"What Are You Going to Do with That?"

English majors notoriously hear this question. It's inevitable. You're sitting around with your family at Thanksgiving or the annual family reunion or Uncle Jimbob's celebratory get-together for his favorite Nascar team or what have you, and everyone wants to know how your life is going. Got a boyfriend? How do you like the city you're living in? How are you doing in school?

What's your major again?

And then you tell them with a big smile because it's something you've loved for as long as you can remember and at last you're building your future around it! And before you can finish smiling, before you even fully register the blank looks on everyone's faces, Uncle Jimbob looks down his nose at you and says, "Well what are you going to do with that?!

I use English majors as an example because I'm majoring in literature and I hear that almost every time I tell new people what I'm majoring (and sometimes the question gets repeated by old favorites). I have a friend who just graduated with his degree in creative writing who gets the same crap. And even though there's a plethora of cool jobs you can get with an English degree, it still feels like a punch to the gut every time they ask.

Who else gets this? What are you majoring in? And what ARE you going to do with that?

I get it nonstop from just about everyone I've ever met, including my own lecturers. I study film studies and I am going to use my degree(s) to get a job at the BFI working to promote and preserve British national cinema, as well as others, with a particular focus on European cinemas of the 1980s because there's really not that much published research out there about it due to it being recent. So as time goes on, I hope to build that database in the library and in a few years when I have the funds, pursue my PhD and publish my own research.

I'm not studying anything at the moment but in the past when I mentioned I wanted to study things like art, photography, English and creative writing, thats the kind of response I've gotten.

I got that a lot. I'm not exactly majoring in it right now, but I'm hoping to be a literature/English Major as well and I want to try and publish a book, or two. I want to do something writing-wise.

I have two friends who are English majors, and as far as I know the answer they give to this question is either, "Fuck, I dunno," or, "Teaching, probably become a professor." I think that one of them wants to write a novel but I'm pretty sure that's not the only plan.

I was a chemistry major and I got this question monthly from my mother, then weekly when I started my senior year. I originally planned on going into forensics (which I still want to do, but certain factors play into whether that is still feasible for me) and always told people that (except for my mother, with whom I would be silent). To almost everyone, that answer sufficed and made sense, giving me some assurance in my major and plan. But like I mentioned, it depends on a few things whether or not I will be able to move forward in this plan.
PS. Everyone always thought I would go into pharmacy or med school when I mentioned chemistry. But my general disdain for the medical field leads me far, far away from that route.

GOD BLESS AMERICA.

Nothing, I mean nothing pisses me off more than this question.

I majored in Sport Management with a triple minor (Public Relations, Communication, and Marketing)

I think people really fail to believe that sports is one of the largest markets in the world. My answer was always very straightforward. I want to work in sports marketing and athlete branding- essentially, I want to work in sponsorships. obtaining and maintaining.

People were so sure I would never get a job. But I interviewed for a job two weeks before I graduated at the worlds largest sports marketing company (IMG Worldwide) and I got the job. I graduated the 10th and I started my job the 12th.

I always love telling the people who thought it wouldn't happen just that.

I’m not currently studying, but I graduated with a Creative Writing + Lit BA not too long ago and I’m saving to do a Writing MA in 2016. Generally speaking though, I don’t get the crappy comments like that? I have a friend studying a science subject and we joke about my degree being fake (we also joke about the institution I attended) but it’s a joke, nothing serious.

I think it was always assumed if I did an English/Writing degree then I’d go into teaching – I now do work in education, but not as a teacher. I’m a school library assistant, I have a waitressing job as well (which suits me fine, I don’t care that I have a degree and spend 3 – 5 days a week asking people what kind of fries they’d like with their meal because I work with some great people and made some good friends there). Tbh my life has been less of a “what will you do with that” in regards to my degree and more of a question of “you have no work experience how are you expecting to get a job”

I was interrogated about this by both my mum and my nanna the other day, simply because I'm doing two folio subjects and two English subjects in my VCE program.
I don't know what I'm going to do, but I do know what I don't want to do, which is important too. I know that I want to go into an art / English related career, not a scientific or mathematical one. I don't see why it's such a big deal, doing more of the creative subjects rather than the academic ones.

I'm not "majoring" because university doesn't work like that in my country, but my college course is Artistic Studies. I mostly hear a lot of "well, it's important to choose a course you like, otherwise you'll never finish it" with a look that says they fully expect me to live off my parents until I'm 30. I don't really know what I want to do exactly, though, but I have a lot of fun ideas: work in an art gallery, do some acting, run an online cultural magazine, organize/promote music festivals, publish a few books, tour in a band. The real question isn't what I'll do, but how, seeing as we don't even have a Ministry of Culture anymore (politics are a joke in this country, sigh)...

I double majored in college in Criminology and Psychology. I got B.S. degrees in both. So, essentially, the answer to the question is very simple.

I'm going to get drunk and cry while holding them. Sometimes I might even just be sober and cry with them, just to change things up.

I get this question all the time, mainly because my family thought I was going to be going into teaching and didn't. I'm working towards a Batchelor of Arts in Commercial Music (so music business / law and sound engineering, essentially). I get my family looking at me as if I'm a weirdo and I also get friends -- most of my friends are studying science or maths degrees, with the exception of my friends from uni -- who discuss how useless my degree is and how I've wasted pretty much four years of my life.

Unluckily for them, I have several career paths opened up to me now, instead of one. Ideally, I'd love to become a sound engineer or a producer, but I don't know how likely that is. Nowadays, I'm leaning more to the business side of things. Depending on what I do my Masters in, I'm looking to get a placement at a record label or somewhere else and work my way in using that. So my two main ideas for careers are sound engineering or working at a record label. Both are definitely possible if I put my mind to them.

I'm currently working towards a BA in Graphic Design, with plans to follow it up with an MA in either Theatre Design for Set & Costume or Scenography. I get the whole "god you're just wasting your time why are you spending this much money on useless degrees" sort of thing a lot, relating to both and usually with some sort of implications that I "squandered" the fact that I'm good at foreign languages and humanities, so I do get a bit sick of it.

Most people I know (especially family members) have asked me what I intend to do with my BA, then when I tell them I'm going into theatre design I tend to get this look of absolute incredulity. The university I currently go to, while good in its own right, isn't massively well known so it's incredibly hard to get into the design industry from, and ultimately it's a hugely toxic as an industry in my opinion, and it's not somewhere I see myself being comfortable at all.

Getting into a Masters program is fairly doable coming from the educational backdrop I do, even though I am aiming high and shooting for some insanely prestigious conservatoire schools, and by the end of both of my degrees I'll hopefully be working in an industry I adore and I fully intend to stick it in the faces of everyone who ever told me I was wasting my time with university.

I'm studying Social Work, with a double minor in Psychology and Justice Studies. My hope is to help rehabilitate homeless or mentally ill youths, and everyone in my family knows this now. They are less concerned with what I hope to do with my degree, and more with my future income. Of course, I'm aware that social workers do not make good money. What my extended family fails to realize is that my primary concern is not (and hopefully will never have to be) my income.

Thankfully, my mom is very supportive. She has lived below the poverty line ever since separating from my father, and understands that there is much more to life than a large paycheck. I'm very grateful for her.