English education / careers - Writers Forum

PrettyPistol · 07-01-2008, 04:36 PM

So I'm an English major with four semesters left.. I'm not sure why I chose to become an English major, other than because I enjoy reading and writing. I still don't know what exactly I'm going to do, but I think being in school is right, and I'm really enjoying being an English major. I've met a lot of great people in my English classes and find they are really interesting people to be around.

So tonight I was bored and was just Googling things and started to look into graduate programs in English and was wondering if anyone here has done graduate work in the field of English.

I was looking at what Penn State offers (I attend Penn State York now) and two areas of graduate study stuck out at me. Rhetoric & Composition and Creative Writing. The rest deal with literature like American Literature, British Literature and so on....Although those are interesting fields, I'm not sure what in depth study in them would provide for me.

Now I know your thinking, 'if you don't know what you want to do, why are you thinking about graduate school?'. Yeah grad school is more specific, but it feels like something I really want to do. I absolutely LOVE learning and wish I could stay in school forever. Also I'd be really proud of myself if I were accepted into graduate school. I found that the requirements (at least for the creative writing degree) is a 3.2gpa and I have a 3.52 right now (it was 3.60 but I got sick during finals week last semester and did more poorly than I should have).

Is there any advice you can offer me? Is graduate school realistic for me? I do pretty well in school now, but I'm sure that grad work is a thousand times more challenging.

I know I should (and will) speak with my adviser about this sometime down the road, but for now I just need to work things out in my mind and have a goal, or an idea of how to shape a goal.

Thanks for any advice you can offer.

Malone · 07-01-2008, 04:59 PM

Quote:

Rhetoric & Composition and Creative Writing

I've taken over a dozen graduate level courses, although I've never actually be a grad student, and I took grad classes in both those subjects. Most the other students were PhD candidates. One was even my old undergrad English professor. Rhetoric is fun, but when you really start to get into it, you can go on forever, if that makes sense. You'll find that most professors have a different idea of what rhetoric is too, which is very confusing.
Creative writing is fun, but useless unless you want to be a writer. I majored in fiction writing a few years ago. I do not have a job.
Don't English majors just become teachers anyway? Grad school it up and then just stay at college and teach. And as to not knowing what you want to do, I think that's what grad school is for. And most schools let you start taking the grad classes before you're actually a grad student. That's what I did. Good way to get a feel for it.