English Majors

hey, im a dumb 19yo, and i initially thought this, but have been hearing a lot stating otherwise recently. how did you do this? if im competent enough, can i do essentially whatever with whatever degree? thanks.

Do you live in NYC? This is my goal but I don't want to move there, though it seems inevitable

What class would english majors recommend taking to learn to read better. I'm not in humanities and I was thinking about taking either intro to fiction, themes in literature, or a philosophy class. Kind of shying away from the philosophy classes as the professors aren't well rated though.

Probably a lit class with a difficult professor (they're better).

>learn to read better

what do you mean?

No, I don't live in NYC. But that's obviously where the big boys are.

If you're a STEM guy who isn't good at reading/writing, I would say to start with the basics. Vocabulary is probably one of the most important things people forget about, find some way to see how much words you know and how many you should know at a college level. Summarizing what you read is also important, in a lot of English 1 classes you read non-fiction and have to summarize it in order to answer questions. Just find some news articles somewhere and just summarize the main points everyday for practice. If we're talking to read critically, like picking up themes and whatever, read a popular work of fiction like Huckleberry Finn, summarize the chapters as you go along, and then find something like cliff notes and compare your summaries and see if they brought up any themes you failed to notice.

Critical theory
Teaches how literature has been deconstructed through the years

Just got a job as a technical writer / document analyst at a software company. The manager had a refreshing common sense philosophy of 'I can teach someone to use the software, but I can't teach someone to write'.

It's tough, though. From my experience, a lot of these positions end up being filled internally, regardless of how they're advertised; no one wants to pay for something that they think Jill from HR can do decently enough.

I could have but chose not to

Do you have any advice on getting into the freelance game, user? Do you typically approach individuals, companies, or what?

Stem majors cannot read Critical Theory for the same reason they can't do economics or psychology...
They have been trained not to fall into illogical traps

Critical Theory violates the Time Travel Paradox...
How can you use the narrative tools you developed to dissect or deconstruct the narrative without dissecting the tools as well?

You see, if you really went back in time, then you couldn't go back to a time you never existed, and the time you could go back to in your own life, you wouldn't be aware that you had, because you haven't lived the future you came from.
This is why there is no time outside of your narrative: How would you know you had traveled back from a future you haven't lived yet? How do you know you didn't travel forward from your past, and are now the person who would remember the intervening time?
The recursion of your narrative is time independent.

This is why Lit should stick to paradigm shifts instead of all that Derrida shit. Deconstruction is really just constructing a past the story never had.
With a paradigm shift, you can simply change the intent of your narrative, which then decoheres the past into the new paradigm...
The conclusion supports the givens as much as the givens lead to the conclusion.

Much better than time travel.

Much more dynamic, and a lot closer to the Quantum Mechanics that a stem major has to retrain their inference to absorb.

What a fucking waste of a post. Only a petulant fraud would prostitute the pursuit of literature in the name of the Almighty Dollar.

Also, define "relevant" and "job" for me?

And why the fuck do you care? If you're remotely considering a STEMlord degree, or, god forbid, any degree pertaining largely to finance, you better go ahead and throw in the towel because wew lad you just submitted yourself to the dominance of societies anti-aesthetic values.

Only similar classes I can find is a 500 level class about contemporary criticism.

no, but sort of in the same neighborhood. there's an asterisk here.

yes, if you're competent. most people aren't that competent though, but in that case a STEM degree is only going to get you a moderately better job than a humanities degree.

How's virginhood?

This is not an ad hominem argument. You're retarded and not worth arguing with, so i've skipped that part and am trying to shame you into thinking things through before you speak/post. So, how's that v-card looking? Still in pristine condition I imagine?

>interview with Esquire on the 11th
I need to start browsing Veeky Forums stat

What kind of gig? What credentials do you have? Any job hunting tips?

Just an assistant editor position. Basically no credentials, I'm graduating in May and I have a few internships. I also edited my school's fiction mag and wrote for the school paper so those may have helped.
If you compete with me though I will fuck your throat.

Haha, I wouldn't want to fuck up your chances. I have an MA, did SOME editorial stuff as a grad assistant, and worked on my undergrad newspaper for 2.5 years. I do freelance work in marketing at the moment but would like to find my way back into a magazine/newspaper track. Seems to be a really tough thing to do though. Glad to hear of your success.