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Teaching is definitely something I'm considering. The main question is if I do end up teaching, where I teach. My current university has a 2 year MAT program in French with 100% placement, so I may go that route, but I'm not sure that I want to live in South Carolina my whole life (aside from the year in France I plan to spend next year!)
If you get a Master's degree in French, you'll be able to teach undergraduate French language courses. I have an MA, but never applied to any universities (for higher pay, they may want me to get a PHD which I do not want to do right now).
honestly, I think you should go for another major. I have nothing against foreign language. It's a good skill to have and it's very good as a minor, however, as a major, I do not believe that it will accurately represent a good skill set to an employer. While you may not care what kind of job you get after you graduate, I will tell you that you don't want to be making minimum wage the rest of your life either. All the foreign language majors that are know are either teaching or working retail. There are a lot of colleges that do not have big foreign language departments either. The demand is just not there. I found a table once that showed that foreign language majors were only 3% of all majors. That's not a lot.
honestly, I think you should go for another major. I have nothing against foreign language. It's a good skill to have and it's very good as a minor, however, as a major, I do not believe that it will accurately represent a good skill set to an employer. While you may not care what kind of job you get after you graduate, I will tell you that you don't want to be making minimum wage the rest of your life either. All the foreign language majors that are know are either teaching or working retail. There are a lot of colleges that do not have big foreign language departments either. The demand is just not there. I found a table once that showed that foreign language majors were only 3% of all majors. That's not a lot.
For making money reasons, it may not be the best major, particularly if the language is a Romance or Germanic language. However, if you're studying principally Japanese, Mandarin Chinese, or Arabic at university, you're more likely to find a higher-paying work, even if you do not have a strong concentration area like business, accounting or science to go with it (you usually have to have high degrees to be a translator, though). And don't forget, either, that having a foreign language degree as a native English speaker can open a lot of "lucrative" doors in teaching either English OR the foreign language studied overseas (not so much in Western Europe, though). For example, I was qualified to take on good-paying French and English instructor position in Japan (more than I would make in the US teaching French at the high school or university level without PHD). So, in other countries, a foreign language degree can carry a lot more weight than here in North America; just as a simple "non-practical" major here could be seen as "practical" on foreign soil (some countries still have a bit more respect for education for education's sake than we do here in the US).
(Note: you can make over $100K [tax-free] + housing and transportation included teaching English in the rich oil countries of the Middle East with a lingustics/English degree, even without EFL certification.)
Spanish major here, working on doctorate. I figured out during my (second) MA that linguistics research was quite enjoyable for me, which is why I'm taking the academia route.
Many of my classmates have either gone on to teach or work in government/contractor positions.
I majored in Russian at Middlebury College, and did go on to teach high-school Russian for a couple of years. Later I got into the translation & localization field, and that's where I've been for the past 15 years or so. Not as a linguist, but as a project manager/QA lead.
I was a double major, with one of those majors in a foreign language. While it has never landed me a job (granted, I never applied for directly relevant jobs) I think it helped my resume stand out while job searching. And for those with clearly "useful" language experience, that's got to be a major plus in many situations. I'd probably couple it with another major or a minor, though, just to cover your bases.
honestly, I think you should go for another major. I have nothing against foreign language. It's a good skill to have and it's very good as a minor, however, as a major, I do not believe that it will accurately represent a good skill set to an employer. While you may not care what kind of job you get after you graduate, I will tell you that you don't want to be making minimum wage the rest of your life either. All the foreign language majors that are know are either teaching or working retail. There are a lot of colleges that do not have big foreign language departments either. The demand is just not there. I found a table once that showed that foreign language majors were only 3% of all majors. That's not a lot.
Ummm.... I don't have anything against teaching. In fact, until my senior high school, I had planned to go to college to get a French degree to teach in high school. I've wanted to be a teacher pretty much my whole life.
Money is not the end-all be-all and I personally am not that concerned with having a high salary. I come from a poor background, so I know what it's like to live on "minimum wage". I've lived on it for the majority of my life and I'm completely comfortable living on it in the future as long as I'm happy with the job I have and living a moral and ethical life.
If there's one thing that my parents taught it's that money isn't everything. It's important to be responsible and to have a job and work hard so that you can pay your bills, but excessive money doesn't create happiness.
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