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Current Language Majors


ALERT!  

It may not be too late.

You are young.  There is still so much time to turn back from your chosen path of poverty.  Seniors, my friends and I offer our sincerest condolences.  We've been there.  Take some time today to use a standard search engine to find university majors who graduate with the highest paying jobs.   Next, talk to advisers in the corresponding academic departments.  Warning: your new program in engineering/law/medicine/finance WILL cause short term panic and confusion.  For more motivation to keep you from relapsing into your old major, initiate some romance with a classmate within your new lucrative major.  You'll thank me in five years.  



Already graduated with your B.A. in Sanskrit/Guarani/Chinese Grass Script?

See links below for local support groups.

Just kidding, but the reality isn't much better.   Here are your options:
  1. Path of lease resistance - get your Masters, work as a T.A., then become a professor.  
  2. Applying to be a U.N. interpreter? Unless you studied at Monterey, your chances are zero .  
  3. Apply to be a bi-lingual sales rep for an American company that has customers abroad.  Nice thought, but the job will go to a native speaker, not a college kid who studied it part-time while drinking and playing Guitar Hero full-time.  
  4. Apply to work part-time  as a contract translator or interpreter for a local agency.   Get ready to jump through hoops of testing and certification for low pay.  
  5. Leave all your friends behind and go teach ESL to the highest bidder (as of 2009, probably Korea).
  6. Work as a forensic linguist for the government.  They will pay you to study an obscure language you never cared about.  
  7. Military - Start practicing push-ups and jogging.
  8. Open your own language school or translation service.  You'd better be damn good at SEO, but if you even knew what that was, you probably wouldn't be a language major. 
  9. Beg your uncles and family friends to hire you wherever.  
What should you do with your language talent if not major in it?

HOBBY!  Meanwhile, major in Petrochemical Engineering Law, and keep practicing the language privately.  Or publicly - just promise me you won't waste one cent in a language classroom.  If your university requires it, you are allowed to take the bare minimum.  There are simply too many excellent ways to learn for free!  Make friends with a native!  Chat with a native over skype!  Crack some old-fashioned books!  Tapes! CD's!  Fucking electrocells or whatever the next technology is.  And get it all from the library so it's free.   Having studied languages intensely at a university, I assure you there are plenty of MAJORS who are far from fluent.   If you can add "fluency in whatever" on a resume, no employer will care if you majored in it or not!  

What about my charming and persuasive language professors who recruit majors for their department?

Politely decline.  They are all secretly broke.   If you go to a state university, you might even be able to research the actual salary figures.   Finance and Engineering professors should easily be making FOUR times the income of language professors.   Law and medicine, even more.