Do you have any advice for a sophomore?

[bookwormkmb]

I'm currently an undergraduate sophomore, and have just declared as a Philosophy major.  Ideally, I would probably be an English major, but I attend a small school that has a pretty weak English department.  The Philosophy department, on the other hand, is one of the school's strengths (they run the only PhD program at my university).

My question is

Comments

[roseofjuly]

By 'everything you find alluring', do you mean scholarship in philosophy or English? Are you talking about PhD programs or MA programs?

I'm not in either field, but I should think that if you intend upon applying to PhD programs in English you should probably double major in English. In either field you'll need to learn languages; French and German are probably the most common ones required. You may also want to do an independent study with a professor to both prove that you can do independent scholarship and to build a relationship with a mentor who can guide you and write you recommendation letters.

I would also take classes with an eye to developing scholarship interests. Start thinking abroad broad areas in which you know you're interested (like feminist literatures, or 18th century Japanese literature, or web blogging and new media or something) and start to slowly narrow them down by taking classes in that and figuring out what gets you really excited.

[roseofjuly]

By "everything I find alluring," I meant other career paths besides teaching. It seems as if every time I think, "Oh--that looks like something I would like to do," (writing, editing, library science, museum/archival work, etc) it requires at least a MA. (I understand that this is not an incredibly serious way of thinking about things, but still...it seems that no matter what I decide on, I'll be grad school bound when I finish my BA.)

That being said, the more I think and reflect, the more I am sure that teaching is what I want to do. I'm setting my sights on PhD programs at this point, and preparing myself accordingly. Thank you so much for your advice!

[bookwormkmb]

Oh, sorry--the anonymous comment above is mine! I forgot to sign in before I wrote it.

English+Philosophy Is Awesome.

[ecritdansleau]

I recently graduated with a double major in English and Philosophy, so I'm all for that. It was something I decided before I started college, and it was fascinating to see how it unraveled, as there are many connections between philosophy and literature that I did not initially foresee. If you are interested in going to graduate school for English someday, the philosophy major is a great asset, in my opinion (unfortunately, literature studies might not be as pertinent to going into philosophy grad programs; all they care about is philosophy and often science, whereas English is much more interdisciplinary in general

[narfenugen]

I agree with the others who said to get to know/work for professors now.

There's a couple other things that might help whether you go to grad school or not. First try to get a part-time job related to your field. Perhaps you could work for a student publication as an editor or as a peer tutor. Second, I'd also encourage you to take a couple upper-level classes out of your major because it shows you're well-rounded. For instance, I'm a science and in undergrad I took a handful of poly sci & history classes that somehow related to natural resource issues. I think that having challenging classes looks better than having straight A's. Or consider taking a semester or year abroad to learn a new language.