So my parents have slammed down the hammer conclusively and told me that they will not allow me under any conditions to...

Your parents care about you. Sorry?

Good communication and writing skills are applicable in almost any profession. Pick a stable career that will allow you to feed yourself and fund your dream. Your real world career will provide you with valuable real world experience and perspectives that you can use in your literature/philosophy journey.

My brother has 6 figure student loans from an Ivy League education in literature/philosophy. He is understandably mad, because he gave so much time and money for an education that he describes as being distillable into 6 months of self study.

Someone already mentioned ITT that the state of humanities education is abhorrent. Don't fall for the hollow credentials and indoctrination meme, or you will be asking your siblings to pay for your phone bill because you are hoping for a call back on a job at the local hallmark gift store.

Patrician parents don't allow their children to get practical degrees. STEMfags are mocked by my parents and grandparents. Silly plebs.

Unless you're a Kripke level wunderkind there is no point in studying Philosophy. You aren't going to be doing anything worthwhile in the field. The best you could hope for is that it'd improve elements of your fiction writing. And all that can be self-taught if you've the drive.

Study something practical. It will give you a genuine safety net.

Your parents are boring and middle-class, but they ain't wrong. Are they paying? If not, fuck 'em and enjoy your first-class ticket to bum-town.

I'm doomsaying a bit, there are options. We're looking at probably the first real U.S. diaspora, so if you're willing to gladhand your way across the globe and play the shiny, dumb American you might have opportunities elsewhere.

>journalism
This is not a good idea, take it from me.

Respect your parents' wishes. Tell them you want to talk to them, have them sit down with you, let them know that you love them and take their demands seriously, and pick another major.

You can still read and write in your spare time.

You can choose to be a blue collar pleb and get a computer science degree I guess

user learn from our mistakes. Study something practical and - more importantly - PROFITABLE.

Money might not matter to you right now when you're young and idealistic, but you are going to be punching yourself square in the cunt for being such a fool later on. Security in life costs.

Echoing what everyone is saying here.

Get a decent secure income so that you can live comfortably, and ideally a profession that has a lot of downtime. This will give you more time to read and write.

If you have the talent and do well, your writing will let you switch it into becoming your primary profession. If your writing doesn't do well, you won't be stuck in a cockroach-infested attic somewhere drowning in alcohol and cigarettes, since you have a solid backup job.

OP here. Do you guys have any suggestions for a major that would lead to a relatively comfy job with decent hours that would allow me to write on the side? engineering/CS? I'm not terrible with math/science, nor do i dislike it, so these are reasonable options

Political science. Or tell your parents you want to go to law school. A bachelors in English is highly beneficial if you intend on going to law school since there is so much reading and writing involved.

If you have this kinda of stuff spoon fed to you, you aren't going to make it.

Also don't ask Veeky Forums for life advice. It's basically R9K for people who don't like video games.

I would do this, OP. Tell them you intend to go to law school and show them the LSAT scores for English/Philosophy majors compared to other majors.

If you want to read and write for a living, I suggest law in any case.

op i know this is hard for you but please reconsider your decision to study those majors, i think your parents just want to help you. listen to them.

Engineering has a high washout rate. When I was in college my engineering student roommate heard that if one of our floormates committed suicide we would all get a free pass for the year. When he told me about this supposed policy he spent a little too long gazing wistfully at me.

kys

This makes me wish that my family didn't leave Scandinavia a few generations back. America's education system is fucked. I'm already loaded with debt, but if I can finish my electrical engineering degree I should hopefully be able to find a job that pays enough to be worth it.

I'm in sort if the same position. I just intended on going back when I'm able to afford it in my own. It just sucks since by the time I'll be able to do it, I'll be in my mid-thirties. But better late than never.

Study law. It's mostly reading and writing and gets you a career if you aren't totally shit.

Undergrad isn't as important as grad school. Like others here said, consider philo and then law school. I have a buddy who did that at UT in Austin. Successful lawyer now. I'm looking at a joint JD/PhD through Columbia once I complete this MA in Poli Sci at HKS.

