English or Science for me?

On February 09 2012 23:24 Chef wrote:

I don't think I agree. The sciences and maths have a much higher focus on route learning than on real critical thinking. Definitely you are much better off understanding your concepts and being able to apply them intelligently, but this is not the same thing as critical thinking. I think you were taking a shit on English majors by calling it pedantic, but I agree that there are better options in terms of actually surviving (depending much on the actual job market of your society, though). I can't say anything about if he wants to work in Singapore or what the job market is like there. It would be worth researching, though only lightly since by the time you are done a degree the market will likely have changed again. It happens often that people go into a degree because the field is wide open at the start, but other people thought just like them and they end up graduating together and competing.

It isn't bad to be thinking about this at 15. Sometimes you can block yourself if you don't take the right high school courses, so I encourage thinking about it now. Waiting till later doesn't always work out that well when you realise you're missing mandatory credits. Not everyone has parents to think about it for them and push them a good direction... I encourage you learn about what your parents do, because if you're interested in what they do their references and the people they know in your field will be helpful as well. Not that this is necessary, but it's a pretty good bonus if you can get it... otherwise you have to do all the networking on your own (gained thru, as I said, related volunteer work).

On February 09 2012 23:31 aebriol wrote:
Go for the sciences, and write a science fiction book?

The genre needs more people that actually understands science

On February 09 2012 23:38 PleasureImWallace wrote:
I'm a CS major taking a minor in astronomy, purely out of interest. Coolest, shit, ever.

The depth of which men have convincingly speculated about the origin of the universe and it's formation, as well as all brands of physical laws of the universe is just baffling. Language, and English, IMO, is something that can develop overtime, and is something that you can, and will always develop, but you only have this one chance to invest in learning the sciences

On February 09 2012 23:41 Stratos wrote:
Don't forget that the school you choose is also important. I'm studying biology and I was afraid that I wouldn't like most of the subjects - turns out I get to pick every one of them according to my preferences and my future field of work. If it hadn't been for this I'm pretty sure I'd be out of the school already.

Get to know all the schools you could possibly enter and find one that suits you the best - How long will you have to study? What are the professors like? What can you do once you've finished it?

I didn't know pretty much anything about the schools that I applied to. I was really lucky this time but if I were to choose again, I'd pay way more attention. I wouldn't recommend choosing a better school for a subject you're not passionate about, but if you like both subjects, choosing the better school for you might work. You can find the time to pursue your other passion later.

On February 09 2012 23:51 OpticalShot wrote:
Due to the lack of girl blogs lately, I'll direct my blog replying energy here. charges up DBZ style

My dear fellow TLer, what does your future hold for you?

What I asked just now is actually something I don't believe completely. You alone cannot change the forces of the world, but at the same time, whatever you do is changing the world - albeit at a minute scale. Let's take another approach at this: you will and you must shape your own future, but you cannot shape it in ways that has no regard for the world around you. It's a complicated thing, as I'm sure you know it.

I'm not some seasoned old man who's lived to experience a century of broken dreams and redundant achievements. I'm a young, aspiring engineer - not as young as you are, obviously - and I know I have many years of exciting challenges ahead. What I'm going to advise you about is based on my experiences, and the collection of experiences as told by others around me.

It's true that at the bachelor or even graduate level, English majors are looked down upon. There's no denying that English majors probably have it the easiest, schedule-wise. While undergrads in sciences and engineering are chugging through ~30 hours of lectures+labs in a typical week, those in English and humanities are planning a 4-day ski trip after they finish their 8 hours split between Monday and Tuesday. Past graduation, we hear about that average computer science guy who landed a typical entry-level software developer (more accurately, code monkey) for a salary that already far exceeds the national average, while we... no longer hear about what happened to that English major friend.

Let me make it clear that I appreciate literature, in general. I was a huge fan of Shakespeare, especially Hamlet. Oh how the character grew into my own! Not to be a snob, but my appreciation for English earned me top marks in my English classes. Despite how much I enjoyed the subject, I knew that my career would be in the field of engineering. Despite pursuing music / piano performance to levels of my satisfaction, I knew that my career would be in the field of engineering. The more I learned from the wise words of the experienced, the more it became clear that 'something' in engineering would bring the best out of me.

I am derailing a bit. Shifting back on focus, I feel that it's important to let you know about the factors that helped me arrive at my decision. Job appeal - at its basic level - was one. How cool would it be to play SimCity in 'real life'? Transport Tycoon? Another was about leaving an imprint in humanity. I knew I would be proud of myself as a righteous engineer doing his best to plan, design, and operate efficient urban centres. Also important, and very important, was the money factor. Yes, $$$. Dat cash. No, I do not make 6-figures at my job right now as a junior transportation engineer. I do, however, make a decent amount that is above the national average. In the time of global economic uncertainty and recession in many areas, I was able to secure a job in the field of my choice - while some of my friends are interviewing for retail clerk positions, and some still sitting at home playing Skyrim full-time. You simply cannot ignore the job market when making choices about your future.

