Tis an interesting time and a painful time for many americans.
My son who at one point very much wanted to be a writer graduated from college a few years ago with a degree in English. In this awful economy jobs were incrediably scarce. Coupled with a major (English) that was virtually worthless in the "real" world it took him over a year to find anything that was remotely tied to his major and his primary love (books, including all the classics). Finally, he found a part-time job at a Border's. He discovered the realities of the real world. Little pay...
Ok. Off the soapbox and where's my Prozac?
An English degree is not necessarily a "poison pill" when it comes to employment. My daughter went away to the University of Illinois Business School (top 5% of SAT's) and after her first year was apologetic when she changed her major to English (bottom 5%--as an aside, at NIU where I graduated, 90% of the bottom 10% of test scores were clustered in the teaching department). However, her aspirations were for a career in advertising, and the English degree worked for her at Time/Warner (Time Life Books) and at AOL (since retired). The trick with an English degree is to use it in some off-topic profession; the world is full-up with would-be writers and English teachers out of work.
When I was in college I wanted very much to be a professional boat racer, but there were no jobs posted on the bulletin board for such occupations. There was a job for an accountant and another for a biology major; then another job for an accountant and a job for a chemistry major; and another job or two for accounting majors and maybe one for a teacher; then several more for accountants and I don't recall any jobs for English majors, except maybe as teaching assistants pursuing advanced English degrees.
While there were no jobs posted for bank robbers, I reflected back on Willie Sutton's famous career move: While in jail he was asked by a not-too-bright journalist why he robbed banks; Sutton said, "Cause that's where the money is." There were no jobs listed for journalism majors, so I took up accounting. EDM
