What can you do with an MA in English?

[felis_ultharus]

Well, it turns out I passed my exam, so I have all my requirements for my Master's degree.

This means I've completed all my requirements to get my Master's in English.

This means I'm (not-yet-officially) a Master of English. So eat your hearts out, all you peons of English!

Of course, the inability to do anything with an MA in English is proverbial. Can't teach it in high school without an Education degree. Can't teach it overseas without a TESL degree. Can't teach it university without a PhD.

But it's not entirely useless. It can be used to smack people over the head with when they disagree with me about the interpretation of a novel. Then I can say, "Do you have an MA in English?"

I can attend seminars on endangered and extinct languages, and the troubles some languages face against the onslaught of English -- and wave it around, yelling, "Woo hoo! We're number one!"

I believe it also gives me the right to have people who misuse the word "ironic" executed. We have a secret English ninja deathsquad for that.

So it's really not all that useless after all.

Of course, the best use is making people squirm. Even before I got it, saying, "I'm doing my Master's in English Lit" made 90% of the people I told it to either a) list all the books they read recently, to prove they read, or b) offer their excuses and apologies as to why they weren't reading as much as they should. We make people as nervous as priests once did!

Comments

[siencyn.livejournal.com]

You actually can go teach English abroad; the TESL cert is very often optional.

Also, congrats!

[felis-ultharus.livejournal.com]

Hmmm. I didn't realize that.

And thank you!

[jenjoou.livejournal.com]

In Japan I think being a white guy is sufficient qualification to be an English teacher. ;) Seriously though, it's true. A lot of people in my department went to teach English in Asia; usually they only require that you have a University degree of some kind, what kind didn't really matter.

[felis-ultharus.livejournal.com]

I heard it was getting harder for Japan...?

[jenjoou.livejournal.com]

I suppose that's possible, my friends (neither of whom had teaching certificates of any kind or were even native english speakers for that matter) got in two years ago and things can change. And it's not like they take everyone. There are interviews and all that, because an increasing amount of people want to go to Japan, but I never heard anything about making a TESL certificate necessary. Besides there's still Korea, they're always looking for English teachers too.

[seal7.livejournal.com]

I don't know about NOW, but you know Nate went there to teach English with a Bachelor in Lighting Design... so if it's gotten harder maybe they want you to have studied languages at least now ;P

[felis-ultharus.livejournal.com]

Wow -- I heard it was harder than that. Maybe I will check into it. I wouldn't want to live in Japan long-term -- probably the worst place in the world for a crowd-phobic person like myself -- but briefly might be a nice experience.

[seal7.livejournal.com]

For him it was probably a plus that he'd had two years of Japanese. There were interviews beforehand and stuff too.
And, yeah- I'm not sure how long you'd last there. Besides the crowds, there's also the fact that Japanese society is far, far away from being about being upfront with each other and you sort of have to know the 'rules' of interaction to not think they actually mean something is okay when they say it's okay.
Mmm- honestly, I think it'd be much nicer for a holiday, I'd never even think about trying to live there, myself. That's just me, though.