What You Can Do With a Literature Major

Video Transcript

"Hi, my name is Laura, and today I'm going to talk with you about what you can do with a literature major. This is a big question for me because I have a degree in English, as I'm sure many of you watching do or many of you contemplating getting one do. And if you think of the new musical Avenue Q, there's a song called "What Can You Do With a B.A. in English?" or a verse from that song is "What can you do with a B.A. in English?" And really, the answer for the people who wrote that musical is you can write a musical and get famous on Broadway only after many years of suffering without a job. That's really...it's a very sad perception that if you've got a degree in English or a degree in literature, that you're not going to be able to get a job. There are plenty of jobs out there available to you. They may not necessarily correspond as much with your degree as you would like them to, but there are plenty of jobs. What, of course, you want to do with your life is that you want to do something that you love with your life. So you want to try to figure out something you can do that corresponds with your love of literature, which is something that, you know, you studied in college. So you can be a writer, a librarian, a journalist. You can do things...you can work in a bookstore. You know, you can do things with books. You can try to become a publisher. You can do many different things. It's never really easy to get the job that you want, so you're going to have to think about, you know, what can I do that's related to what I love? And, you know, can I enjoy doing that and can I find fulfillment in that? So the question is not, you know, is the only thing I can do with an English major be, you know, I'm going to go become an English professor or I'm going to be an essayist, you know, writing about old works for the rest of my life. There really aren't that many of those jobs out there, so if you want to be realistic with your English major, I would say really try in the beginning and, you know, as long as you can to find something that really corresponds with what you love so that you can get into it. Of course, if not, you can always, you know, get a job that you enjoy that may not be completely related to your degree. But you can also work on your essays or work on your writing on the side. And, you know, work toward getting published always. Don't let the despair of not being always in the field or not being, you know, "Oh, I'm not a freelance writer like I thought I was going to be. I can't make as much money as I do, you know, being a manager wherever." Don't let that discourage you from actually continuing to practice what you love to do. So I would say have a lot of hope and keep trying and you'll find a good career that has to do with your literature major."