Life After English Major
I haven't graduated college--yet. I've got one year left (and, to be honest, if I really wanted to, I could probably graduate this winter. If I'd tried harder, I could've graduated last year), and I will be graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in English, minors in French, History, and Creative Writing.
Basically, the most frequent questions I get are "Are you going to be a teacher?" and "What are you doing with that?"
Until very recently, the answer has been "Maybe grad school..." or an awkward laugh and a joke about living in my car. At the moment, I have a job at my local library, which I do enjoy quite a bit. It's a really good job, especially for a college student, and I've been kind of resigned to living there forever, never leaving North Dakota, never leaving the county I've lived for most of my life.
But fuck it, man, I'm moving to Frenchville.
Okay, maybe not Frenchville, exactly, but now I do have a plan, and that plan is to save the hell out of everything I make, live with my parents for a year after graduation, keep saving, and then buy a cheap house somewhere in the continental US, load up a U-Haul, and go live there. Start a life somewhere else (hell, it might be in North Dakota, if there's a cheap house out in Rugby or whatever), find a job, and go. This might sound like a hasty, incredibly poor financial decision, but my plan is to have enough saved to buy a house outright. I do have student loans, but not that many--I've managed to escape without taking out more than federal loans, so what I do have won't have as steep of an interest rate as private loans.
And I am 100% willing to live in squalor, to be honest. I am fortunate enough that my parents aren't poor right now, but we live like we are a lot of the time. I grew up pretty poor. This is pretty much what my parents did--our house was roughly $24,000 dollars. My mom's last few cars have cost more.
So I'm moving to Frenchville. I dunno what I'll do there (wherever "Frenchville" may be; it might actually be Frenchville, but probably not), but I'll be there with a cheap house and complete freedom, and that's what I'm doing with my English major.
Basically, the most frequent questions I get are "Are you going to be a teacher?" and "What are you doing with that?"
Until very recently, the answer has been "Maybe grad school..." or an awkward laugh and a joke about living in my car. At the moment, I have a job at my local library, which I do enjoy quite a bit. It's a really good job, especially for a college student, and I've been kind of resigned to living there forever, never leaving North Dakota, never leaving the county I've lived for most of my life.
But fuck it, man, I'm moving to Frenchville.
Okay, maybe not Frenchville, exactly, but now I do have a plan, and that plan is to save the hell out of everything I make, live with my parents for a year after graduation, keep saving, and then buy a cheap house somewhere in the continental US, load up a U-Haul, and go live there. Start a life somewhere else (hell, it might be in North Dakota, if there's a cheap house out in Rugby or whatever), find a job, and go. This might sound like a hasty, incredibly poor financial decision, but my plan is to have enough saved to buy a house outright. I do have student loans, but not that many--I've managed to escape without taking out more than federal loans, so what I do have won't have as steep of an interest rate as private loans.
And I am 100% willing to live in squalor, to be honest. I am fortunate enough that my parents aren't poor right now, but we live like we are a lot of the time. I grew up pretty poor. This is pretty much what my parents did--our house was roughly $24,000 dollars. My mom's last few cars have cost more.
So I'm moving to Frenchville. I dunno what I'll do there (wherever "Frenchville" may be; it might actually be Frenchville, but probably not), but I'll be there with a cheap house and complete freedom, and that's what I'm doing with my English major.
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