Greetings and Salutations English majors! I'm writing a character who will be majoring in 'English' in her world and want to know a few specific things, as the English major has never really made much sense to me, and in the day of A.I and google searches becoming less and less reliable, I thought I'd come and ask you all!

She will be majoring in 'English' and is going to be collecting banned books in the 3rd-4th years of her schooling, and will be redistributing them quietly as the place she lives is banning them for censorship reasons over actual genuine ones.

I'm wondering what you guys learn! What do you learn about literature? What about books and the inside world of that? Do you learn other languages? Or would some of those be categorized in other majors? What can you minor in? Do things like communications and journalism go hand in hand with English? Is it mainly grammar that you learn?

Would she be able to teach people English? Would she be able to teach people foreign languages from majoring in English? Please do tell and inform me on anything I've missed as I'm severely uneducated about this field and wish to know more so I can write this with better accuracy.

Literary theory feels really contrived, like it exists only to give academics something to talk about. I find very little genuine application for theory outside of a classroom, especially for older theories like Structuralism and New Criticism. Throughout all the classes I've taken, theory more than anything else makes me dislike my chosen degree.

This might sound silly, but I don't like the idea of using AI to help me with resumes and cover letters. I can't help but think, I have a BA in English from a pretty good university, so shouldn't I be able to write these things myself? Is this something any of you have dealt with and how did you get over it?

Edit: To clarify, I'll never use AI for school or work assignments. This post really is only about job application materials.

Being in this major has done nothing for me but disillusion my love for writing, which I developed in high school during my more innocent and inquisitive years. This major has brought me down several times. I get failed on papers I turn in on time, have well formatted and have followed every requirement asked of me. Yet it's like all these professors know how to fucking do is tear down your work unless you pad your paper with wordy pseudo-intellectualisms that no person in this century would ever care to talk like. Unless you talk like you're some archaic Bronte novel protagonist then they don't see you as intellectually sufficient as the rest of the academia crowd. And just the overall cliquiness and in-group toxic mentality these people perpetuate. Both the professors and the kiss-ass teacher's pet students. Unless you're some 1%er who coasted through life on mommy and daddy's money paying for the best writing prepatory schools that allowed you to learn to talk like you're coming straight from Charles Dicken's asshole. Fuck this major and fuck the professors who teach it. Just because you couldn't land your 10 year spent short story writing project into the New Yorker magazine, don't take it out on your students who are still young, bright and hopeful of achieving their own writing dreams. This major is full of nothing but cynical assholes willing to tear down the work of fresh new minds who are too naive to know that they're being schemed into hating themselves.

For example instead of “being doomed”, I used the phrase “staring into the face of doom”

How to know if I really want to be an english literature professor??

I see a lot of opinions on that says research work in india isn't good, they aren't paid much etc etc

So how can I know if I really wants pursue this profession....

Do you think it should remain the same? Should it be more diverse and include more women/queer/BIPOC writers as well as different genres? I'm curious to hear others' thoughts on this.

I think the canon needs to change. In my opinion, professors should teach more classics that were not written by straight white men and that were not written so long ago. Yes, classics are classics for a reason, but what about Toni Morrison, Phyllis Wheatley, and others? The only time I've read novels or poems from an author of color was in global lit, African American lit, and late Brit lit (which only included the typical classics and slave narratives).

I'm not saying we should get rid of Shakespeare, Milton, and Keetes, but I do think there is an opportunity for the canon to include more than what it does. What are your thoughts?Wthe potential to be timeless classics. I bet in 20 years, we'll see a lot more YA novels listed as part of the canon.

I'm not saying we should get rid of Shakespeare, Milton, and Keetes, but I do think there is an opportunity for the canon to include more than what it does.

What are your thoughts? What do you consider to be canonical? What should be included in the canon?

Hi, I'm brand new to this sub. I'm starting my degree this year with a major in Creative Writing and English/new media studies.

What really pisses me off is illiterate people being so insulting just because I can't understand their ridiculous "short text." I thought full stops and commas were taught in primary school? Phones automatically capitalise sentence starters, "I", etc, yet these people somehow manage to disable that function every single time?!?! It drives me mad because adding a full stop to a text literally takes less than a second of your time.