Career counsellors will advise you to pursue something that you love. Your parents may tell you that become a doctor/lawyer/engineer is the only way to bring home family honour. Your friends might think a career in eSports is viable (it is only viable for very very very small number of talented individuals).

Whatever you do, make sure you fully understand the likely consequences of your choice. Don't jump into a field with low job prospects and then blame the world for not tailoring to your talents, ten years later. Don't pursue a field with only money in sight then blame your boss for working you like a machine. Where can you find a place where you can accept the consequences of your actions without losing sight of the big picture?

One more, about PhD: the world around, in large, has been suffering from academic/credential inflation. Back a couple decades, a bachelor's degree from a respectable university guaranteed you a decent job, and probably a comfortable life as long as you worked hard. Now, there are countless stories about Master's and even Ph.D's out of choices when it comes to choosing a career - many work at places that don't require anything more than a high school diploma. There are too many post-docs (PhD graduates without proper jobs) that hang around research positions waiting for an extremely rare door of opportunity. What you envision as the authority and prestige of a PhD may not be true when you get there.

Why do you want to get a PhD anyway? Will you enjoy ~9 years of studying and researching during the prime years of your life? Why do you want to be a professor? Behind the surface illusions of a secure career, there are immense pressures for quality research and contributions to the university.

Maybe I'm just a skeptic because I didn't find abstract research a compelling use of my time. Nevertheless, my impression of you is that you're a young aspiring student with diverse interests but not enough vision. That's fine. Your opinions may change multiple times during your high school years. I suggest that you keep your bright mind open to new ideas while forming a better, well-informed vision for your future. As long as you've done enough of that to select a field of study in university, you're on the right path. It is then, during university years, that you should decide whether to pursue graduate level education or a career in the working field.

So best of luck, fellow TLer! Don't decide on English or Science just yet - start forming the vision and make the actual decisions when you submit your university applications.

Also: if you have girl problems PLEASE POST THEM I am dying for more girl blogs on TL. =)

On February 09 2012 23:54 bbm wrote:



To OP, don't fret too much. I didn't know what I wanted to do at uni until after I arrived (when I was 17 wanted to do economics, took a course joint honours compsci + business, five weeks in I changed to pure computer science). Do what you want at the moment, at colllege, at university. Play it by ear, do things on a whim, and don't worry about the future, shit always sorts itself out in the end.

On February 09 2012 23:54 ymir233 wrote:
Oh well if you didn't get perfect grades in English you should just give up while you're never ahead. You're done for man. It's over.

Or you could just work on it (with different perspectives/methods) anyways if you're that much into Literature/English. Nobody said you had to be perfect in high school, and nobody gives a flying fuck about performance levels in high school on your records in the future (aside from university applications).

On February 10 2012 00:12 ABear wrote:
you could always go into a professional school after your BA, so it's not like you have 0 options. also you might want to consider business, which is another pretty good option aside from sciences/engineering

On February 10 2012 00:27 serge wrote:
If you want a well-paying job that requires lots of writing and science, become an engineer. You'll write tons of technical papers.


I know chemical engineers like to joke about chemists being their slaves, working for minumum wage and all. I think physicists are in a similar situation.

I think it's fair to say that a science degree is good for your employment prospects only if you're incredibly good at your science.

On February 10 2012 00:35 Xiron wrote:


Well, where I live you'll get a job in management after your PhD in chemistry and last year 96% of graduates had a job within 2 months.

On February 10 2012 00:52 Xiron wrote:


The difference is for me, that in the end, as a scientist I did something that helps humanity understand the world. It may or may not have a big impact on science, but I for one achieved the goal of evolution ( advancement; besides the reproduction, which does not depend on me studying a science). On the other hand, what could you possibly achieve with studying English
(German for me)? Well, you know how to think critical. But what can you do, thinking critical? Unless you go into politics, there is no other option. Law? Media? Literature? You are better of studying those fields then.

On February 10 2012 00:44 Meta wrote:
Just wanted to say that science is a LOT of work, to be successful you have to be extremely passionate about it. That said, it's also extremely rewarding. Even if only a handful of people ever really see the fruits of your labor, you're always left with a better understanding of some small facet of the universe at large, and once you start doing research, you get the added bonus of knowing that you might be the ONLY person to know about the things you're working on.

I can't speak much on English / arts. I would suppose that to be successful you may well have to be equally passionate and probably spend similar amounts of time on your work as you would in the field of science.

