The Decline of the English Department

I'm now a lisp programmer.

I imagine that I would be making more money (potentially anyway) had I gone through a computer science department, but I don't think I would have been as good a programmer. Nothing against computer science departments, especially the good ones. Where I went to school, it seemed like they were teaching a lot of 'how' and not as much 'what' or 'why'.

I would have learned a lot of very relevant and useful math working my way through the computer science department (and probably a working knowledge of Java), but I don't think I would have has as much experience really thinking things through. (I can teach myself the math anyway...)

I also know quite a few English majors, the jobs occupy a pretty wide range. A couple are singer/songwriters (starving, of course), one is an administrative assistant at a hospital, and another is working for a textbook company.

Other potential 'after graduation' things include technical writing, getting a masters in something else (like journalism).

I think programmer is kind of an out-lier among humanities, as it is harder to break into (You have to prove you can write code, whereas the CS major does not...) I started in a sort of technical writing position, and 'apprenticed' until I understood enough of the code to be useful. I also did a lot of learning on my own...

Unless you're going on for further schooling, grades don't matter at all. Employers certainly don't look at them. Study what you love and work hard, no matter the grades.

but neither pays well... take it from me. an english major.

So, usage manuals, reference books, instructional posters, Material Safety Data Sheets, quickstart guides, and so on. Every company that makes anything needs at least one writer (unless you do agile programming, which for some reason shuns documentation being a resource unit and more of a PITA). And, I suppose you can make someone on your development or QA staff write docs, but who would want to? That's where we step in.

I mean, the guy mowing the lawn outside your office complex has his job, I've got mine :D Mine does pay 90k year (and this is in the South), but my colleague in Sunnyvale is just over 6 figures. Yes, solely from writing for a major software company.

Of course, there is the entertainment industry where, if you can get a good "holding" or "development" deal with a major studio, you're well into 6-figures, probably quarter-to-half million a year. Scriptwriting teams that don't get the byline in a movie make about 60-80k a film, depending on overall budgets. That's 2-3 months of work for some, so you can see how that stacks up in a year. I don't want to live that world, though, because you basically must be in Hollywood unless you're a superstar.

Finally, there's game design and story writing, which for the most part, you'll find everyone there are from an English Lit. background. Talk about hand-to-mouth, though. A true feast/famine career. But, if you have a solid track record, you tend to "fail upwards" to bigger budgeted games at major studios. Be prepared to move to Vancouver, BC, though. I like that route, personally, but I don't have anything game-related under my belt (yet).

First-order logic is not to be fussed with. The latter part of that course kicked my ass, but that might've also been due to me smoking an inordinate amount of weed at the time.