Redpill me on majoring in English. Are the courses interesting? How's the job market? I can't decide between History...

if you're right politically I'd incline heavily against English
you will be urged to write at least twenty essays on colonial studies/racism in your undergrad
you will love old english/middle english texts (like Beowulf and Chaucer), Victorian literature and some twentieth century stuff but be prepared for some pretty pozzed classes.
Philosophy is ok, Logic classes will be very difficult for you if you aren't an autist and you will be study Descartes in at least five classes until you hate him

you could also consider classes like italian, french or german studies, they're basically a weird mix of linguistics (you learn the language), history, and literature

English: read novels, poetry, plays; talk about them, usually in a small classroom, with the desks in a circle; write about them (basic research paper format, but need a complex thesis and a very thorough understanding of the text)

Philosophy: sit through philosophy lectures; read philosophy texts; write philosophy papers (meaning they are highly organized and refined arguments about the texts you have read)

History: sit through history lectures; read history texts; write history papers (basic research paper, but it too needs a complex thesis, a thorough understanding of the text, and high quality sources)

When it comes to jobs, you'll find something. It may not immediately be you'r dream job, but you'll make a living if you want to. It's the same in every field. So study what you like, really what will give you the least headaches and maybe even be enjoyable. Good luck.

t. English lit major w/philosophy minor

Do you like editing? That's the only job there is. Ever here that one meme how editors hate their job and work almost as much as a lawyer does for half the pay (even though lawyers don't get paid that much)? It's an old meme but it is still so very true. The editor in the internet age """""edits""""" articles with obvious political undertones , because everyone just so happens to be a liberal in the humanities and liberals make up the established journalism echelon. Gone are the days of respected magazines because slander and calumny is totally in right now.

what do you mean by editing?

>Logic classes will be very difficult for you if you aren't an autist
nah logic is fun. it's just math really. and descartes is important and everyone should study him

i rec philosophy op. but i'm biased because that's my major. i love english but i never found the english classes stimulating. it didn't seem like they provided anything to me that i couldn't get on my own.

in contrast, the philosophy classes are extremely good. learning about logic and thinking about arguments critically is super engaging.

>She's not a chica she's persian
lol yeah and I'm Gaul

Im very inclined to go with History because it's my favorite subject, but there's something about philosophy that draws me in. It's like a mystery to me, it's like an itch that won't go away. I feel like philosophy is the basis for pretty much everything, so without knowing philosophy I can't know anything. I very annoying, I think I might end up minoring in so I can at least have the skills needed to teach myself.

>but there's something about philosophy that draws me in. It's like a mystery to me, it's like an itch that won't go away. I feel like philosophy is the basis for pretty much everything, so without knowing philosophy I can't know anything.
i'm torn between thinking this and thinking that it's worthless word games that haven't gotten me anywhere

either way, it's fun as hell and it HAS definitely helped my thinking. like my actual thought processes i feel like are better.

definitely minor in it if you can. i mean idk i just remember having to take this gen ed phil class before it was my major and the professor in it just gave this ironclad presentation about vegetarianism. and i just remember thinking that it was great, even at the time. he was talking about wittgenstein and all of this stuff that was over my head back then but i remember just feeling this strong urge to read more philosophy.

and ever since then i feel guilty every time i eat meat. so that sucks

>but i remember just feeling this strong urge to read more philosophy.
this is literally me. The fact that I don't understand it makes me want to learn more.

OP, I'm seconding this guy's statement. English is pretty much like continental philosophy but shittier and even leftier. If you want to read literature, I'd do a foreign language or classics.

i think that's a great mindset for a major/minor in it. there are some kids in my major now who are clearly not too into it and i think it shows. it's pretty reading-heavy so if you're not into it or if you don't do the reading it's impossible to fake really (unlike in some english classes i've been in)

it's also worth noting that most phil departments in the US are in the analytic tradition, so while you might take a couple classes on continental stuff, it probably won't be the majority of what you read

>English major
85% of the class is female.

>Philosophy major
95% of the class is male.

