What to Do with Your English Major

Very few people understand how versatile an English major is. Most of the time, English majors are met with ‘Well, what are you going to do with that? Look like you’re deep in thought in a French café?’ 

However, one of the critical benefits to being an English major is being able to write. Every field is in dire need of people who can write quickly, concisely and accurately.

My capstone class for my bachelor’s degree forced us to operate as writing consultants for local businesses and organizations. What I found was that the different types of work an English major could perform was endless. Each partnership was completely unique: writing for grants, blogs, manuals, white papers and curriculums.

Every partner loved each of our complete projects, which was rewarding to the originally dubious class, which had fallen into the same mindset that the major was useless. All of our projects had tangible results in the community.

I recommend, at least to start, writing anything you can in order to build a portfolio. There are so many needs in every community. Try walking into a local business to see if they need help editing their website, the local government office may need help writing a press release or a non-profit could use an extra boost to their social media. 

While these seem small and time consuming, coupled with the fact that you probably won’t get paid, these will build a published portfolio. From there you can become a copy editor for a newspaper, publishing house or even a business company. You can become a grant writer for a local non-profit. You can write speeches and press releases for local politicians. 

Essentially, you can write in any field you are interested in. 

A wide range of clips and samples will show potential employers your writing skills, versatility and the numerous ways you can benefit their company.