College Major

[Nighthawk 0]

I'd like to learn to be a butcher. It wouldn't take nearly as long as college, and it couldn't cost much. It's not something I'd ever want to do for a 20 year career or anything, but I'm all about being a jack of all trades.

 

Even though this was like six months ago, Kosher butchery is where the money's at.

[Bruiser Chong 0]

I'll be getting my Master's in English in the spring. The extra year after undergrad it took me to get the degree has settled me on not wanting to be a professor. Few people, even in highly regarded English departments, actually seem to care about the actual pedagogical aspect of being a professor, and are more concerned with publishing and getting citations. That kind of environment seems a bit masturbatory for me, so I'm taking the terminal M.A. and heading into the real working world come May.

 

What kind of work are you going to be zoning in on? I've been majoring in journalism for the past three years, mostly for the lack of a more appealing one. But I've come to the realization that I don't much care for reporting and prefer more creative outlets. English was suggested to me because of the creative writing aspect, but I'm not sure I want to take a lot of courses with people who think everything they write is brilliant and witty. Of course, I've found that to be the case with a lot of journalism majors, too.

[Slayer 0]

Pretty good...I was looking over the material for the actuarial exams when I was deciding whether to take them or not, and I've got most of that covered, although I'd need to brush up on it.

I'm doing fine with basic prob, conditional prob and combinatorial prob... the problem is remembering all the different distributions and their respective parameters (mean, median, pdf, cdf and mgf)

And as I'm doing review and hammering through questions in assorted study guides (as the exam is next Wed), I would also like to say I hate random variable function transforms

[Guest Princess Leena]

A worthless associate's degree in Office Management that I've luckily made a good paying job out of.

[Edwin MacPhisto 0]

I'll be getting my Master's in English in the spring. The extra year after undergrad it took me to get the degree has settled me on not wanting to be a professor. Few people, even in highly regarded English departments, actually seem to care about the actual pedagogical aspect of being a professor, and are more concerned with publishing and getting citations. That kind of environment seems a bit masturbatory for me, so I'm taking the terminal M.A. and heading into the real working world come May.

 

What kind of work are you going to be zoning in on? I've been majoring in journalism for the past three years, mostly for the lack of a more appealing one. But I've come to the realization that I don't much care for reporting and prefer more creative outlets. English was suggested to me because of the creative writing aspect, but I'm not sure I want to take a lot of courses with people who think everything they write is brilliant and witty. Of course, I've found that to be the case with a lot of journalism majors, too.

I probably won't be zoning in on creative writing, simply for the fact that it's almost entirely a self-made industry. English as a degree is almost universally a literature degree, though lots of programs offer creative writing concentrations. Still, there is a creative aspect in all literature analysis, simply because most of what you're writing is generated by you, and not by interviewing others. I do write fiction and essays, and I have been published before, but it's really not something on which you can hang your survival. The sorts of magazines a beginning writer can aspire to--national magazines linked to a university, genre magazines--pay very little for submissions. I'm talking $100, or maybe a two-year subscription, and that's if you even get published. When you get a story accepted, it might not see print for another 6, 12, 18 months. Unless you write creatively on a much more than full-time work schedule, or get exceptionally lucky, you won't make a living strictly as a writer of fiction. If you want to get a jump on what's hot right now, have AIDS in New York and write in a derivative post-modern style. I'll keep doing it on the side and submitting a story to some of my favorite journals here and there, but I'm more zoning in on editing and research work at this point: full-time positions that involve writing to some extent. Landing something like a book deal is a pipe dream.

 

I've applied for positions as an in-house editor at the Smithsonian, as a publications officer with the CIA, as a proofreader for D.C. Comics, as a technical writer for a financial group, as an editorial assistant for a regional cultural magazine in Boston, and as a digital research assistant for the George Washington Papers project, to give you some idea of the types of jobs I'm after. And of course, an M.A. in English also makes you very qualified for many high school English teacher jobs, or literary courses at a community or junior college, if you're into that sort of thing. An English degree puts you in pretty much the same boat as any other qualified humanities major: capable, hopefully a good communicator or writer, and reliant on any specialized skills you've incidentally developed over the years.

[SuperJerk 0]

BA

Major: History

Minor: Geography

 

MA: Education

 

Thinking about going back for a doctoral degree, don't know in what. Not education. I have to teach high school social studies for a year or two so I don't have to pay back $24K in fellowship money for my masters first, though.

 

"Social Studies teachers are a dime a dozen."

 

-random administrator from a job fair I attended 5 years ago

[Big Ol' Smitty 0]

"social studies teachers are football coaches"

-me

[Vampiro69 0]

"social studies teachers are football coaches"

-me

 

Hey some of us are going to be baseketball coaches!

[Big Ol' Smitty 0]

Hey, have any of you guys had classes with any of the most dangerous professors in America?

 

My school only got one

[Slayer 0]

Noam Chomsky? Surprise

[Papacita 0]

Temple University: Melissa Gilbert

I actually had her my final semester. She was nice as hell. I don't see why she's on that list.

 

Edit: Googled the Most Dangerous Prof. In America thing...yeah that makes sense.

[SuperJerk 0]

"social studies teachers are football coaches"

-me

 

Hey some of us are going to be baseketball coaches!

Hey, some of us also became special ed teachers.

[Jericholic82 0]

It was Journalism when I first went in fall 2000, but I haven't gone in over 3 years and since then my old school has cut the journalism program.

 

I am going to go back to school soon, don't know what programs there are here in NY, but I would like to take some computer and tech classes likely.

[kkktookmybabyaway 0]

Hey, have any of you guys had classes with any of the most dangerous professors in America?

 

My school only got one

 

Looks like the U. of Cal system ruled the school.

 

Nice to see the better half's higher learning universities go in (PSU, Dayton).

 

Is one of those two profs at Sappy Valley that hippie who wants pot legalized and got arrested for it?

 

And let's not forget, a professor isn't dangerous unles he or she is employed.

[TheDevilAndGodAreRagingInsideMe 0]

Excercise Science

 

My first week of college two years ago I switched to Health & Physical Education K-12.