Bren_Cameron is spot on. I have several professors who refer to that particular rule as “grammar folklore.”
The nonsense about not beginning sentences with “and” or “but” falls into the same category.
Wow, I can’t wait to tell all the mans and womans I know about that one!
Yes. That’s the kind of nonsense up**,** with which**,** I shall not put.
I don’t have a grasp on proper grammar. Thus, this is the most eloquent of a retort I can manage - a meager attempt at best.
(And, “which” makes writings weak.)
Heh.
Excuse me. I got all gleeful for a moment back there, reveling in the glory it is to be an English major, and misstated.
Let it be known that all regular nouns in PDE are pluralized with an -s. Irregular plural nouns (especially ones with vowel changes) obviously do not fall into this category, and thank you all for ribbing me so nicely.
Peace out to my mans and womans! 
Man, I feel ya. Imagine getting that from a professor. Imagine getting that from your British Literature professor. We went round and round one afternoon. He was trying to encourage me to either change my major (he should have tried that the year before when I actually could change my major) or just accept that I’m going to be a high school teacher for the rest of my life. I said “Why are you trying to hurt my feelings?” Because he was making me pretty depressed. He said “I’m not trying to hurt your feelings. I’m trying to save you from making the same mistakes I made!”
Well, he’s got a job now, doesn’t he?
Anyway, we’re still friends and it didn’t change my mind one bit. I’m still going to get my BA in English, my MA in American Lit, and my Ph.D in…something. Either American Lit or Creative Writing…
I am something of anomoly in my department though. As far as I know, and as far as a few of my professors can tell, I’m the only person in the English department who is there purely for the sake of learning about literature. I’m not all caught up with making a shitload of money. I’m going to do what I love and deal with the consquences. That was the decision I made, and since I’m paying for my education and I’m the one who has to deal with the consequences, nobody has the right to question that decision. (If you’re wondering, every other person in the English department does want to be a teacher or was rejected from the other majors and that’s had a big impact on how the profs teach which really pisses me off but thats a whole 'nother rant…)
Anyway, I usually just smile and say “At least I’m not a philosophy major!” or the variation, “Thank god for the philosophy majors!” 
I think the snobbery around majors basically comes from a person’s background. I majored in History because it interested me and I had this silly dream of working for the UN or state dept. A college aquaintance of mine, who’s the first generation of her family to attend college, picked her major based upon average salary. She ended up getting her Chem-E degree and used to endlessly bash us poor liberal arts idiots. If we complained about our salary, she’d ask us what did we expect with such a useless degree. Another aquaintance of mine comes from money, has no plans and just enrolls in programs. Masters - you bet! PhD - woohoo! Law - yup! Other people I knew, just attended college to find a spouse.
I’m getting my MBA and am doing fairly well in the program compared to my fellow economics or engineering majors. Only idiots think Liberal Arts degrees are worthless. Imagine what our world would be like if our president actually studied History, Anthropology, or English?
But what she said was true, wasn’t it?
You mean the part about it might be ok for a woman, or you mean the part about for a guy it’s setting the bar pretty low? I prefer the part about she’s a nosy, ignorant bitch, personally.
I’d say my biggest interests were foreign languages and comp linguistics when I was an undergraduate, though my actual major was German literature. I ended up as a programmer too, via vicissitudes that are too numerous to mention. Actually, the older ranks of the programming profession have quite a sprinkling of liberal arts majors in addition to the engineering and math types you’d expect.
I think you mean “chicken.”
I’ve had no trouble finding work with my M.A. in English. There’s plenty of teaching to be done; assessment tests to be evaluated; editing and proofreading to be performed, stories to be written and sold or entered in contests.
A friend of mine with a B.A. in English eventually found herself doing corporate legal work for a major company.
People are idiots.
Things I did for money with an MA in English with a concentration in Writing:
Taught English Literature and creative writing at an overseas K-12 school.
Taught middle and high school English at a US private school.
Published much poetry and fiction in magazines and anthologies.
Teamed with an artist and dancer to teach teachers how to incorporate creativity in their lessons.
Taught English as a Second Language at an Ivy-league university.
Worked as a proofreader.
Wrote book reviews for Publisher’s Weekly.
Worked in a bookstore.
Copyedited dissertations.
And oh yeah–got an 800 verbal on the GRE and a 94 on the MAT when I decided to stop being an English teacher and wanted to get into grad school in another field (where my committee had only 5 minor edits to make at my dissertation defense).
BD: I think that you missed my point and you might even dismiss your own arguments after examining the market forces.[…]
Any college degree takes effort, but face it, some degrees are tougher than others. The migration from tough degrees goes towards English, not away from it. That means people like Incubus can expect to have his salary pressured downward by the mob of people who can pass the tests but care little for the subject.
Yes, I got your point. My point was that the job market for English majors is limited much more by other constraints—e.g., by the high percentage of entry-level jobs seeking some sort of specific technical training—than by the competitive “pressures” from a glut of English majors “migrating from tough degrees”.
Moreover, as I pointed out, many technical fields experience the effect of “migration towards lucrative degrees”, which, like “migration away from tough degrees”, put many students in a major that they don’t really care much about. But job markets in those technical fields are much less soft. If student “migrations” by the under-motivated were really so influential on job markets, we’d expect to see soft markets for, e…g, lawyers and doctors and engineers, but we don’t. That’s because those other constraints—such as whether there are lots of available jobs needing your particular type of skills and training—have a much greater impact than these “migrations” at the student level.
