“Keep trying to find what you love to do… If you don’t know what that is, it’s okay, just keep trying different things and you will find it.”

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“Oh, so you want to be a teacher?” 

If you’ve ever talked to a college student, you can bet that they’ve been asked that at least ten times. In 2024, students and parents alike are increasingly worried about the viability of an English degree in the workforce. After the 2008 recession, STEM fantasies filled the heads of Americans, and images of Starbucks baristas took over what it meant to be a Humanities student. George Anders, Senior Linkedin Editor and author of “You Can Do Anything: The Surprising Power of a ‘Useless’ Liberal Arts Education,” tells numerous stories of students itching to learn about the classics telling their professors that their “parents wouldn’t let [them]” study the humanities –  “[t]hey have become understandably fixated on starting salaries and the supposedly safe majors that will make college pay off.”

Long gone were the ivory tower ideals of academia, the values of a well-rounded education destroyed. 

All that mattered in this market were job skills. Professional school. Morgan Insley, a student at the College of Charleston from 2009 to 2013, saw this dilemma. She majored in English, studying a wide variety of literature and media, from classic British literature to contemporary Jane Austen mediums. Even though these aren’t necessarily classes that seem valuable to a career-driven market, Insley knew her plan: go to law school and become a practicing attorney.

Insley finished up her senior year and headed straight to the Charlotte School of Law, graduating in 2016. What she quickly found was that the classes most people would have thought were ridiculous were actually what helped her graduate fourth in her class, summa cum laude. Further, she was able to intern for Justice Paul Newby of the North Carolina Supreme Court and was on Law Review, one of the most prestigious extracurriculars in law school.

While her classmates were struggling to adapt to the complex and often counterintuitive new writing styles, Morgan was quickly finding her stride, “and would not have succeeded without [her] English background.”

But Morgan’s writing skills weren’t the only thing she learned from being an English major at the College. She felt that the major opened up her eyes to social issues around the world – especially through Dr. Simon Lewis’s African Women Writers class. As a senior, Morgan chose to write a bachelor’s essay on madness in Black female literature. The ideas that she was exposed to through the English major inspired change in how she saw the world – and not in a corny way, in a real and honest way that pushed her to explore many passions.

In his book, “You Can Do Anything,” George Anders calls these skills the “rapport sector” – the ability to explore all options, and to make “wise decisions amid the ambiguity and murky information that machines can’t stand.” These are the X Factor skills that set English majors apart; the “pioneering spirit” that fits so well into the American Dream.

Because CofC’s English major is so fluid, Morgan felt that “you’re not pigeon-holed into one particular career path or a few – there are so many possibilities.” Morgan has tons of hobbies: painting, reading fantasy literature, and most importantly, keeping a work life balance. 

As an attorney, certain jobs and firms expect that you devote your life to the work. Especially in certain corporate or “big law” positions, it’s out of the question to have a life of your own. Morgan says that keeping a work life balance is her “#1 priority” in the job search, and that after taking on a few jobs where it was impossible to keep the balance, she has “gone out and found positions” that have the right understanding.

But it didn’t all work out easily. Morgan had to work extremely hard in law school to get her place as fourth in her class. Then, her law school dissolved – meaning that her foundation, connections, alumni web, and more – was effectively gone. She still has a network of classmates, peers, and business partners, but it has made things harder, especially when some people have never heard of her school. Further, she wishes that she had pursued a tax LLM, which is a master of laws that specializes in a certain niche. 

Things have worked out well, though. Today, Morgan works for Blanco Tackabery in the Trust and Estates practice group, living in Mt. Pleasant. She is also well versed in real estate, corporate counseling, and business formation. Her work deals with clients going through intense situations, often coping with grief in their own ways. 

Morgan wanted to give a piece of advice to current English students: focus on finding fulfillment in your professional life, because it will bleed over to your personal life.