What do I do with my English major?

[-Jrabbit]

Sounds like you should become an irritable blogger. Too bad it doesn't pay...
The idea of translating bizbabble into common English has definite possibilities.

Bonus point for using "illucid" BTW. Nice.

[GrumpyOldMan]

If you can write quickly, clearly and without typos, then try copywriting. There is a great demand for people who can write copy, and it often pays regularly and well.

I know someone who earns a good salary writing captions for a porn website... Not the most obvious use of an English degree, but writing 1,000 catchy, original soundbites a day isn't the sort of thing you can do with native wit.

[Fake Boris]

Not a bad idea... you could write those sex stories of the day, or as Grumpy said the stupid captions.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Or even operating instructions for the fry cooker.

[Elok]

Originally posted by Oncle Boris
Kant is quite intelligible. Aristotle not as much granted. But that's beside the point. Your assertion about philosophy and profs is horse****.

Just out of curiosity, what's your relationship to philosophy? I thought Agathon was our only professional philosopher, and Asher scared him off. Kant is intelligible in the sense that he constructs solid arguments logic-wise, but he drones on forever and argues his points very poorly. He only makes sense to other philosophers, who've spent so long wading through intellectual mud that they're accustomed to it. A lot of philosophy consists of taking simple truths, investigating them so thoroughly that you lose their context and get confused, and babbling things that don't follow about them as a result. Not all of it, but a lot of it. The one thing they all have in common is that they're good at juggling abstract concepts. Communicating said concepts is a whole different story.

And my experience disagrees with your "horse****" analysis. Philosophy papers were ten times easier than English papers, once I'd cut through the crap and got the gist of what the philosophers were using too many words, and poorly chosen words, to say. The biggest challenge was getting them up to the page limit. In my last philosophy class, I was one of the two best students. The other was also an English major, Philosophy minor. The Philosophy majors had a hell of a time making their way through.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

We've got whaleboy kicking around here IIRC.

[Darius871]

Re: What do I do with my English major?

Originally posted by Elok
good writer who can learn quickly and communicate effectively

Originally posted by Elok
BA

Originally posted by Elok
3.7

Originally posted by Elok
Philosophy minor

Originally posted by Elok
fierce hatred for obfuscation

Originally posted by Elok
writing quickly without typos

Originally posted by Elok
picking apart other people's arguments

From the above I'd say you're an ideal candidate for any law school, just to throw that option in the mix.

[LordShiva]

I was a philosophy minor too

[Fake Boris]

Originally posted by Elok
Just out of curiosity, what's your relationship to philosophy?

I'm preparing a graduate degree. IIRC there's also Nostromo preparing a PhD.

Kant is intelligible in the sense that he constructs solid arguments logic-wise, but he drones on forever and argues his points very poorly. He only makes sense to other philosophers, who've spent so long wading through intellectual mud that they're accustomed to it. A lot of philosophy consists of taking simple truths, investigating them so thoroughly that you lose their context and get confused, and babbling things that don't follow about them as a result.

Do you have any example to back your claims? I can think of some useless babble, but I wouldn't say it applies to most philosophers remembered by history

Not all of it, but a lot of it. The one thing they all have in common is that they're good at juggling abstract concepts. Communicating said concepts is a whole different story.

Who said it had to be easy? Philosophy is complex, it's only normal that you would use specialized vocabulary.

And my experience disagrees with your "horse****" analysis. Philosophy papers were ten times easier than English papers, once I'd cut through the crap and got the gist of what the philosophers were using too many words, and poorly chosen words, to say. The biggest challenge was getting them up to the page limit. In my last philosophy class, I was one of the two best students. The other was also an English major, Philosophy minor. The Philosophy majors had a hell of a time making their way through.

I can understand what you're trying to say, but I'd wager the reasons for this were that:
a) you were taking low level courses (first or second year), and most likely not third year specialty courses or seminaries.
b) you were studying in the American system, where most profs (and especially in low level courses) expect you to plainly explain a text, or answer a few essay questions (usually between 2 to 5) based on your lecture notes.

Philosophy is not a restricted discipline, so it's true it attracts a lot of losers in the first year. You see these people gradually disappearing and you meet virtually none of them in graduate school. I remember a course in ancient philosophy I took in first year - they failed half of the class (a 200-student amphitheater) as to get rid of them in the second year.
When you move up the ladder difficulty radically increases. A good example of this is the "agrégation", the French philosophy contest held annually to hire high school teachers. There are two parts: first is a crash 7-hour dissertation where you are given a random, super tricky subject. The second part is the oral dissertation, where you are given a mere half hour to prepare a 30 minutes speech in front of a jury on another (usually tricky) topic.

[Fake Boris]

For instance I recall an advanced Latin course I took with two philosophy buddies. We always got the better grades over Classical majors except for one particularly brilliant girl. I wouldn't think it implies anything about their discipline in general, it just meant that my friends and I were good in Latin even if it wasn't our specialty.

[LordShiva]

Academic Philosophy is probably the most misunderstood discipline.

[Lorizael]

Elok: I'm a technical writer. I have no degree and no prior experience in English/writing jobs, but the pay is ****.

[asleepathewheel]

Re: Re: What do I do with my English major?

Originally posted by Darius871


From the above I'd say you're an ideal candidate for any law school, just to throw that option in the mix.

If you have a high tolerance for pain, yes.

[Elok]

Eh, the same held true for my one 400-level course, but it's not worth arguing over, really. I'm just saying that your average philosopher is very bad at communicating what s/he thinks, whether that material has other merits or not. If it eases the sting, I have far more contempt for a lot of the literary criticism I've encountered. That stuff was poorly expressed for a good reason, namely that it was manifest nonsense from start to end. Aristotle was actually saying something, he just said it quite awkwardly so that it takes hours of reading to figure out what it is he was saying.

Oh, and I was thinking mostly of Parmenides of Elea, the most egregious offender I've encountered. It's exasperating to think that the equivocating man-whore wouldn't be inflicted on unsuspecting college students if only ancient Greek had different verbs for different senses of "to be," like Spanish. But IIRC someone more modern--Moore, I think it was--argued for his position on ethics with a shoddy argument worthy of a PoMo journal, just more elegantly costumed. I suppose there are crackpots in every discipline, but I've encountered a lot of them in Philosophy.

Thanks for the warnings about technical writing, Lori. And I don't have the stamina or money for law school. Or the drugs I'd need to abuse in order to live with myself while doing that for a living.

[Fake Boris]

Originally posted by Elok
Oh, and I was thinking mostly of Parmenides of Elea, the most egregious offender I've encountered. It's exasperating to think that the equivocating man-whore wouldn't be inflicted on unsuspecting college students if only ancient Greek had different verbs for different senses of "to be," like Spanish. But IIRC someone more modern--Moore, I think it was--argued for his position on ethics with a shoddy argument worthy of a PoMo journal, just more elegantly costumed. I suppose there are crackpots in every discipline, but I've encountered a lot of them in Philosophy.

Oh please, here's an unfair criticism if there's one. Parmenides wrote in a time were prose didn't even exist as a genre. His texts were intelligible to his contemporaries.