What Do You Do With a BA in English?

NEW JOB - WOOO HOOO!

This is my last month of 800 # hell.

^______________^

I applied for two jobs down the hall. One position provides support to our satellite locations and the other gives academic help via email to students. The first one pays $2,500 more, but, like the idiot I am, I decided I'd like to have an enjoyable job for once. So in February it's goodbye Callcenter, hello Academic Support!

*breaks to buy chocolate*

Should have gotten a Snickers... the M&Ms just aren't hitting the spot.

Anyway, new job.

Things I'm looking forward to:

Coming in at 9, not 8:30.
Being able to do things after work because I won't have to get up before 6 am anymore!
Training - I'll become an expert on the question types that appear on various standarized tests (SAT, GRE, GMAT, most likely).
I'll sort of be teaching again (teaching SAT prep was the only job I've ever had that I liked)
I can yell at students all I want and they won't be able to hear me!
Training myself not to be a jerk about run-on sentences. (Let's see... you're having difficulty with the writing section and you don't know what a clause is? Hm........) Being a grammar nazi (which I am NOT... using bad grammar is fun sometimes and using correct grammar 100% of the time can alienate ppl) is very stressful.

But I am a grammar nazi to some extent. Yesterday, I muttered something that my coworker overheard:

Me: I hope I don't go crazy.
Jim: Going?
Me: Um..... what?
Jim: You said you hope you don't go crazy and I said, 'going?'
Me: *chuckles* Oh, so you used the incorrect verb form in your attempt to insult me! *laughs in his face*

Poor Jim. He didn't know what to say. But what was there to say?

So I am a little crazy when it comes to grammar. I do misuse "hopefully" all the time, though, and then remember, duh, that's wrong... but I only care so much.

Anyway.

I just got off the phone with an SAT mom who was very confused by the college admissions process. "This is just so confusing," she repeated. I gave her contact info for the College Board and tried my best to address her concerns and listened as she repeated things three times and asked questions that I would have no way of knowing the answer to like, should her daughter start out at a community college and then transfer to a four year school, does the College Board already have her daughter's information online because she took the PSAT (this one she asked about three times), etc.

Mom then mentioned that she is an English professor at a community college.

She just answered my question - What do you do with a BA in English? If she can get her masters and become a professor, why do I think it's probably not that hard?

Labels: work

posted by ariah @ 10:54 AM