Journalism and English majors

[Lankard]

Is anyone an English or Journalism major? Do you work on the student newspaper or magazine? Whats your position, and does it have a website?

>>Journalism major. Going to Waubonsee Comm. College, and working on the student paper Insight as Layout Editor, but also standing Photograph Editor and Staff Writer.

Newspaper is a monthly paper that is student run and funded by advertising we bring in. The May issue had 32 pages, a record in it's near 40 years of existance(sp).

We have a myspace, facebook, and a web site with links to them, as well as posted PDF versions of each issue from '04 to present. Insight Newspaper (http://www.wccinsight.com)

[CrossboneGundam]

Journalism? That's still around?

Existence, by the way.

I'm told by everyone and their mom I should be an English major since I always get A's in English and related classes. But I'm not.

[Alice Catherine]

Meh, I took all of my English courses. I think you should take Literature. No one really takes that anymore and we need a few semi-cultured human beings left in the world.

[Vaikyuko]

I'm going to be an English major, mainly because I love English.

I still don't really get what the topic is about, though.

[DarkDestiny]

My major was English Language and Literature. I could get a job as a journalist if I wanted to because my major can swing both ways, but I chose to educate the youth of the world instead.

[Lankard]

My major was English Language and Literature. I could get a job as a journalist if I wanted to because my major can swing both ways, but I chose to educate the youth of the world instead.

maybe you can get a job at a magazine like Game Informer, or Shonen Jump

[Ken-Ohki]

I is English major I go creative writing.

Lots of poetry writing and reading. I was disappointed with the English department because they had so very little for creative writing majors but it was good for me. I never worked on a newspaper but did work on the school's creative writing publication.

Geez I can't remember the name of BYU's sci fi publication. I'll look it up if you want to see it.

Well here's LTUE which is the sci fi convention put on yearly. It's not the publication but it's a step in the right direction.

http://ltue.byu.edu/home.html

[Tenou]

I just completed my absolutely useless B.A. in English with concentration on pre-17th century literature, specifically drama, though I did put in a bit of time with Canadian literature. I also have enough credits for Classics and History minors (also focusing on literature, linguistics and Canada) which are even more useless. I won't get into the ****ed up reason why I came out of my graduation with only a major, and not the duel minor I'd planned.

Meh, I took all of my English courses. I think you should take Literature. No one really takes that anymore and we need a few semi-cultured human beings left in the world.

And what, my dear, will these semi-cultured individuals do with said knowledge? Because trust me when I tell you that a B.A. in English gets you very little in the way of a job. Even if you want to be an English teacher literature doesn't really help you (you need to know more about composition, not literature). You could become a writer (in which case, you take writing and theory courses more so than literature). Or you go the professor route, which takes about 8 years. And the pay's crap (unless you get tenure, which takes decades).

No, my dear, unless you truly love literature, there is no reason to devote your academic career to it.

[Leader Desslock]

I won't get into the ****ed up reason why I came out of my graduation with only a major, and not the duel minor I'd planned.
You can minor in dueling these days?! Cool. Back when I was in college, dueling was only an extracurricular activity hosted by the SCA.

And what, my dear, will these semi-cultured individuals do with said knowledge?
A lit major? Oh... I suppose it might come in handy if you want to work in a bookstore or library. Maybe it'd be a nice bit of background to work for a book publisher, or combined with an Education degree for teaching HS English. You're right, though - a lit major by itself doesn't kick open any doors.

linguistics... even more useless.
I laughed aloud when I read that, 'cause it's so true. There's not a lot of direct practical application for it these days. Linguistics courses make for good electives, though.

I went the Creative Writing / Linguistics / Medieval Studies route. I think that gave me a couple of things:

1) Perspective on the English language, how it used to be used and what it could express, versus how it's used today and what it can express.

2) Insight into how peoples' thoughts and expressions are shaped by the languages they use, and vice-versa.

3) The ability to express myself more precisely, in any situation. Sure, I write humor/fiction, but the ability to express oneself accurately to a variety of audiences is a pretty portable skill. It comes in handy when writing program code, tech manuals, SOPs, project plans, and in pretty much any other situation where efficient communication is required.


To answer the other questions, no I never wrote for a campus rag; we published our own. And we never had a website, because this was before the web, browsers and all that stuff. Nobody had a website.

[Haro!]

Journalism? That's still around?

Existence, by the way.

I'm told by everyone and their mom I should be an English major since I always get A's in English and related classes. But I'm not.

