What are you going to do with an English major?
“What are you going to do with an English major?”
…is always the follow-up question I get every time I tell someone that I’m an English major. That question is kind of scary because I ask myself the same thing all the time.
Being an English major makes me feel like I’m standing at a crossroads in the middle of nowhere. Everybody else seems to have their own map and destination, like they’re following a carefully planned route. Nursing—nurse. Accounting—accountant. English—writer (??). At least, that’s what people usually think.
But before I talk about where I’m going, maybe I should start with how I got here. I know figuring out the next step after this major is what people usually focus on, but why don’t we start with why I chose it in the first place?
Somehow, a childhood full of books and a love for learning English led me here.
I grew up reading books, many in English, and I’ve always been fascinated by the English language. My parents never really pushed me toward the paths that people in my community often encourage. They cared more about what I genuinely wanted to learn. Somehow, a childhood full of books and a love for learning English led me here.
When I was sixteen, I co-authored a testimonial book with my uncle, and that became one of the biggest reasons I wanted to learn more about this thing called writing.
So I applied to Calvin’s English: Writing program without really knowing what to expect, or even what I was supposed to get out of it.
In my early classes, I felt incredibly intimidated. It seemed like everyone else had a head start. They connected through books they had already read, they knew how to discuss literature, and they always seemed to have something insightful to say about our readings.
The older I get, the more I understand how the world works. Junior year came around, and that’s when I realized how difficult it is to paint a picture of my future.
Natasha Jayaputra with author Barbara Brown Taylor at the 2026 Festival of Faith & Writing.
When I said I wanted to be a journalist, or a writer, or an editor, I never thought about how much I’d make, or if I could even survive in a job like that. Back then, those jobs felt exciting because they were the only careers I could imagine for someone who loved writing. I didn’t think about stability, visas, healthcare, or any of the practical questions that come with adulthood.
As I got older, those questions became harder to ignore.
It wasn’t that those careers were impossible or unimportant. I just realized that I had been looking at my future through a very narrow lens. I only knew a handful of jobs that seemed connected to writing, and suddenly those few options felt overwhelming.
Then, I started to blame myself.
I blamed myself for not being smart enough to pick another major that was more promising; I blamed myself for not being smart enough to at least add another major or minor that could help my future; I blamed myself for not understanding how the world works, or having anyone tell me how the world works, how I would eventually need a job, a career, and a plan.
For a while, I convinced myself that maybe I had made the wrong choice from the very beginning. That maybe it was better to choose a path where I can get directions.
Reality hit especially hard during junior year. Let’s just say I reached a point where staying in the United States depended heavily on my ability to earn my own income. That changed the way I saw the world, my future, and the idea of a dream job. It was the year when I seriously started asking myself: What am I going to do with this major?
For a long time, I thought my major was preparing me for one or two dream jobs, but junior year taught me that it was actually preparing me for many different possibilities.
Eventually, the big question of what I’m going to do with my life turned into action. I started pursuing little projects that sparked my interest, like the podcast I created during Summer 2024, What Does Dad Say About…, creating content on Instagram, and other creative experiments that allowed me to explore different skills.
At the beginning of junior year, I also joined Chimes, Calvin’s student-led newspaper, mostly because I wanted to find out where I actually enjoyed journalism. Being there was genuinely one of the highlights of my college experience. As an Arts & Entertainment writer, I got to write weekly stories about events happening around campus. Every week, I had the privilege of working with an incredible team, and attended performances, interviewed people, and wrote stories about them. It became something I looked forward to every single week. I’d often find myself thinking, “I can’t wait to see this person performing this week.”
I wish I had been able to stay with Chimes for another year, but other opportunities pulled me in different directions, which is exactly the point of this field of study. At the time, I was still trying to figure out what exactly I wanted to do.
Natasha Jayaputra with author Kellie VanHorn at the 2026 Festival of Faith & Writing.
Becoming a Student Fellow for the Calvin Center for Faith & Writing (CCFW), completely changed the way I viewed my major.
The work itself involved so much more than I expected (and honestly, was so cool): event planning, research, data collection, marketing, content creation, book reviews, blog writing, podcast editing, social media management, being a point person of contact for authors Kellie VanHorn & Barbara Brown Taylor during the Festival, and other things behind the scenes.
I began to realize that being an English major isn’t limited to one specific career path.
Maybe you become a publisher. Maybe you work in marketing. Maybe you’re a content producer, a communications specialist, an editor, a nonprofit leader, or something else entirely.
The more people I met, the more I realized that writing exists everywhere. Even the people we invited to speak at the Festival weren’t all writers. They’re filmmakers, artists, business professionals, publishing experts, and people who careers crossed multiple disciplines at once. Working at the CCFW changed the way I saw my major because it introduced me to possibilities I didn’t even know existed.
For so long, I thought an English major was preparing me for a very specific set of careers: journalist, novelist, editor, maybe a teacher. But everything I learned in writing and lit classes, along with other courses to pair like Marketing, PR & Communications, gave me new skills, new ideas, and a new perspective. Eventually, I realized that asking, “What job do you get with an English degree?” might be the wrong question. The better question might be:
What kind of work do I want to do, and how can I bring the skills I’ve gained into it?
Because the more experiences I had, the more I realized that this degree wasn’t pointing me toward one destination. It was giving me tools that could take me in many different directions.
From that point on, my focus shifted. I stopped obsessing over finding the perfect job title and started focusing on collecting experiences instead.
Today, I keep wanting more and more experiences—there’s nothing I say no to—and that mindset has really opened up new opportunities for me. Every experience teaches me something new, not just about what I can do with my major, but about the kind of work I enjoy doing.
Maybe…the point was never to find the right road at the crossroads, but to keep walking, ask for advice from people around me, and take several routes I hadn’t considered before. Maybe it’s about exploring various paths until discovering the most promising or compelling destination—and then curiously heading in that direction.