If you have to ask Veeky Forums for self-actualization tips you've already lost

Being a successful writer is being a rare, exceptional tangent to everyone else's series of narcissistic convictions. Don't listen to anyone, everybody is fucking terrified, and their fear is all that they can and will ever offer you-- that is unless you phrase your questions in a way that makes them feel less threatened by the magnitude of what you expect for yourself.

What you're talking about is ambition, and I'm not memeing you when I say that Veeky Forums is a hotbed of scum. Funny, clever and oft relatable scum they may be, but true scum. Fuck this place for anything more than entertainment.

If you heard the call to writing, you'll write. If you haven't, you won't. There's nothing else to it.

Give father's cock a little suck, remember what I say

He'll yet regret he barred you from philosophy, and made you gay

History

I studied Eng Lit and I don't recommend doing so.

My advice: study something that will allow you to find a ob pretty easily, read as much as you can on the side, work after college for three years full-time in your field, then take one year out to write full-time before going back to wagecuckery.

> tfw doing a major in Media and Communications and a minor in Philosophy
Just pick up extra philosophy electives, I did enough that qualified for a minor. I plan on doing honours and post grad in Marketing and then just pursuing philosophy in my own time.

Get a bread winning degree and write on your free time, as well as self-educate yourself on literature/philosophy, you'll be much better off. Most of the best writers weren't writers by profession in the first place. Aditionally, the subject you're studying tends to get boring and off-putting when you are forced to study what you're told to keep your grades up.

Journalis is a dead industry. Today you have to have a twitter at least if you're a journalist, wages are plummeting, many companies are laying people off due to fall in advertising and readership.

What is wrong with philosophy classes "as they are taught today" in your opinion?

>college
>making you a great writer

You're correct but there's always going to be a demand for official publications and sources that break news. It's just going to be a shell of its former self, as it is currently.

Self-teach, study at home, it's more fulfilling and personal anyways. There's not much of a point to studying phil/lit anyways, I've done it and it leads nowhere
"follow your passions" is a meme, sadly

Just become a mailman.

I work in the industry and I see the layoffs taking place every day, not just locally but all off the Western world pretty much. Bloomberg (one of the largest newswires in the world) is investing a lot of money into AI that can churn out articles using stats, facts and so on. If you work for a regional publication, say the Des Moines Recorder etc, you could be the Editor of the publication working 50+ hours a week and still be earning as much as a new high school teacher.

>Also don't ask Veeky Forums for life advice. It's basically R9K for people who don't like video games.
lel this

THIS

t. History major

>If you're European you can easily support yourself with a part-time job while studying in uni, which you should do.
>europe is a socialist utopia meme

M8, I'm European and he'd be lucky to find a job in the first place unless its Germany or Britain. Even then, both of them have had stagnant wages for 10 years while inflation and housing costs have skyrocketed. Even in these countries, he's unlikely to get a migrant because we already have all the cheap third world/polish immigrant labor we need. Unless he wants to work full time or for minimum wage in a factory, which isn't going to pay for shit, its a bad idea.

this desu.

My wife and I have agreed that our kids will get financial support equal to that which we would pay for an undergrad state school unless they get into an Ivy (not Cornell) or Oxford/Cambridge.

They will get no support if they major in the arts or humanities excepting a language, which must be done with a business or stem minor or double major.

They CAN do whatever they want to do, but if they go to some librul arts skool like NYU and think we are gonna pay 400,000 USD so they can learn wymens studies, they are sadly mistaken.

bls.gov/emp/ep_table_103.htm

Take a minor in something you love to bump GPA

this is awful advice, like 60% of lawyers have trouble finding salaried work, and all of them have tremendous debt loads. The anecdotal friend at UT Austin is like the top 5%.

Get a reality check in various apects of your life.

