Why Be an English Major at Auburn University?
"What will you major in?" It's the most painful question for a person coming to college after "What are you going to do with your life?" and "You're not going out in THAT, are you?" But it doesn't need to be. Why not consider English as a major? You might think that English majors just sit around and read books written by people who have been dead for a long time and then write papers about them. True, we do this; yet English is so much more.
English is a major that offers marketability, flexibility, and applicability. It's marketable because it's a four-year degree that offers excellent pre-professional preparation for graduate, medical, law, business, or divinity school, to name a few. Check out what some of our Alumni are doing with their degrees. Our program is flexible because we have several areas of concentration available for study, such as Creative Writing, Linguistics, Rhetoric, Technical and Professional Communication, or Literature. Or, you can put together your own Individually-Designed Concentration that best suits your needs or desires. Our program is universally applicable to virtually any profession because every concentration helps you develop as a writer, a thinker, a communicator; these skills, as any recruiter will tell you, are highly desirable in any job. Our research has identified several jobs for which English is an excellent qualification; click on Future Plans. Additionally, there is the lifelong pleasure of reading and thinking about culturally diverse texts that have shaped our world and that remake it each day.
Basically, an English major at Auburn can give you the tools to make your college career exciting, challenging, and rewarding, and provide you with a firm foundation in order to make your life the same way. So, majoring in English at Auburn will answer two of those painful questions: what you want to major in and what you will do with your life. As for the question of what you're wearing to go out, well, you're on your own with that one.
Now that you've decided on majoring in English . . .
How Do You Tell Your Parents That You Want
to be an English Major?
Your parents have been after you for some
time now, bombarding you with questions about your future. You've
decided where you want to attend college, which should appease
them for the time being--but they want MORE. They want to know what
your
major will be and what you plan on doing with your degree! Furthermore,
what are you going to do with your life?! To major in English is
what you really want, but you don't think that they will be overjoyed
to hear that. So what do you tell them? Telling them that your
older brother wants to major in theatre will only deter them for
a short
time. But don't panic...
Just tell them that to major or minor in English at Auburn University is to pursue some of the most vital (and, more importantly for them, employable!) skills in the humanities: writing and interpretation. In Auburn's English department, excellence in study and research matters a great deal, as does the community of faculty, graduate students, and undergraduate majors and minors. To major or minor in English at Auburn gives students the opportunity to work closely with an outstanding and diverse faculty of scholar-teachers as well as the opportunity to work with an advisor on a one-on-one basis in order to plan his or her course of study and to discuss possibilities for career planning.
Of course, it may also help to mention that a degree in English from Auburn University is not restricting. In fact, English courses at Auburn venture well beyond studying grammar or the reading of classic texts by seeking to understand the full range of literary history and popular culture. Along with traditional courses in medieval literature, Shakespeare, and the Renaissance, Romantic poetry, and the British and American novel, Auburn's research faculty offers courses in poetry and fiction writing, film studies, women's studies and gender theory, the Christian Bible, modern drama, African American literature, cyberculture and the Internet, literary and rhetorical theory, linguistics and rhetoric, technical and professional writing and many others. Auburn University's English Department emphasizes, above all, its dedication to creativity, scholarship, and community. What's not to love?
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Last updated April 18, 2005