Blood Makes Me Squeamish, So... English Degree It Is!

As I am typing this, I am just coming off the tail end of slaving over two huge final exam papers for this semester. Actually, I am coming off the tail end of trying to decide between blogger and Wordpress, but then I spent an hour getting sucked into a vortex of html code, web hosts, and other equally intimidating computer terms that made me just want to go cry in the corner with my leftover school notebooks.

In any case, with the exception of one old fashioned, in class History exam in two days, I am home free after a year of assigned reading and 12 page analysis papers.

This will be the end of what is technically my Junior year of college (I took the scenic route through that trip) and, in addition to all the postmodern papers and literary theory readings, I also made some pretty big decisions this year.

I have sort of assumed for the past couple of years that I would finish my B.A in English and also get a certificate to teach secondary education, which would mean that, at the end of what's worked out to be about 18 years of school, I'd go right back and just teach it the next time around.

This path made sense to me; I have always loved literature and grammar related hobbies (I almost made the background for this blog a crossword puzzle...) The thing is, though, that I have never really wanted to teach. It just seemed like a plausible, safe route to go given my interest in English.

So, after attending an introductory meeting for new students admitted into the School of Education, in which strong emphasis was placed on how the program was designed to weed out those of us who didn't really want to be there, I abandoned ship for what I have known all along I actually wanted to do: publishing and editing.

Still, almost 5 months later, it is difficult for me to say that out loud without hyperventilating a little bit. The process for becoming a teacher was fairly straightforward: make it out of the program and student teaching alive (and with all of your students alive) and we'll give you a certificate. But there is no program offered that makes you an editor or publisher.

Let me be very clear here, when I say editing, I do mean I will edit anything you give to me; I do not just expect to waltz out of college graduation and find a position as editor of The New Yorker. But the actual process of finding any job in this field is much fuzzier. Because the classes I have taken equipped me with a much more vague, general set of skills (as opposed to "How To Successfully Wield a Scalpel 101" or, say, "Teaching High School Freshman to Read") the job market is a slightly trickier field to navigate for me. That can actually work to my advantage (a fact which I have futilely tried to explain to my dad on numerous occasions) but it does mean I'll have to be more aggressive about it (something I am about as good at as performing open heart surgery.)

So this leads me to the blog. It is time that I start sending good English vibes out into the abyss so that I will at least have some credential when I graduate next spring. It may not be a bestselling memoir, but it beats having to show someone my 10 page analysis of House of Leaves as part of my portfolio, right?

Is that what they call samples in the English world? Portfolios...?