By the time this post goes up, I will be a week into my twenty-fifth year. Celebrating being both halfway through my twenties and a quarter of the way to a hundred gets you thinking.
Said thinking has made me realize: I have beef with the degree I got. Kind of. Let me explain.
The older I’ve gotten, the more instances of double consciousness that have piled up in my personal life. I acknowledge my first postgrad job working with middle schoolers put me through the ringer and double-tapped my already-nonexistent desire to work in education, but I also acknowledge I appreciate the impact I made on my students and the mini-community that sprung up between me and my coworkers. I’m happy my parents took me back in with open arms when I graduated, but I’m also fiending for the means to move out on my own. My closest friends live lives that mean I’m not in especially close contact: they live out of state, work intense jobs, are married with a kiddo on the way, or in the case of my friend Kali, all of the above. I’m so grateful that they’re in my life, but if I could wave a magic wand and make them my next door neighbors with forever open schedules, I would.
I also semi-recently read Lost in Thought, a book where public intellectual Zena Hitz makes a case against the supposed uselessness of liberal arts and says we should cultivate an intellectual life for our own sakes, not to sound smart to our friends or because better writing skills means the perfect cover letter for that six-figure job. I certainly don’t disagree with any of Hitz’s conclusions. That’s where the double consciousness aspect comes in. (Heck, would I even know what a double consciousness is were it not for my liberal arts degree?)
But.
I knew from day one of getting an English degree that I wouldn’t have the straightforward career path that I would have if I got, say, an engineering degree or a nursing degree. The fact that a stereotypical English major job—or any job, for that matter—didn’t fall in my lap right after graduation isn’t my problem. The mixed messages are.
It’s an old joke that an English degree is useless. Avenue Q having a musical number literally titled “What Do You Do with a BA in English?” is the verbalization of an age-old question. But, as an English major, I’ve also heard a lot of the opposing argument, that an English major is the first brick on the road to success. I’ve practically memorized the rhetoric by this point: English majors are in high demand. They’re the new hot commodity in the job market, more in demand than, say, business majors. Big, money-making industries—tech and software—are eager for English majors, and if they’re not, they should be. And while I appreciate the sentiments, in my experience that’s what they are: sentiments. Clashing with reality. They are as real as the “hOt sInGleS iN yOuR aReA!” and the “aNtI-aGiNg TrIcKs DoCtOrS dOn’T wAnT yOu To KnOw AbOuT!” in those annoying sidebar ads. If companies are giddy at the prospect of hiring someone with my credentials, why did it take me nine months to get my first job and five months to get the job I got hired for while typing up this post? If an English degree is worth its weight in gold, why are there jobs I applied to two years ago that I still haven’t heard back from?
And here’s where the “Kind of” in “I…Kind of Hate My Degree” comes in. As much of an uphill battle as putting my degree to use has been, I don’t regret getting it in the slightest.
Halloween night of 2019, my friends Jelz and Britt drove me back to my apartment after the Halloween party we’d gone to wrapped up. On the drive back, we got to talking majors. Britt asked me about my degree, and for some reason, five years later I can still remember my response word for word: “Britt, if I wasn’t sure about my degree, I could have commuted to Wayne State for a sixth of the price.”
I still stand by that.
I picked Calvin because it was a perfect fit. I got a creative writing degree because I love writing and a Spanish minor because I love the language and want to know more about Spanish-speaking cultures. Writing is what I hope to do for a living, and I would and currently do it all the time unpaid. Also, a few months back I listed off the five people I consider my best friends. Three of them—Kali, Brooke and Rodney—I wouldn’t know had I not attended Calvin, and another one, Cami, attended Calvin with me, which deepened our friendship. Despite the large price tag that attending Calvin came with and the diminishing returns I’ve gotten in these first few years of postgrad, for the reasons above I can’t truly regret my decisions to attend Calvin and major and minor in what I majored and minored in.
So…what do I hate?
I hate the job market that acknowledges the skills I have are valuable but don’t reward them with consistent, well-paying work. I hate the people at the top of the economic pyramid that have made artificial scarcity and playing games the norm in the hiring practices of today. I hate that in the modern world the point of higher education has been reduced to how much money and prestige it can net you. I hate inflation.
Capitalism. Capitalism is what I hate.
But let’s be real, “I Hate Capitalism” doesn’t hook you the same way “I…Kind of Hate My Degree” does.
Noah Keene graduated from Calvin University in December 2021 with a major in creative writing and a minor in Spanish. He currently resides in his hometown of Detroit, Michigan. He spends his free time reading and putting his major to good use by working on his first novel. See what he’s reading by following him on Instagram @peachykeenebooks and read his other personal writing by going to thekeenechronicles.com.
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I feel this. Job market sucks for sure. Especially for those of us who aren’t clean cut cogs for the machine. Thanks for sharing <3
The number of times I’ve said “I wish I just liked nursing or taxes!” in the few months since I graduated is honestly uncountable lol — this piece just puts more eloquent words to the frustration. Thank you!