Southwestern Magazine | Fall 2019

B Y B A R B R A R O D R I G U E Z I L L U S T R A T I O N S B Y R O B E R T L I N Southwestern’s English faculty help majors tout career skills. Shifting Narratives 35 SOUTHWESTERN IF ENGLISH MAJORS relied on novels to gauge their career opportunities, they’d be drafting a eulogy between classes. Consider Patrick Anderson Jr.’s Quarter Life Crisis , in which a female protagonist replies with leveled eyes to a colleague’s question about making more money, “Linus, I was an English major.” And in Celine , Peter Heller describes a difficult char- acter as “probably a frustrated English major who graduated from college qualified to drive a cab.” Luckily for graduates of Southwestern, the faculty under- stands that this age-old myth is just that. Studies have shown that the skills students develop in English and other humani- ties majors set them up well for lucrative careers in any area that requires communication and critical thinking, including sales, training, and management. Seeingmajor value Mia Zozobrado ’17 found this out her first year at the University. The Houston-area native recalls being nervous about job pros- pects in spring 2013, when she arrived on campus, and feeling insecure about her smarts after the first week of classes. A trip to SU’s Center for Career & Professional Development (CCPD) helped put her mind at ease on both counts as staff shared surveys about the career paths English majors had pursued— everything from being a registered behavioral technician or serving as a legislative assistant for a state representative to being a technical-support specialist. “There was such a diversity of where students landed following their time at Southwestern,” says Zozobrado, who is now a content writer for a marketing agency that serves the building industry. “It helped put into context how I could shape the English degree trajectory a little bit differently [from the story you typically hear].” Surveys have also shown that the pay gap between many college majors shrinks over time. For instance, a 2014 analysis by the Association of American Colleges & Universities showed that, by their mid-50s, humanities and social science graduates make slightly more than those in vocational fields like nursing and accounting (by about 3%, earning an average annual salary of $66,185). Given the way career paths often twist and turn these days, having broad job skills also has benefits, notes Morgan Patterson ’17, an assistant buyer of merchandise for the online site Zulily. “My English and history degrees set me up well to be able to problem-solve, essentially,” she shares. “I was expected on a regular basis to research, to think about a problem, to come up with a solution to that problem, and then to write eloquently about it and to communicate that to other people—all of which are tremendously valuable skills, no matter what." Faculty such as Professor Helene Meyers, who chairs the English Department, and staff at the CCPD also work hard to provide humanities students with the mindset and expertise to not get pigeonholed into entry-level jobs. During Zozobrado’s first-year visit to the CCPD, for instance, she noted that Alexandra Anderson, the Center’s senior associate director, pushed back against the narrative that an English degree doomed graduates to underemployment. As Anderson says, “[Employability] has less to do with exactly what you majored in and more to do with the whole package you’ve put together: the intellectual development and growth that you’ve gained, as exhibited by your academic performance to some degree, as well as out-of-class experiences that can include internships, which build skills.” The positive approach to careers that SU faculty and staff take doesn’t mean they convey a Pollyanna outlook about career success. One study, for instance, suggests that nearly half of all college graduates take a first job that doesn’t require their degree. A particular challenge for humanities students,