On February 10 2012 00:46 IMBensin wrote:
I have a university degree in English. Honestly, I can't say i would take it back. I enjoyed my time. I tried teaching a little after graduating, and that I really didn't like it. Maybe teaching English in a country other than the US would be more interesting/rewarding, idk. I thought about moving to a place like LA or New York City and start a writing career, then I realized I wanted to get married and start a family soon. I couldn't afford to be poor. Honestly though I could n't have predicted that when I was in university let alone highschool. I ended up switching fields into nuclear technology. So in other words I think science and technology are much more financially stable and rewarding fields.

So my honest recommendation, is to not choose one or the other. You seem like you have good work ethic, you can dual major. Or major in engineering, math or physics and minor in English. At US universities at least this is not only possible but the structure of required classes encourages it. Not everything has to be one or the other.

On February 10 2012 00:50 jrkirby wrote:
Two things:

1) science > english always

2) Your camera has too many pixels. You either A) need to scale down your photos, or B) need a lens with a larger focal length. I'm learning in quantum physics that if your focal length isn't long enough, then the light at two nearby spots can't be differentiated because of angular resolution. I can clearly tell that your camera doesn't have a good enough lens, so you should scale your pictures down so you can get just as good of a picure in less data.

On February 10 2012 01:53 Kickboxer wrote:
I have a master's degree in English. The studies involve a great deal of grammar and unless you want to become a professor there aren't too many high-paid jobs. Translation and interpreting used to be lucrative professions but technology is making it possible for people with little knowledge to compete with experts.

English is a good course if you sincerely love poetry or prose and want to marvel at the amazing sensibility of great spirits.

If you want to discover new things and dissect them take science instead.

On February 10 2012 02:45 DreamChaser wrote:
Hey Neil deGrasse came to my school...before i was enrolled fml.

On February 10 2012 02:50 nath wrote:
i really think you should explore both options and go for whatever makes you happy, if you want to go to grad school and get a PhD, either option is fine for the job market, dont listen to people who just got a BS in liberal arts and complain about not having a job. getting a PhD in English will net you a decent job at worst, and a tenure-track professorship at best. getting a PhD in science only makes that professorship a bit easier to find and slightly higher paying. So I would just go with what you love. If you want to get a PhD and be a professor then you gotta LOVE what you do, for that kind of profession its more important than just an office job or trade where you can just be like 'well i do this to make money'; being a professor means you actually extend human knowledge of a topic and you really have to LOVE what you do.

if a circle represents the current knowledge of a field/discipline, a PhD is when you go to a point on the circumference and push it out a tiny tiny bit with your contribution to the discipline/thesis/research.

On February 10 2012 03:27 babylon wrote:
Having not have read any of the responses yet:

My informed opinion is that you shouldn't think about this until you get into uni and actually take some classes in the subjects, because university's a whole 'nother sort of beast across all disciplines, IMO.

My uninformed opinion is to not major in English. It teaches you no valuable skills that you can't get from other majors (which in addition to teaching you those skills, teach you something else), and it teaches you nothing you can't learn yourself if you really have the passion and drive for it. I'm not saying this as a snobby hard science major or anything. (I'm not a hard science major, for one thing.) It is just, as someone who has considered majoring in English because of a.) a love for literary analysis and b.) a love for writing, I reasoned that it is something that I can and have done on my own free time. You can find shit tons of academic papers floating around the web to give your brain stuff to gnaw on, and if you truly love writing and expressing yourself, you'll do it without having a professor hovering over your work.

The same can be said of most subjects, of course -- if you really like it, you'll be able to self-study -- but it's much easier to self-study something like English over self-studying something like physics, and I find that having a professor benefits aspiring scientists/mathematicians/engineers/archaeologists/philosophers/anthropologists (throwing in the last few to show that I don't mean "just scientists") more than they do English majors, unless you're specializing in an area that's very, very specific and very, very niche.

Anyways, my two cents.

(Also, linguistics is the study of language, not the study of English (though it does go into that depending on your area). I haven't found many English majors who like linguistics though ... more philosophers, computer scientists, mathematicians, and language people who are interested in the structures of the language they speak are more suited towards linguistics majors.)

On February 09 2012 22:53 Gheed wrote:


The skills you learn as an English major (researching, thinking about a piece of work, making connections, drawing conclusions and writing those conclusions as a coherent point etc.) are skills that every field uses. Unless you just adore literature, there is no particular reason to be an English major over anything else. I'm not shitting on English majors, I'm just saying that unless that's all you want, there are better options.

On February 10 2012 04:49 Xiron wrote:


College is a way to pursue things they enjoy and invest a huge ass amount of time and effort into it.