>Unless he wants to work full time or for minimum wage in a factory, which isn't going to pay for shit, its a bad idea.
I always find it funny to see fighting aged polish men being paid the same wage as obese 30-50 year old english/part irish women who are even dumber

t. 19 year old English majors

They're not paid the same wage. Polish people aren't doing it out of the kindness of their hearts. True, they get paid a low wage, but they send the money home to Poland where its worth a lot more. So a factory worker from Poland can return home and enjoy a standard of life a normal english person can't.

this

do not listen to your parents or all of these posters. yolo is a meme but also profoundly true.

On the other side of the argument, paying for their head-in-the-clouds son is certainly not their responsibility.

why hasn't anyone recommended linguistics/foreign languages?
studying philology isn't looked down upon by the muh jobs crowd where I live as translation jobs are plenty and pay well
even tutoring is very profitable
learning another language will surely improve your English too

studying languages in classes is a waste of time

America is the worst country in the western world.

>enjoy a standard of life a normal english person can't.
youtube.com/watch?v=2g0zAb3y9is

seriously though, if they send the money back home while they're renting I'm genuinely surprised they can afford to save while making ends meet when they're on £7.20 an hour even working 60 hours a week

I'm doing an English literacy license in France, next year I'm taking an optional course to teach French to foreigners, the year after I may or may, depending on my will to do a gap year, not do an internship teaching French in some London University, then I'll do a master with the same optic and be able to find a job almost anywhere in the world, there's no problem in doing literacy studies, just pick the good courses

>going to college for practical majors
>getting saddled with debt for the rest of your life to get glorified 4-year job training is practical
College is a scam.

America isn't Western.

I dont understand how anyone can live the starving artist/perfect NEET paradigm if they arent a citizen in a northern european socialist paradise.

Is everyone who espouses this lifestyle supported by their parents? I assume that you need to at least pay for a roof and an internet connection and a jar of peanutbutter.

Interesting, I didn't know that. I suppose it's actually a South-northern country, right?

Why don't you just major in a STEM field and philosophy? Humanities are super easy so you should be able to do it. Majoring in English is pointless, imo

America is actually the center of the world
"""the west""" should be called the east and vice versa according to their geographic position in regards to the USA

If you read Huntington, he says that America has removed itself from the West by its embrace of multiculturalism as opposed to requiring assimilation from new immigrants. Drehr says we are in a post-Christian world, and since Europe has defined itself by the welfare state, and America by this grotesque pop-culture and capitalism that is built to appeal to a broad global audience, describing America as "western" is antiquated.

double major in philosophy in literature, and tell them how you want to get a JD+MBA after college, and show them data about how philosophy majors score highest on standardized grad school exams.

dumbass

> Even then, both of them have had stagnant wages for 10 years
Try the last 30 years

>I want to owe 250k+ and make a ceiling of 70k a year after 7 years of school.

>lawyer or management consultant
>starting salary $100k+
>consulting fortune 500 CEO's on a daily basis
>having an actual interesting life and experience worth writing about

but hey, have fun dying in your cubicle, faggot

>If you read Huntington

Which is not a good idea.

Well you're going to work for 40 years though. Paying off 250k in debt is literally not a problem at all if you make 70k a year.

>If you're European you can easily support yourself with a part-time job while studying in uni, which you should do.
Reminder that anything south of Rome, west of Bordeaux and East of Vienna isn't Europe

nice fantasy

Pic related

your parents are good people.
you should listen to them

Math, if you're up for it. CS is a meme, don't do that.

Why the fuck are you talking to them about it? I write, I have 6 books self-published, and one of my parents don't even know I've written books while the other only knows I've written more than one. Neither of them know of my pseudonym, nor the names of my books, but I'm making a bit of money from my books already. I'm most certainly not going to be a 'great writer', after all I'm only writing genre fiction and most of it thus far has been zombie-related, but at the rate things are going I anticipate being a full-time writer in around 10-22 months. I've more-or-less averaged a book a month lately though I don't think I can maintain it, none the less even a book every TWO months is a very respectable rate.

