6 Essential Job Skills English Majors Aren’t Being Taught in College

Upon completing my English degree, it was about five minutes into my first “real job” search before I started cursing my school, my degree, and everything else on this planet.

Like many recent graduates, I didn’t know what jobs my degree qualified me for, and when I eventually found what those jobs were I didn’t know the skills expected. While now eligible to apply for jobs which didn’t require lobotomizing myself at a cash register, the reality was that I was not prepared for them, and my great nightmare of having to drag a pallet-jack around for the rest of my life began to feel like an inevitability.

In the end, there was nothing to do but learn these things myself. For this list, I’ll be recounting the six most consistent job skills that employers expected me to know, and which nowhere during my college career was I taught.

Ulysses – Book Review

Originally wrote this as a Sample for a freelance book review website that turned out to be a scam. Normally I do not write reviews in formula nor so briefly, and did so only because of the requirements of that application. But regardless; a sample.

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My first Facebook photo; but it does apply

Upon completing James Joyce’s Ulysses I am as compelled to write a memoir of the experience as I am a review. The difficulty of this book cannot be understated, and the labyrinth of its ceaselessly obscure and specific content is like buckshot blasted over an open field, trailing you to the most forgotten of philosophies at one point, well out-of-print fictions at others, and a whole lot more other strange academic nooks besides, often all within the same sentence. Pair this with a purposefully alternating, radically original writing style which routinely yanks the rug from out under your feet the moment you feel you’re getting a grasp, and Ulysses is undoubtedly the most devilish, confounding, and unfriendly novel you will ever come across.

Struggle as it is though, Ulysses is perhaps the greatest book ever written, and while this book will require more than a dictionary at the ready to successfully complete, the extra effort required in no way diminishes the impact of this, however challenging, pristine story of communion.