Top Career Paths

If you have majored in English, and are confused as to which line of work you should go into, well – you needn’t be confused any longer. Gone are the days when English major opened up only two career options – teaching in high school, and teaching in university. Now, with the plethora of career paths opened up to you through an English major, you are spoilt for choice. This article will discuss the top 3 career paths for English majors.

First, there is journalism. Working in the field of Media is always a great career path for English majors. You can use put your knowledge of the language to good use. You can go into specific beat reporting, like Finance, Technology, Politics, etc – depending on which field you are comfortable in. You can also go into Feature Writing, which is a less specific, more language-oriented type of journalism. In this, you will be writing feature articles on a variety of topics, which will be of interest to the targeted readers. Feature writing requires not only skill in the language but also a lot of effort and research. If you have a flair for writing, if you think a newspaper office is the ideal office for you, if you think that you were born to write, then journalism is definitely the career for you! Write a few samples of your work, intern at a few places, get some good recommendations from Editors, and work your way up. In no time at all, you’ll be Editor!

The second career path for English majors is teaching. Of course teaching is the old classic profession – why not pass on what you’ve learnt all these years? If you think that you can handle children/young teenagers well, then you could well become an English teacher and make a profession out of teaching Milton, Blake, Shakespeare, Pope and Dryden. For this profession, you need to be constantly reading yourself, you need to be well-learned in the subject, you would probably also need a Ph.D.

The third career path if you have an English major is being a professional writer. Think of an interesting plot line, something that will catch the attention of readers, and start working on your book. With good writing and ample marketing, your book could become a bestseller! In a few years, you would become a prominent writer.