>most phil departments in the US are in the analytic tradition,
Really? I thought they'd be more pozzed and into continental stuff. Are all the continental philosophers in the sociology department or something?

which tells you something about the difficulty of the class

desu yes. or in polysci. i'm finishing the major up next month and i literally haven't read a continental philosopher yet (i'm taking one last winter course where i'm gonna read sartre and heidegger but other than that i haven't read anything other than my own personal stuff on the side). and obviously continental philosophers probably wouldn't be too into formal logic and all of that shit. actually i feel like academic philosophy in general is biased towards analytic thinkers like Quine, Russell, Kripke, Witt, etc

>i can't decide between philosophy, history and english
those aren't even remotely the same degree or as difficult as each other you absolutely gigantic faggot
>how's the job market
move to china you fag

do you know anything about computers or maths? are you good at maths? if no to both, do not do philosophy. If yes then philosophy, if you do the others and don't care about being lower middle class your whole life and want to move around a lot and be treated badly, be a horrible idiot "servant" of the public, then be a history or English teacher like a good little bug moron.

>which tells you something about the difficulty of the class
Philosophy major here. I really have nothing against women, but I gotta admit, in my first year there were 9 or 10 women in my class, and now we have literally one. There were a lot of male dropouts too, but there was a disproportional amount of female quitters.

You have a lot of dropouts in your logic classes? I had literally half my logic class leave because they didn’t understand it. We were just doing pretty straightforward propositional and relational logic (we didn’t even get to modal stuff)

Why do people give up so easily

Also I don’t think there was one woman in the logic class

because logic requires a base iq a large portion of prospective philosophy majors do not have and also works a lot like maths, with lots of drilling and memorization of rules. anyone who is afraid of math will be afraid of logic and anyone who excels at math will then in turn be skilled in logic. Most of the people who drop the class are female students and people who were just trying to get their GUR

history and phil theoretically have merit but you'll spend all your time discussing methods of blaming caucasian males for everything, includying the reason ethiopians cant read

good luck. choose a real major

>slander and calumny
>respected magazines
gonna need source. show me those formerly respected magazines

and
are correct, and being good at maths and thereafter formal logic will be helpful (metalogic can be trippy af though so be careful).

But Philosophy and History both require primarily good literary skills. So prepare to read a lot and to think critically about what is being asked of you.

Don't think about job-prospects. If you're doing humanities, you're doing it because you want to do it, not for the job-prospects when you get out.

Job-prospects themselves aren't terrible, but you'll have to be creative about what you apply for and start networking early.

Coming from a maths background, i found propositional logic, predicate logical, tableux proofs etc absurdly easy.

When you get to metalogic, that is when shit gets hard. Also axiomatic and natural deduction proof systems can be very tricky.

We didn't have logic classes until much later in the course. Most dropped out because of a particularly demanding professor who taught Aristotle.

>Persian
What you got against Iran my dude, it's 2016+1

What did you do in your first year? For me it was mostly a mix of "modern metaphysics", short histories of ethics and aesthetics, and then an introductory course on logic (propositional logic, GPL, tree proofs etc)

I went to English/German this year and it was so bad that I stopped going. It's boring as fuck and your classmates are going to be idiots.
>I can't decide between History, Philosophy and English.
Let me choose for you: Computer Science. Unless you live in a backwards country where knowing English is going to set you apart, you're going to get a useless degree that's only going to qualify you for teaching ching chongs in their 2nd and 3rd world countries.

Mostly Aristotle and Plato, plus a foreign language of my choosing, a general ethics overview and optional classes. All the optionals I chose were related to Ancient Philosophy.

if you actually want to write, don't.

It'll actually make you a worse writer.

Just read and practice writing on your own.

t. published, working editor and writer who taught myself everything

You'll maybe get a secretary job. Seems most humanity majors in my city coast on min wage jobs for years after.

What type of books do you publish?

novel's coming up
had a slew of short stories published this last year, including winning a contest with a respected novelist as a judge.

i've a long interest in computer science, so my novel is
>about the internet
>about social media's dark underbelly that includes robust porn empires and trafficking networks operating
>about freelance investigation
>about the phenomenon of mass shootings
>about how easy it is to stray into that mode of thought and how we're not that different from them

guess it'll be marketed under "cyberpunk" or some shit...

You can double major, dork. I'm doing Philosophy and English.

There was a good thread on /pol/ the other day

Here's one example

Do you go to Oxford or something?

...

...

You non-Harvard plebs should stop posting about Drumpf.

No, I'm from a second world country which I won't name because if there's someone from here on Veeky Forums they'd probably know someone I know and I'm ashamed of browsing a Japanese cartoons imageboard. My university is one of the best in the country but nowhere near among the best in the world. I do think it's a quality course though.

Ah okay, I just remember Oxford had a similar structure as yours for philosophy. What's your favourite book this year?

>only going to qualify for teaching ching chongs
as opposed to being a scriptmonkey and having your job outsourced to ching chongs?

