Presently, I am majoring in English - expecting to graduate within the year. Your mother's concerns are somewhat (though not entirely) dated; yes, most people with an English degree often end up as teachers or in the publishing industry, but an English degree is quite versatile and would be useful for any job that requires composition or compositional analysis. This includes anything from marketing agencies to journalism, tech writing, and - yep, could've guessed it - law. Enrolling in such courses as technical writing would also make you competitive in today's job market (at least until the software industry crashes).
Ultimately, however, you will need to ask yourself why you like English and language studies, and if that reason warrants spending ten grand or more on another college degree. Do you like reading and writing enough to endure four years of comp classes? What do you plan to do that involves reading and writing? Leaving issues like job security aside, are you passionate enough about English that you could see it through to the end?
If you're young - as your profile seems to indicate; perhaps it's incorrect - you may not find the answers to those questions until you dive in for a semester or two. That's perfectly fine; college is a good opportunity to branch out and determine what you really want to do with the rest of your life. I will, however, say that becoming a lawyer is probably not as wonderful as your mother makes it out to be. There is a reason why nightly crashes at the pub is damn near a trope; the law profession has a very serious problem with substance abuse, and no wonder, given how stressful that line of work is...
26 Aug 2016, 6:14 pm
