Bryant Spaeth

How did your time as an English major prepare you for your current role or your career?

My English degree has been incredibly valuable, and as time goes on, I continue to see just how crucial the skills I learned while in school have been to my career path. I often joke that English is a degree in learning, which is something I need to constantly lean on to both understand current best practices for the various business groups I support as well as keeping up to date on the newest technologies we may want to leverage.

Another invaluable skill that you leverage while studying English is critical thinking. In a time where AI is being leveraged by more people, for more use cases, being able to really think through a problem and come to logical conclusions on your own is becoming more important than ever. Identifying logical fallacies, challenging the ever present “well that is just how it is” statements, and checking your own biases are key to being able to provide true innovation and bring tangible improvements in efficiency and usability.

While the English course load is going to help you to gain a lot of these intangible skills, I also focused my studies on direct hard skills that would allow me to get that (sometimes difficult to obtain) “first job” right out of college. Technical writing and communications was the ideal entry into the types of jobs I wanted, so I enrolled in as many technical writing courses as I could, as well as taking various computer science courses to allow me to better understand the technologies I would be writing documentation for.

What advice would you give to someone considering an English major?

English is very much an area of study that will give you back what you put into it. You will take courses that may not seem that interesting to you, but you will learn things you never realized could be so fascinating. Focus on something and keep that in mind when taking your courses. For me, it was working towards being a technical writer. For others, English may be their first step towards law school, teaching, or marketing. If you are using your time working towards that goal you will be able to clearly see how you are improving and progressing after each semester.

Make friends with your classmates, and lean on them when you are stuck, frustrated, or just need a pair of fresh eyes on something you feel you have written and re-written 100 times. I cannot express how invaluable it was to be able to chat online with my group of study buddies when we were all working until 2 a.m. on our final projects some semesters.

Is there anything else you’d like to share?

Have a plan, and prepare for that plan to completely go off the rails and send you down a path you would never expect to go down. As long as you really try to get as much as you can while earning your degree, you will come out with the skills to be able to adapt to any career path.

AI is not going away, and it is already impacting the job market for things like technical writers. However, I truly believe that this is making those soft skills that you will learn even more valuable. Critical thinking skills, written and spoken communication, and (healthy) skepticism are all things that will make you stand out in your career.