Consider the fact that in recent years, the percentage of undergraduates majoring in humanities subjects has been declining, but the job market for those majors hasn’t been improving. Obviously, there is more going on here than the simple effect of too many “clueless” or “unmotivated” students choosing “easy” majors.
In other words, my point is that your oversimplified economic model of the situation is inadequate to explain all the facts.
I don’t think that being a liberal arts major limits you to liberal arts careers. I work in marketing for a financial services company. We pay pretty well. My degree was in economics (so it’s related), but we also have a history major and French lit major on our team. It hasn’t hurt them any.
Some positions at my firm do require an MBA (mine does and I have one as do the previously mentioned history and Frech lit majors). But all of us had jobs in business before getting that degree. Also, our entry level positions have no such requirement, and a lot of people I work with started out with us in one of those positions then got their MBAs through night school. We don’t require a degree in a related field for entry level applicants.
It may be a bit more challenging to get that first job out of college. However, it can be done. And once you’ve been working a few years, your major really doesn’t matter all that much.
If you want to know which majors attract the clueless 'cause they’re easy, just look at the majors jocks gravitate to in college. IIRC that would be marketing, education and communications.
I think the Simpsons nailed the whole problem with English majors in one of their cartoons. A calamity threatens to destroy Earth, and only Springfield’s best and brightest are allowed to board the ship. The Simpson family goes to board, but only Lisa is on the list. “You’ll be our ship’s proofreader,” announces the purser.
The real problem with being an English major is that it consists of marginally improving the skills which almost everyone has. It’s not a very useful field in any direct sese, so it doesn’t command much pay.
Your post made me chuckle. Like you, the main reason I’m studying English is because I like literature. If there was ‘concentration in Literature’ in my school, I would have definitely fulfilled the requirements, since I must have studied literature from nearly every continent and epoch…
As a whole I think the major was a perfect fit for me. Most of my classes aren’t graded based on whether you got the question right or wrong; its more about how well you interpreted it and backed up your claim. Oddly enough, non-English majors in some of my Lit classes are totally helpless because of this- they may be taking the class for Upper GE and normally are Engineering majors or something; many of them can’t grasp the concept of an answer than can be half-correct 
MS: I don’t think that being a liberal arts major limits you to liberal arts careers. […] And once you’ve been working a few years, your major really doesn’t matter all that much.
Oh, I agree. It’s just that Bubba and I were talking about job markets specifically targeted for new graduates in a particular major. Obviously, those markets are broader and better for majors like engineering and IT than for English. Not so much because the English-majors’ market is glutted by “clueless” people incapable of doing a “tough” major, as Bubba contended, but because more of those jobs require particular technical knowledge.
Looking at the bigger picture, of course you’re right that no graduate has to consider themselves locked into one of the “traditional” job markets for their major. (As a math major who became a software engineer before going to grad school in a humanities field and then moonlighting in IT development between gigs in academia, I’m totally with you on the value of career flexibility.)
I understand Kimstu. Sorry if I wasn’t clear. I wasn’t directing my post towards you or Bubba. I was trying to address the idea that enlish majors are limited to proofreading, copywriting, teaching, and other related careers (which I hear off these boards all the time).
Certainly there are some fields that require related education. For example, I started out in consulting after getting my MBA. Since it was a new area for the company, I split my time with their public accounting group. Between grad school and some in undergrad, I had enough hours to sit for the CPA. Even though I managed to muddle through, I wouldn’t suggest anyone go into accounting without an accounting major (or grad school with more accounting courses than I had). That’s just not learn on the job stuff (and was very difficult for me).
But my area now (marketing) doesn’t require such focused education. In fact, it always give us a chuckle when an eager recent business grad speaks up in a meeting to inform us all that according to some matrix devised by some academic we should be doing XYZ. It just doesn’t work that way.
Oops, I forgot to add that the relative difficulty of various majors may depend on which school you attend. My undergraduate institution was known as a teacher college. Education was not an easy major. Sociology was the major with the lowest academic requirements for acceptance. But I doubt that holds true for all schools.
My father was a professor in the school of business at Indiana University and, from what I understand, it could be a challenging major. But I see Sally Struthers on TV advertising that you can get a degree in business management or accounting from whatever school she’s promoting. I doubt that degree has such stringent requirements (but I could be wrong–heck, I can’t even think of the school).
A friend of my mum’s recently asked me what I’ve been up to (she hasn’t seen me in about 15 years.)
I said I’d earned my PhD in mediaeval history, and was working on a post doc towards a certification in museum studies (with an eye to becoming a curator), and will be interning at the British Museum, and that additionally, having been creating, teaching, and showing textile art beginning at the age of 5 (obviously not the teaching and showing, of course!), and playing 4 or 5 different stringed instruments (this Christmas I will be performing on lute, citole and psaltry – not at the same time – in a programme) & researching guitar organology, and translating German, French and Latin freelance and for my work almost on a daily basis, that many of the museum people I have spoken to have said, 'Oh, good! We can use someone as well rounded as you!" and I have had good reaction to my resume, &c,
she replied,
‘Oh that’s nice, all that. But what do you plan to do once you get that out of your system?’
:smack: