Top 10 Easiest and Hardest College Majors in the Country

“Spending four years studying a language you’ve been speaking your entire life… is the laziest choice ever.” As an English major, I don’t take offense to this statement, but I disagree with it in its entirety. In the interest of dispelling this harmful stereotype, I’ll try to lay out a comprehensive defense of English majoring as best I can. Jack, I ask that you consider revising your original post in light of these insights.

First thing you ought to know about English is that it’s a far more multi-faceted degree than what your blog implies. Studying English isn’t just about honing one’s basic linguistic skills. Most English educations focus on literary analysis, or the break-down of culturally and/or intellectually significant works of literature such that new, valuable knowledge may be gleaned from these works and applied to real life. This process yields a multiplicity of invaluable products for the literary analyst; an enriched understanding of human nature and the surrounding world, an improved efficient reading and writing skills, and a sharpened argumentative prowess are just some of the endless potential products of a rigorous English education.

Endeavoring to devote one’s college education to these ends takes strength of altruistic character, especially given the anti-humanities stigma if today’s college-centric discourse. It takes cajones to major in English when seemingly everyone has jumped on the “liberal arts degrees are worthless” train. The mechanics of the degree itself, contrary to popular opinion, are also extraordinarily demanding. English is a degree that by definition centers around reading and writing. By the time they’ve graduated, students of a strong English education will probably have completed not only a bookshelf’s worth of reading material, but also a 40 – 70+ page portfolio of essays (and creative material for students emphasizing creative writing). English majors simply cannot slack off because they’re reading and writing all of the time. And both processes, when undergone properly, require extensive thought beyond the rudimentary act of absorbing or producing words on a page. There’s a reason not everyone “got” The Great Gatsby or To Kill a Mockingbird when they read such texts in high school – classic literature is f*cking hard to understand! Successful English majors don’t just put in the time to read and write the voluminous texts with which they interact. They put in extra hours to think critically about how they’re approaching the text in question. Even for the best English students, one five-page chapter in a Dostoyevsky novel can balloon into an hour-long rabbit hole of conspiracy theorizing if the chapter is nuanced, subtle, and/or self-contradictory enough. A ten-page paper can be similarly challenging if the paper itself covers a difficult subject. Hence, both a surface-level acknowledgment of the sheer volume of work done by English majors and a consideration of the surplus efforts necessary to accomplish this work refute the paradigm that English is an “easy” degree.

I hope that my thoughts have made sense thus far, and that any English majors, pre-majors, minors, or potential majors who feel attacked by the original post now have something to reassure them that their choice of major isn’t “lazy”. The same is true, I should point out, of nearly all of the degrees listed. I’m not qualified to defend an education degree, but I know that what makes a college degree a college degree is that it takes work, time commitment, and endurance. More importantly, whether you’re majoring in business or anthropology, your college education is what you make of it, both in terms of your material success and the deeper merits of an intellectually stimulating program. A sociology degree whose achievement brings the sociologist student a competitive GPA AND the joys of a worthwhile education is priceless compared to the average marks and lackluster personal development earned by a bored, unengaged business student.

Soapbox rant over. Thanks for anyone who made it all the way through. Jack, if you read my comment, by all means respond as you will… but please, for the love of Shakespeare, at least write something other than ‘majoring in English is the “laziest thing ever.”‘ Hasta luego.