In defense of the liberal arts

People constantly ask what job I’m going to get with an English major. I usually shrug, but after applying for a recent opening, I think I’ve found a career. I want to be pope.

Frankly, I can’t think of a more qualified candidate. I drink a lot of wine, look really good in hats and I’m already infallible.

Sure, I’m not Catholic, but in an age where people associate the Church with antiquated societal norms and child molestation, you’d think that would be a selling point.

Unfortunately, while my application looks good on paper, my interview went somewhat poorly.

Either the conventional advice of “Dress like you own the business” is patently untrue, or perhaps I should have gone with a more New Testament look, but regardless, it looks like I’m back on the job market.

For English majors, like myself, the job hunt is personal. We are so unbelievably tired of defending our major.

When people ask, few things are more satisfying than telling them that you, in fact, are an English major with a job, instead of resorting to the slightly less witty response of shivving them.

To those of you considering an English major but worrying about practicality, let me offer a few words of advice.

The unimaginative look at an English major and wonder how spending four years reading literature could prepare one for any job, save for English professor.

Ignore the fact that English majors actually have great job prospects, facing far lower unemployment rates than “practical” majors like business, journalism and even some fields of engineering.

Forget, for a moment, how English hones one’s skills in communication, analysis and synthesizing information. These are only byproducts. The most important thing an English degree offers is a deeper, more insightful understanding of humanity itself.

Our discipline shares much in common with that of the physicist. The average person knows the sun exists, water freezes and things fall down when they are dropped.

This understanding is perfectly adequate for everyday life, yet physicists feel compelled to probe these phenomena until they discover things like molecular vibration and nuclear fusion.

Similarly, we all have thoughts, emotions and philosophies which govern our daily life. While the majority of the populace might accept these with only a cursory examination, English majors trace these impulses throughout history in order to better understand them.

Our much-vaunted analytical skills come from spending four years in communion with minds like Shakespeare, Woolf, Rushdie and Poe. Our work inspires cultural paradigms and revolutions, not nuclear reactors and satellites.

Don’t pick something just because you think it’s the safest way to guarantee a job. This is a college, not a trade school. Its mandate is not to teach us a set of mechanical skills to make us money. It is to make us better-educated human beings.

No matter what major or discipline, neglecting the “human being” part makes us no better than short-lived automatons.

­— stefsoko@indiana.edu