>Coming from a maths background, i found propositional logic, predicate logical, tableux proofs etc absurdly easy.
oh yeah if you're from a math background it was easy. i'm not, but i still didn't find it as tough as the rest of the class did

what's metalogic?

Basically trying to prove the properties of a particular logical system using logic.

sounds literally impossible. have any examples?

I'll be honest, I barely understand it myself.

yeah i was trying to ask my professor about stuff like that, because i figured that logic couldn't justify itself. he didn't really have much to show me but he told me about russell's paradox which i guess would lead to something like axiomatic logic

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell's_paradox

is that metalogic?

Stuff like that yeah pretty much.

Axiomatic logic can be fun, but gruelling at times.

Didn't Wittgenstein already solve this? The concept of a "set of all sets" is as fantastical as the concept of a "being of all beings," especially since the supposed set is to have reference to an empirical construction, i.e. quantity.

yeah i think he basically did:

>In 1923, Ludwig Wittgenstein proposed to "dispose" of Russell's paradox as follows:

>The reason why a function cannot be its own argument is that the sign for a function already contains the prototype of its argument, and it cannot contain itself. For let us suppose that the function F(fx) could be its own argument: in that case there would be a proposition F(F(fx)), in which the outer function F and the inner function F must have different meanings, since the inner one has the form O(f(x)) and the outer one has the form Y(O(fx)). Only the letter 'F' is common to the two functions, but the letter by itself signifies nothing. This immediately becomes clear if instead of F(Fu) we write (do) : F(Ou) . Ou = Fu. That disposes of Russell's paradox. (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 3.333)

For example, the barber paradox supposes a barber who shaves all men who do not shave themselves and only men who do not shave themselves. When one thinks about whether the barber should shave himself or not, the paradox begins to emerge.

an easier example for non-math people

He also showed that the expectation that logic should "justify itself" is nonsensical through the mirror argument. Logic itself cannot be represented, it can only be mirrored in symbols. This is why no syllogism can prove the totality of logic: logic necessarily antecedes the representation, the symbolic construction of it. But, if it were otherwise, and logic could be fully represented, then it would only be an impression, not fully general, and would come under the heading of something else, i.e. it couldn't properly be called "logic" as we mean the signification. So to ask that "logic be proved" is a confusing tautology along the lines of "A=A," since "proof" itself can only be demonstrated within a system of logic; logic is required for proof to exist.

Fuck I really need to read "Philosophical Investigations," I'm getting all hot and bothered thinking about how prescient this man was

Do something useful (? to your country and srudy sociology desu

What I mean by editing is looking over other people's work and applying a nonbiased view on how it should be changed.

congrats you got the philosophy bug it will all be downhill from here

>worries about the job market
>is tossing up between history, philosophy and English
I got bad news for you, son.

Don't worry too much about the job market. Most people never get a job in whatever they majored in. My office is staffed by two philosophy majors, a film major (me), a veteran w no degree, and an MPA. None of these majors have a single thing to do with what our company does. Most employers are only looking for a degree to filter out the brain-dead.

goedel incompleteness does a better job

I am a Lit + History Major. Joined the army cause no jobs. Don’t use my degree at all except for nifty fun facts.

thanks for driving up the cost of a stem degree and contributing to the mil industrial com so you could learn ho to tell everyone that you're totally not racist and hate trump.

hope fighting another conflict in the middle east fun for you. fuck drumpf right?

The guy shouldn't have made a claim to authority. Got BTFO quite swiftly there for no reason.

Yeah I don't really understand "Persians." It's not a subsect of a nationality (I think? could be wrong) but just a throwback to...what? 2300 years ago? Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like an Italian saying they're Roman.

It means a speaker of the Persian (Farsi) language

Wrong military but sure senpai

That is exactly what i'm into, especially after watching Manhunt: Unabomber

The country was called Persia until 1935.

Wew

A big problem that a lot of English Majors have is writing critical theory perceptive analysis papers. You'll have to write a bunch of LGBT/Colonial/Feminist analysis of insert classic papers. If you don't tow the line on them it is really easy to get a bad grade. So, keep that in mind.
>telling someone you're reporting them is a bannable offence
No it isn't. Falsely reporting someone is but saying that you're going to falsely report them isn't.

Also, overall, it is a pretty fun and rewarding field if you're going into it for the right reasons (The only real reason to get an English BA is to become an English teacher)

the people are still called persians

>Submitting false or misclassified reports, or otherwise abusing the reporting system may result in a ban. ---Replying to a thread stating that you've reported or "saged" it, or another post, is also not allowed-----.