What are you doing with your undergrad degree in Writing or English?

Question

I have a B.S. in Writing and I'm someone's assistant. =(
I'm considering Grad school, but worry that if I get an MFA or an MA in the same area I'll be in the same boat, but two years older. Does anyone else feel this way?

Answer 1

I didn't get my BA in English, but I should have. I kept applying for writing jobs because political science jobs were tougher to come by, and I've always been a decent writer. But until I started getting published freelance, no one would hire me to write. They assumed, every one of them, that I had to have a degree in English to have any writing skills.

I've since fixed that problem. I have a master's in English, and I'm wrapping up my Ph.D.

As for your own case, the top jobs to consider with an English degree are writing, teaching, and analysis. The third one throws people, but lit majors are more adept than most others at spotting patterns in textual data or behavior and trying to explain them. This is one reason literature majors (including foreign-language literature majors, for obvious reasons) are so heavily represented among intelligence analysts.

Answer 2

I did my BA in English. I then moved to Europe (the day after graduation, actually) and did a TEFL certificate in Spain. I bummed around Spain for a while, and then moved to Italy to teach EFL. I did that for a year and a half, and had a great time. I've now gone back to school for a B.Ed in Secondary Language Arts Education. I'm planning to teach in a public school for a few years, but I'd like to work in school administration or (international) educational policy and development. I'm also interested in curriculum development, but I did some work on ESL curriculum development this summer and found that I wasn't motivated to work behind a desk. I needed more interaction with the students.