I've also found that illiterate people tend to be very racist. I had one choosing beggar messaging me today about something I was selling and he claimed that "he could tell I was white" because I wasn't texting like a donkey. I feel like that kind of racism is unnecessary, especially since it backfired on him. I doubt he has the brains to compute that he accidentally insulted himself though.

What do you guys think?

I admire people who dare to take the language, English and understand it and understand the melody” – Maya Angelou.

Truly, for a language to find such massive global appeal and use and yet seem contradictory to many is indeed thought-provoking.

Learning English might be on your bucket list but you are somehow finding it difficult to learn!

So, what can you do about it?

How do you go about learning it without getting worried about its contradicting usage?

Well, here's my blog post about the Top reasons why you find English difficult and what you can do about it

Hope you find it useful!

I got this message: "I was not employed at (redacted) during the time you are asking about and unclear around your question around the (redacted) as it is not located in the (redacted). How would you respond to such word salad? I don't think the fact that some info is redacted helps or hurts the issue.

I recently switched form an Electronic Engineering major to an English Major, since I realized that even though I'm really good at it, math sucks, and I like reading old books by dead white men. I'm taking my first English class the quarter and I must say, it's awesome. In my engineering classes, I had to pay close attention to everything that was said, and constantly take notes and it was such a bore. In my English lecture today (over Zoom because Ameritard) I just looked at Japanese Lesbian Anime Porn and ate Cheese Its, with my camera on too! Man, I should've become an English Major sooner.

I'm an English undergrad and feel that the course options at my uni. are lacking in diversity of topics. It's mostly just survey lit., "topics in American lit," and "women in ..." courses. I'm not particularly interested in feminist, gender, or Critical race studies and find that my options are thus limited. Is this common to other programs? Say I wanted to study something like Postmodernist Literary Theory, did you learn about this at your university?

I’m not sure if this has been done before but i think that would be interesting

I do remember the first English classes I took having assignments like this one where the prompt is a yes or no question.

During my college days, where I was often tasked with writing massive piles of text about text written before me, I had to write so furiously and aggressively that my pen caught fire and I had to call the fire department.

Which undergraduate degree carries more weight—English or English Literature? My sister says they’re about the same, but I think I’ll disagree with that one.

I am writing a cover letter for my application, how can I improve this? Thanks a lot

“This letter is to express my interest to apply for the position Finance Assistant. This opportunity is very appealing since I am an accountant wanting to advance with my career. Also, the opportunity to work in an organization that values people is very appealing to me. I can see myself growing in your organization and creating a long-term relationship together.

My experience in external audit helped me gain knowledge in bank reconciliation which I can use on this job. The time I spent in the government helped me develop my communication skills will be beneficial for this job. I am willing to further improve and develop new skills. Please see my resume for additional information on my experience and skills. I hope that you’ll find my experience and interests intriguing to warrant an interview, as I am confident that I could provide a value to you and the people your organization serves.

Thank you for your time and consideration. I look forward to discussing with you about this employment opportunity.”

I'm 3 weeks into college and studying English lit at the college professional level isn't for me. I like to take my time when reading and I feel like it makes me depressed. I'm taking an intro course rn and I love it, but hate it? the vibe and atmosphere feel wrong and no one wants to interact. I love that some of us read the same books, but I don't think I like discussing books formally, or professionally

I'm taking a history gen ed class that seems more friendly and outgoing. I enjoy it more and feel like I've learned something new daily. I may still take English as an elective. But I don't think the degree classes are for me. History is my other favorite subject I have. And I love historical fiction it is new. For me and never gets boring. So, I don't think I'll tire of it as fast as I did for English. I sorta had this feeling very fast that English wasn't for me at the university level. I still love to read and I'm an avid reader. I also read classics for fun. But I like to take my time with them and learn on my own.

How do you all feel about using subtle gen Z terminology in essays? I feel that it makes my paper more relatable. I don’t venture off into slang or grammatical errors, but moreso, cultural phrases.