I got into NYU for an English major but I figured I wouldn't be able to find work once I graduated so I stuck to engineering and its the biggest mistake of my life. I was so damn good at English/History/anything that didn't involve numbers.

[Tenou]

You can minor in dueling these days?! Cool. Back when I was in college, dueling was only an extracurricular activity hosted by the SCA.Yep, it's a two year course... kind of.
Since you brought it up... the dueling was fighting to complete my minors and in the end giving up (because there were not enough credits offered in Classics (unless you count the cross listed English and History, which I needed to tweak with the Arts faculty, because I had more than enough credits, but not the right kind of credits) but because all of my mentors decided to retire or go on prolonged 5 year sabbaticals, they weren't there to back me up) and the chair of the History department was MIA) which resulted in me fighting to drop the minors (which I had to do two and a half times over the course of two years before it was actually off my transcript).
And then fighting to graduate (because, while I no longer had the minors on my transcript, the requirements remained, which I had not fulfilled because of the lack of courses offered and the missing chair).
Then I fought even harder, calling in the parental unit - who threatened media attention - to get me into convocation (because it took several months to clear everything up it ran into convocation prep, and because the registrar's office messed up so many times and the Arts Faculty delayed everything close to 4 weeks (for a signature and an audit), lineups were settled, and I was finally squeezed in last minute assigned the number 244A). That's the really quick version of events.

So it wasn't so much a duel as a long, drawn out war with the Arts faculty and registrar's office against me. But duel/dual made such a good pun (hence the italics), I couldn't pass it up.

A lit major? Oh... I suppose it might come in handy if you want to work in a bookstore or library. Maybe it'd be a nice bit of background to work for a book publisher, or combined with an Education degree for teaching HS English. You're right, though - a lit major by itself doesn't kick open any doors.

It might help if you want to work in a bookstore, but commerce would help a lot more unless you have no higher aspirations. Library. Nope, doesn't help you what so ever, at least not here. You need a special librarian degree (which is only one year at the community college and about half the annual tuition). Now librarians aren't expected to know anything about literature, they're expected to know computers.

I laughed aloud when I read that, 'cause it's so true. There's not a lot of direct practical application for it these days. Linguistics courses make for good electives, though.Fortunately, I chose practical courses for electives, like CS, symbolic logic, and mathematics. You know, I was going to do CS when I finished high school, but I didn't have the math/science marks (another Ten'ou story, for another day) to swing into the B.Sc. program. And then I found out how much I love literature and Classics and the rest is History (because I needed another teachable to do a B.Ed.).

There are something I would change about my academic career, but literature isn't one of them... though I might have minored in it instead of major so I wouldn't have to take some of the requirements, like 2 poetry courses.
Mostly I learned that people really haven't changed. The surface changes, but nature and events haven't, though perception makes it seem like they have.

[Scandiadream]

I was not a major in any of those. However, I wrote for my high school's newspaper. I wonder if I should have majored in journalism instead of microbiology- maybe I would not have been so depressed and done better in school. But given how useful my science (and science education) background has been for so many programs, reference questions, and collection maintenance activities at my library, I think this was totally worth it.

[tenshi_a]

I have a BSc (Hons) in Computer Science, so, no, but... I do have an A Level in English Language and took a module in linguistics in my first year of university. I still think it's a really interesting subject; CLA, sociolinguistics, pragmatics, the minor fields of the subject all interest me the most. They give a great insight into how people function, how incredible it is that babies pick up language at the speed they do, how people communicate in ways they have no idea they're doing, how to read really biased journalism and just laugh at all the tricks they're employing, etc, it's an insight into understanding human beings at a level that I've never gleaned from any other subject...

And yet I spend my time typing in man-made computer languages, listening to songs sung in Japanese, communicating on forums. Seems weird?

I've got no interest in Literature, grammar, studying Old/Middle English or any of the related subjects within English courses so I wasn't interesting in pursuing it academically.

[HSaabedra]

Oddly enough, I am a journalist for a major website centering on the wireless communications industry, and my main field of study is audio engineering. It seems to me that the idea of needing a specialized degree for journalism is a bit overstated due to the explosion of the internet. There are thousands of websites written in a direct, non-confusing way as to have everyone who reads understand the material and be informed. I'm proud of my work and I'm happy that I was given an opportunity by one the most well known pundits and insiders on the wireless industry. While an English and journalism degree helps, it isn't an absolute necessity unless you move into a major organization.

[Scandiadream]

I currently write for my library's Teen Blog. But many others do- and it is not my primary responsibility. I do enjoy it and have covered events for it like a press reporter would.