What kind of job can I get with an English/History?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
21

My first two degrees were in English, and if I had to do it again, I would chose the same major. If I had to change, I would go for an English – history split.

I have run my own corporate communication business (mainly technical writing), and had a blast doing it. I got to make my own hours and made a pot of money working on lots of neat projects (e.g. writing how to manuals on running a nuclear station).

I have been a university professor (English, and also computers and outdoor ed), and had a blast. I was able to turn on students to the joys of literature, and more importantly, what our culture is and how it came to be as reflected in literature. At one school I had unlimited computing resources (U. of Waterloo), and at another (Laruentian U.) I had cross-country skiing and saunas at lunch in the winter, and tossed students off waterfalls in the spring and fall.

Now I am a lawyer, and as you might guess, I am having a blast. Needless to say, the work is challenging, the work environment is enjoyable, the other lawyers in town are really nice, the money is amazing, and the job security is solid. My English background helped me tremendously in making it into law school, and continues to help me as a lawyer.

For my money, I’d say you can’t go wrong with a liberal arts degree. Just remember that it is only the first stepping stone to a career. Follow it up with graduate degrees and professional degrees, even if you have to do them part time.

Although with a liberal arts degree you will not immediately be hired for a techincal specialist position, you also will not find yourself sidetracked into a specialist position. In terms of “line” or “staff”, you have the potential for “line” with a liberal arts degree as your first degree.

Suggestions for what to do for the next little while?

Graduate school leading to broader teaching and research opportunities.

Professional school (law, architecture, business) for a solid career.

Employment in general business (work up the ladder and fund ongoing education).

Dream job (whatever, just move there and take whatever is available, and get yourself known – a lot of my outdoor ed students have had success with this).

Year off (go teach English in China for a year – have fun, pay the rent, give you head some time to clear).

What it all comes down to is that you have one heck of a fine education and you reside in one of the greatest countries in the world. Grab the tiger by the tail and give it a spin.

22

Realized after I posted that I hadn’t provided much in the way of information to the OP about types of jobs to look for – spent too much time reacting to the other posters.

Despite the downturn over the last year or so, there are still lots of jobs in the technology sector for which you’re potentially qualified, assuming that you have at least an average familiarity with computers (as I’m given to understand nearly all recent college grads do). Look for entry-level positions in technical support, quality assurance, training, technical writing, etc. Shy away from marketing positions; despite the seemingly natural fit with your verbal skills, you may find that such positions don’t really lead anywhere within the organization, since (unless you’re truly a rara avis) you don’t tend to pick up much in-depth technical understanding of your company’s products and services. Tech support and QA can be horribly draining and underappreciated positions, but someone who really shines in those roles is very likely to get the opportunity to move into other areas, such as product or project management. Having managed support and QA departments, I’ve found that my best employees were usually liberal arts majors (and several were former teachers) – they were capable of higher quality independent thought, they communicated better, and they were better able to learn new information and skills than the few people I hired with technical degrees. Given that you’ve achieved your teaching certification, you might have a natural entree into a training position, either with a technology company or with one of the many companies that provides technical training to corporations and/or individuals.

The same is true outside the technology sector as well. There are thousands of companies that have complex products that require people to train customers in how to use them, people to provide phone support and assistance in using them, people to develop training materials for them, etc.

Generally speaking, your odds of getting additional responsibilities and moving up quickly in pay and prestige are better with a smaller company. If you’re just one more customer service phone rep in a group of sixty or eighty, there’s not much you’re going to do to get noticed. If you’re one of six or eight or ten, however, you’ve got a more direct route up. Smaller companies tend to have less rigidly segmented grops and have more of an “all hands on deck” approach, making it far more likely that you’ll get the chance to do things outside your official job description. The downside is that you can end up progressing way up the ladder at a smaller company without having some of the experiences and credentials you’d be expected to have at a bigger company, making it more difficult to move laterally into a large company down the road – you almost have to stay with smaller organizations once that happens (as it has with me). Not a bad thing necessarily, but potentially limiting.

23

Hey, finnofranco, where’d you get your MLS? I’ve considered going back for one-despite the fact that I love what I do-because I think I’d enjoy that a lot too. The only school I’ve found in Atlanta is Clark Atlanta University. I’ve got no problem with that, but I’d love to find out about other potential schools as well. :slight_smile:

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Hey there Lsura! I did my graduate work at Catholic University in Washington, D.C… There are a number of good schools out there, but since librarianship is sort of in the midst of a pretty huge evolutionary step, many of the schools have chosen to focus on the Information Science aspect as compared to what might be seen as the traditional Library aspect.

Many of these changes are taking place in respect to how organizations change their names. For example, the Library Schools at Michigan and Berkeley (I think), dropped the word Library from their titles. Perhaps the word Library connotes an antiquated way of things now that everyone is getting computer oriented. Oh well…While I did my work at Catholic in its program that does use cutting-edge materials, there was still a foundation in traditional librarianship. I can’t say anything negative about the other schools because they are graduating some pretty intelligent folks as well.

Now that I’ve sort of babbled…I am personally familiar with three schools on the East Coast: Catholic, the University of Maryland, North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

When you’re looking around, keep your eye out for schools that might have Information Science as an option. Much like schools changing their names, some are changing the degree program’s title as well.

Good luck, and let me know what you end up doing, or if you’d like some articles to read that have become part of the basic library studies in recent years.

-finnofranco :slight_smile: