I’d made. Trudging through the process of looking for a job in a world filled with fresh and useless liberal arts
degrees, I tried to remember why I’d picked English as a major. I knew there was a Senior year meeting with my Guidance Counsellor: “Any career thoughts, plans?” No. “Any idea what you want to do?” No. “What do you enjoy, what are you good at?” Reading and writing. Ergo …
So it came as no surprise when I recently read “Twelve College Majors That May Limit Your Career Potential” and scrolled down to see English coming in at number 8. I honestly thought it would be higher, but it landed ¾ of the way down … or ⅔ of the way. Not sure on that. Math was never my forté, another reason why I chose English, because you could BS your way through an essay question about a character’s motivation in Dicken’s “Barnaby Rudge,” but you couldn’t BS your way through mathematical equations.
In spite of my career indifference as a youth, I ended up doing just fine. I fell into the printing and publication business where I was a pre-spellcheck proofreader and a pre-cut & paste editor, and then was a print sales rep, a paper sales rep, then manager to those, then marketing was added, then consulting, leading up to now. During that journey, my ability to parse verbiage and edit missives in order to gain a better purchasing response or higher level of understanding became valuable everywhere I worked. In The Quincy Group, we now call it Pattification.
So it’s not really a matter of degrees. Only you, and not your choice of major, can limit your career potential.
Cheers!
Pat Detmer
March 22, 2023