An Author's Best Degree #backtoschool
We’ve all been or will be there. What are you majoring in? Why do you pick it? It’s a hard place to be in because there are two schools of thought. Chase your dream with your degree, or the other side of get something that assures you a good job to make sure you can pay back the student loans. How do you decide? Well, I found a good middle ground in my degree. Let me share how I did it, in honor of the beginning of my last full semester.
I have a father who is very big on the practical degree. He started out in his dream major and regretted it not because he didn’t still love it, but it left his wife and son hungry. So he wouldn’t stop me get a more ‘fun’ degree but there was pressure to do the more practical one. And with how much I was spending on college, I agreed. But that didn't mean I was quite ready to give up on my dream yet, and I didn't really believe I had to. My thinking was my degree would help me get my day job while I used my electives to master my dream job.
But I did one better than that. If you’re looking to be an author, listen up. You will need writing skills for sure. So degrees in creative writing or other kind for writing seems wise, and there are lots of writing day jobs, aren’t there? And yes, there are, but they have high competition and a lot of people want them. So I found a more open road that I am thankful for every day I work on this job and my day job.
My degree is in English, Social Media, and Entrepreneurship. Many schools offer this kind of ‘mix degree’ under many names: Universities Study degree, General Studies, a basic Bachelor of Science, to name a few I found googling the idea.
College is best when it’s teaching you principles rather than trying to help guide your art. Most schools most try to make you think their way and indoctrinate you anyway. You’ll find college is best and most helpful at teaching things more solid that creative. This degree allowed me to learn the grammar, voice, and other key skills of writing, the skills to market my works online (skills writers both self-published and traditional published need these days) and Entrepreneurship. All of these skills have been invaluable to me! It helped guide my path defining myself as an author, as a producer in the market place, and increased my social media skills tenfold.
I recommend if for any want to be author going go college. I’d not trade it for anything. I also used my electives to study writing for film and stage, literature, some fun things I wanted to do like dance, and even did enough to almost get a certification in communication wring by choosing electives like Journalism and rhetorical writing. All these classes have been key in growing my skills as an author and writer.
It’s the best way to go and has made me a better writer, a better marketer, and a better person by getting a degree that let me get a really good day job (I work in an office honing my communication writing and social media skills) and have the skills I need to run my writing business as well. It’s the best of both worlds. It was worth every penny I put into it.