COLLEGE MAJORS, LAZINESS, AND IRRITATION - I SWEAR THIS TOPIC IS IN THE VALID SECTION!

post=104407
Uh, you realise there are tens of millions of people who work very high-paying jobs with liberal arts degrees right? There are hundreds of millions of people who have decent wages with regular ol' useless degrees. Trades are good if you can actually GET INTO the actual trade (which is far from guaranteed) and are very well paying jobs if you are able to promote yourself, but many tradesmen are self-employed, which not everyone wants to be.

There are a HUGE number of people who get jobs with liberal arts degrees. If you are really into something and it gets you a degree, go for it. School is hard enough without hating your degree.

I think you sort of missed my point? The demographics of unemployed recent college graduates with bachelor's degrees in the liberal arts are pretty telling: you probably aren't going to find a job if you are 22 and have a Creative Writing or Music degree. While the actual unemployment rate for this demographic is fairly low, recent college graduates are working the lowest-paying jobs available (the same ones people held while in college, at the pizzaria, etc). Read the news, man.

Also, my suggestion was to explore options other than the traditional university experience. Unless your major priority is like . . . university clubs and drinking etc . . . there are alternative ways to go to college that are much more practical in the long run.

Do you have any links to works you've written?

Just so you know, even the best writers still use writing as a supplement to their main job. You likely won't be able to even pay the bills or afford any acceptable standard of living without working a second job on top of writing books. Unless of course, you are

the next J R R Tolkien or Stephanie Mayers

Also, you don't need a creative writing degree to write books. Anyone can write books. Publishers don't care what kind of degree you have. If you're serious about writing for a living, do your research on the field and figure out the right way to approach this (hint: Actually write some full-length novels instead of taking expensive and wasteful courses on writing).

Of course, knowing your attitude, you'll probably just ignore me and be naively optimistic about your chances, so I guess this post is for anyone else who's thinking about taking a creative writing major.

Would you like a little critique on your short story? I'm not into poems, so I didn't bother reading them, but just so you know - your story writing is extremely average.

I noticed some things you could work on. First is this: "Mitsuhide finally let his sword back into it's scabbard, the sharp metal sliding across was like a quick, invigorating song."
That "was" really has no place there because the second part of the sentence becomes a whole new sentence of its own. The "was" accents on "the sharp metal sliding across" being the subject of the sentence, while the main focus should be on Matsuhide's action. I can't really express myself well but this is how this sentence should look like: Mitsuhide finally let his sword back into it's scabbard, the sharp metal sliding across like a quick, invigorating song.

This part: "Mitsuhide patted Gaven's shoulder as he marched past. Gaven stared at the tree ahead, his eyes only halfway open. A gentle breeze darted through the trees, scattering cherry blossoms." Or the whole paragraph actually. There is no flow here at all, it all just reads like:

1. Mitsuhide patted Gaven's shoulder as he marched past.
2. Gaven stared at the tree ahead, his eyes only halfway open.
3. A gentle breeze darted through the trees, scattering cherry blossoms.

You do know words like "while" exist, right?

Anyway, another thing I noticed was weird punctuation at weird places. I really suggest you find a nice simple story, study it and try to see how the author avoided making the mistakes you made.

Mitsuhide finally let his sword back into it's scabbard, the sharp metal sliding across was like a quick, invigorating song.

Again, you can get amazing jobs with liberal arts degrees, the only thing is that they are not handed to you like people expect they are. If you work as hard as you did getting that liberal arts degree on looking for a job, you won't be at Starbucks forever. It's just that the majority of people don't, or don't even know how to if they wanted to.

it's = it is
its = what "it" possesses

You could probably split that up into two sentences too, or use a -- or ; or get rid of the "was" like meh told you to.

EDIT: I really have no opinion yet on college majors, I just wanted to add to Darken's post because I obviously love him so much.

post=104507
Canuck: I trust you haven't tried looking for a job in the US since the market crash in 2008? Well, I imagine you've never tried looking for a job in the US at all, because you're a canuck :-p

Anyway . . . it's basically impossible to get a decent job in the US right now. This is especially true if you don't have specific, highly specialized skills in a particular field. The white-collar job market is flooded with recent layoffs who have a lot more to offer than a plucky 20-something that recently learned a lot about art history. It's not about trying hard; there are countless stories about people who put in literally hundreds of applications without a single call-back.

I wasn't thinking in terms of the current economic climate, this is true. I was including friends who are now in America though.

Yeah, it would suck to look for a job now, wouldn't it?