What is it like being an English major?
What are common misconceptions about English majors?
What kind of internships and international experiences have majors had?
In a truly broad sense, English as a field of study can be just about anything you want it to be. The department is large and deep enough that, as an English major, you will inevitably get exposure to a multitude of different approaches to the world of English Literature, while at the same time it is flexible enough that you may curtail your course of study to your interests.
Communication skills are, essentially, your mail-in rebate from the Princeton English department for four years of your life (and tuition)! The lectures, precept discussions, and assignments challenge us to communicate our ideas effectively. Our peers and professors give us different interpretations of the works, and listening to them broadens our way of thinking about how authors communicate. Articulating our own opinions and synthesizing an amalgamation of those with the techniques or theories we study in class serves us well in any area we go on to. The papers we write allow us to discover our writing style and technique as we discover those of the authors we quote, disagree with, or admire.
What is it like being an English major?
Being an English major is nothing less than pure joy. Our classes are among the best on campus, our professors are delightful and completely approachable, and the requirements, while more than some other departments, are entirely do-able. While there are 11 requirements ("departmentals"), the department is incredibly flexible and eager to accommodate all sorts of different interests. Two JPs of about 20 pages are required, and often viewed as opportunities to foray into thesis territory—feeling out just where you want to spend most of your senior year researching. For the aspiring poets, playwrights, dancers, and novelists out there, the creative thesis is an incredible opportunity to write a book, a play, or design a production. Overall, the English Program is robust yet intimate enough to accommodate most individual needs and interests.
What are common misconceptions about English majors?
Firstly, we're not all as ridiculously good-looking as the media would have you believe. Some of us are only well above average! Future English majors, use your mind-shatteringly beautiful appearances to sway the hearts and minds of your acquaintances against this terrible stereotype.
Other than that... mostly good grammar, I suppose. We really don't receive any additional training in grammar, but everyone expects us to be experts. It's kind of like when you do something stupid and all your home friends say "Duh-hoi, and you go to PRINCETON!" You just have to end ONE sentence with a preposition and everyone will be all in your grill.
Also, everyone will expect that you have read James Joyce's Ulysses. Very few people have actually read Ulysses, but everyone expects everyone else to have read it. You can use this fact to your advantage by making a nonsensical joke about one of the text's more obscure characters (like Kitty Ricketts!) if the book comes up in conversation. The amount people understand your joke will be directly proportional to their newfound respect for your English expertise.
What kind of internships and international experiences have majors had?
English majors should take advantage of the incredible programs at either Oxford or the University College of London—one can choose to study abroad for a semester or for the entire year, and both options are potentially life-changing experiences. Credits are easily transferred toward departmentals, and the department is happy and eager for English majors to spend time studying literature abroad. Beyond England, of course, Princeton English majors have travelled the world—and there are many opportunities to travel and conduct research in one's own area of literary expertise.
In terms of internships, it is safe to say that just about anything—really, anything—is open to the English major. From publishing houses to newspapers, from the New Yorker to the Wall Street Journal, from business to marketing to politics to teaching, the English major can pursue internships in just about any field. There are some English majors who have graduated and gone on to graduate school, law school, business school, consulting firms, the Hill, Teach for America, and even Hollywood.
Many undergraduates assume that if one is interested in learning in/studying literature in another language, one has to major in Comparative Literature and not English. But you can do just that in the English Department! The key difference is that within the English Department, if you would like to "specialize" in comparative literature, you may do so with just one other language if you wish. In the Comp Lit Department, however, one needs to be proficient in not one but TWO languages other than English. Choose whichever suits your interests and time best.