So just write. Don't tell your parents jack shit. Write in your spare time, self-publish, pursue traditional publishing as well if you want, but just fucking write. You don't need to go to College to write. Well, if you want to become a 'great writer' as you say, and pursue philosophical works, then in that case yeah, you might need College and/or University, I don't know. My advice is to continue doing whatever you're doing. Work, make an income, get on your own two feet, and write something. Even if it's just fiction. I don't care if it's romance, drama, comedy, or what have you. Get some experience in writing, it can also eventually make you a little bit of money. Perhaps share some philosophical ideas you have now to see how they do. Make it free instead of costing money; try to get some reviews.

Anyways, that's my view on the matter. Show that you have what it takes to be a writer, before you pursue being a 'great writer'. As for me, I just write about whatever I find interesting, and I'm lucky in that some others seem to find it interesting as well. Since mid-March I've made over $100, and it feels pretty fucking good. Most self-published authors don't make $100 in their first year let alone in just the span of about 2 months so it's a damn good start considering I started writing books less than a year ago.

>if they send the money back home while they're renting I'm genuinely surprised they can afford to save while making ends meet when they're on £7.20 an hour even working 60 hours a week

They share housing. Its not like its one immigrant to a flat, its more like 4 all paying the rent together. They don't stay here all year around and its not permanent, so they're willing to put up with a few shitty months for larger returns.

>west of Bordeaux
????

this

My parents actually WANT ME to major on philosophy. I think they are retarded. they know they are not rich. Don't know what to do, lads

Same boat but I just finished junior year of chemical engineering. Good luck, bro.

Don't do anything that isn't practical OP.

Don't even bother with college. Drop out and go into trades, then work 40 hours a week doing manual labour while bitterly complaining about it and your position in life. Then work this same dead end job for 30 years and be surprised when it doesn't go anywhere.

And spend half your monthly paycheck on drugs and alcohol so you can kill the pain and anxiety of living paycheck to paycheck.

Because that's how life really is and if you're even daring to dream of doing anything you're probably just a trust fund faggot who doesn't understand how the real world works.

you should double major whichever of computer science, stats, physics, or math you have the aptitude and interest in, and philosophy
go full AI

/thread

Lol what the fuck

>Since mid-March I've made over $100

Kill two birds with one stone and take Law.

Takes time to become a full-time writer. That, or a lot of luck. Not many people 'strike gold' as it were and get a best-seller with their first work a la J K Rowling or that chick with 50 Shades of Gray.

Besides, over $100 in two months within the first 7 months of being a self-published author is typically more than someone would make with traditional publishing, in which the first 7 months is often spent waiting for the traditional publisher to read the manuscript, HOPEFULLY accept the manuscript (unlikely), have it edited, have a graphic designer create a cover, get it printed in a mass-produced manner instead of printing on demand like with CreateSpace, and then ship/distribute it to the outlets across the country.

A writer can get self-production on the go meanwhile they wait for all that stuff to go on, but it can take potentially years for a first-time author to find an agent, get taken by a reputable traditional publisher, and so on and so forth. By the time I'm at my two-year mark I'll likely be making several hundred per month, potentially even at over a thousand per month.

>By the time I'm at my two-year mark I'll likely be making several hundred per month, potentially even at over a thousand per month.
If every single one of your books continues to sell reliably the same amount, not being knocked off the top slots because they're old and all the people who spend their money frivolously on crap ebooks have already bought it. I think you're getting a bit ahead of yourself.

Spain and Portugal

CRAWLING IN MY SKIN

Dad, calm down...

Most great writers didn't major in literature or philosophy. Teach yourself in your free time.

1. get a mathematics degree
2. pursue writing and philosophy on your own

>you will be asking your siblings to pay for your phone bill because you are hoping for a call back on a job at the local hallmark gift store

Recent Philosophy grad here, this is literally my life right now desu

Please kill me.

>Poorfag problems

So far my best-selling book is still my oldest one, though the sequels are doing very good as well. The other three books are doing 'ok'. Most of the money I'm making is in my trilogy, which will become a quadrilogy sometime. I've left it alone for now but the4th book is about 25% finished.

it is. i dont know about the us laws, but in europe they'd have to pay for their sons education

And Oxford.

>Just go to trade school
t. actual, literal pleb