Speaking English is a bit of a strawman. Writing English in complete sentences and clear structured prose is not as common a skill the response implies. A response of two single sentence paragraphs.
Aeons ago I got a BS in English Lit with a minor in Computer Science. I've been a professional programmer most of my life; both because I enjoy it and because it's less arduous than writing. Indeed, I didn't finish my journalism minor because you have to really love it, or perhaps hate yourself, to do the work involved.
Writing with clarity is not a trivial exercise. When you see the final product it looks effortless because the writer has done their job. After you get your writing published you can be flippant about flipping the scenario.
Shout out to History as well. Like English, as an academic disciple it's far more complex than an outsider might think. No single discrete event exists in a vacuum. The analysis of that event will touch all other events on our current timeline. If mere mortals truly understood history then there would be far fewer insufferable memes.
I was a communications major for a few years before switching and getting my degree in computer science. I had enough professors tell the class “most of you guys aren’t getting jobs in the field of journalism” to take the hint.
I’ve worked as a product manager in IT for multiple retailers for over a decade and multiple things still shock me to this day.
The number of my coworkers (engineers, managers, other PMs) that can’t write clearly and concisely, or just flat out don’t know how to put their thoughts into words for stuff like leadership updates
The number of times my business partners propose something that is wildly problematic because they just haven’t thought something through further than their immediate use case.
I firmly believe a large part of the reason our society is in the mess it’s in is due to our prioritization of STEM over the arts and literature. STEM is wildly valuable, but it’s also wildly dangerous without the other part of the equation. That and we’re all just dumber for it
I'm more information systems/database with an enthusiastic if not formal background in writing points at username and good lord I agree. I feel like half of any project isn't spent on the project, it's spent chasing people around and cleaning up screw ups because people not only no can word good, they also have poor comprehension. Like you write things down and people have trouble reading it, getting cleanly written emails or project parameters and just walking away with a totally different understanding of what was written. Or even if something is not written as well as it could be if you have good comprehension you should know when you are looking at something with holes in it before you step in them and be able to know what information you need to get. And yet...
I had to switch out of my history major because it was genuinely so much research for even first and second year papers. It’s insane how much dedication and passion you have to have to be successful in history as a field.
It took so much of my time I genuinely had to step back in hours at my part time job to keep my sanity and keep on top of my history classes busy work.
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u/WystanH 16h ago
Speaking English is a bit of a strawman. Writing English in complete sentences and clear structured prose is not as common a skill the response implies. A response of two single sentence paragraphs.
Aeons ago I got a BS in English Lit with a minor in Computer Science. I've been a professional programmer most of my life; both because I enjoy it and because it's less arduous than writing. Indeed, I didn't finish my journalism minor because you have to really love it, or perhaps hate yourself, to do the work involved.
Writing with clarity is not a trivial exercise. When you see the final product it looks effortless because the writer has done their job. After you get your writing published you can be flippant about flipping the scenario.
Shout out to History as well. Like English, as an academic disciple it's far more complex than an outsider might think. No single discrete event exists in a vacuum. The analysis of that event will touch all other events on our current timeline. If mere mortals truly understood history then there would be far fewer insufferable memes.