English Lit M.A. student, realized I don't want to work in academia -- What jobs can I do/am I qualified for? How do I even start?
I am a 24-year-old in the last semester of a master's program in English literature (I know), which I started because I thought I wanted to be a professor/work in academia. I did learn one valuable thing from my grad program--I 100% never want to work in academia. Or teach at all, at any level. Now, however, I'm at a total loss of what to do for a job or what careers I can even (or might want to) pursue. I graduate at the end of April, and it's stressing me out-- a) because I need a job and b) because I don't even know what kind of job I would want.
Experience: My BA is also in English, and I have some experience freelance editing and working for two literary magazines--one that was just an undergrad student literary journal, but the one I'm an online editor for now is a national publication housed at my grad school. I also had a brief editorial internship with an online startup last semester, and I've published an academic article & an author interview (and soon will have published a poetry book review). I've worked as a tutor (in writing centers for 2.5 years and as an SAT/ACT tutor for the past year) and as a graduate teaching assistant. I did a little bit of clerical work for an accounting department in undergrad.
My initial thought was to go into editing, specifically trade book publishing, but I'm not at all sure I'll like that. I do love books (clearly), and I want to produce something useful (this is part of my frustration with a lot of literary criticism/academic bureaucratic red tape), but I mostly picked this career out because I have at least some relevant experience and it seemed like an obvious English Major Career. The pay is generally awful, and it would probably require me to live in a big (read: expensive) city. Still, I might like it.
But the kicker is I really want to move out west (preferably Colorado) and start a career that would eventually allow me to make a decent wage (and it is hard to find entry-level publishing jobs in Colorado). I know I'll need to start from the bottom, but I want some potential for upward mobility.
I'm very good at picking up new things/programs, and I'm also interested in the tech industry. I have some basic web experience (with content management systems like Wordpress, editing posts for SEO best practices, basic HTML & CSS, and I'm trying to teach myself Javascript at the moment but haven't progressed too far yet). However, I also haven't had time to build up my tech skills/teach myself programming languages & have no demonstrable experience (beyond managing Wordpress sites & editing web content) or education in anything tech related.
Basically, I'm looking for any and all advice: What jobs do you think I could reasonably pursue? How might I get my foot in the door so I could get a tech job? Have you switched gears after pursuing a humanities MA to take a totally unrelated career, and if so, how did it go/how did you do it?
**TL;DR** I'm an English Lit MA student who doesn't want to be a professor (or teach at any level) and might eventually like to work in tech industry and/or get a job in Colorado or somewhere else out west. (Though I love writing & like editing too). Where do I start/what jobs should I consider?
(edited to change formatting for ease of reading)
Posted Feb 25, 2016, 1:29 AM UTC · edited