What’s in a Degree?

I find going to school to be a great privilege and opportunity. I have two degrees an Associates and a Bachelor’s. I’m a little obsessed with school. I would love my masters. More importantly I’d love to go back to school for 5 years and get my J.D. and get my masters in intellectual property law. I have lofty goals (still intact).

My major is in English, my minor creative writing. It took me years to settle. I initially was shooting for psychology then it turned to marine biology and finally rested on the haunches of English. I would have preferred journalism, but it wasn’t offered at the closest university where I was living at the time. I drove an hour and a half one way for 2 years to finish my bachelors. That defines my dedication to school.

One of the few pictures of me actually doing what I love.

My degree has not allowed me any jobs – my reporter jobs were brief, my magazine jobs were short-lived. I am not an editor or a reporter or even a copywriter; I am a writer only because I choose to be one. I’ve sat back and heard one of my cousins mock me. Heard her tell my aunt that she thinks an English degree is a useless degree. That if her kids chose English as a major she wouldn’t pay for their college.

It’s a dark time for those who think the pen is mightier than the sword. With no jobs out there and even less jobs in journalism, making headway towards a career has been slow and painful. Whenever I think I’ve gained a footing on my career I slip and fall back down into the canyon of wannabe writers. Unless you have experience, there seems to be no starting footholds in advertising, reporting, writing, newspapers, etc. Sure, you can intern but at 27 and a newlywed, I need to be able to pay my bills. I have an insane work ethic, being without a job makes me uncomfortable. 

When I expressed to my husband that I was upset that I’m 27 without a career, He told me to get one.   Like let’s go grocery shopping, bananas or apples? He told me to get a career and not let them fire me. I started crying.

From FailBlog.org - http://work.failblog.org/

It seems like the only option for English majors if you can’t make it in the advertising, publishing or journalism field is to get your masters and teach. Here is the problem, I’m not a teacher. I don’t want to be one. That is the one career path I put dynamite near the opening cave mouth and destroyed.

So what’s left? Keep working low-paying jobs trying to etch out a career? Quit? Go back to school? Whatever may come all I need is for it to pay the bills and not destroy me with soul crushing boredom, bad scheduling and harsh coworkers.