I have both a BA and an MA in English and Creative Writing. My doctorate in mass communication used a great deal of what I learned in my English major (not to mention that it helped further develop my research and writing skills). I could see so many connections that people coming out of sociological backgrounds couldn't see until I pointed it out to them.

I chose to go the mass comm route for my doctorate for two reasons: I needed something more practical more likely to secure an academic appointment to teach; and most importantly, I felt that my deeply introverted nature that had explored the world through books for 35 years needed something that would pull me out of what had begun to feel like "navel gazing." I wanted to be a WRITER, and I felt I needed to know more about living people from THEM rather than from books alone (tho books alone is far better than experience alone).

Unfortunately my body and my psyche made it impossible for me to follow the "born teacher" in me, at least in formal ways that make you enough money to live on.

But despite many years of not being able to get a full time teaching job when disaster struck in California when Reagan was elected governor, I have never regretted my studies. Bottom line, I firmly believe it made me a better person than I would have done otherwise.

Most of all, when you spend a great deal of time immersed in stories that push you to figure out human motivations, I believe it teaches COMPASSION. You have to be open to developing that, of course. There are English majors who've actually killed people... But it is far rarer than in many other fields.

It teaches you to work hard at trying to understand people's motivations and desires...in colloquial terms, "what makes them tick."

If there is anything this world needs right now, it is more human beings with compassion for other human beings, and for all living things as well as the environment that makes life possible.