Double major Greek/ Latin?

The hardest thing is when you realize that doing this will not lead to any kind of job.

Before the early 20th Century, a college degree was not meant to train a person for a job. A college education was for personal enrichment. To turn you into an educated person with skills in critical thinking to allow you to take up a career in public administration, the clergy or business where you would learn on the job.

There was no intention for a degree to train you for a specific career.

However since the 1940’s the expectation of the public about a college or university degree has changed and a college or university education is now expected to lead you to a career.

Unfortunately the college and university system has not changed with the times.

A degree in Anthropology, Archeology, Art, Art History Creative Writing, Film, General Studies, History, Humanities, Language & Culture, Liberal Arts, Liberal Studies, Literature, Political Science, most any language including English, Media, Music History, Paleontology, Photography, Philosophy, Religious Studies or Sociology is considered a "personal enrichment" degree. Also pretty well anything called “Something Studies”. That is, these degrees are degrees that are meant to enrich you personally in the classical sense of a university education without leading to any specific job.

These degrees sometimes result in a position in academia if you go on to get a PhD though there is an oversupply of PhDs for all the academic jobs that come up in these fields.

However, in today's world where people go to university to enable themselves to get a job and hopefully a career a bachelor's in these fields is essentially useless. With a degree in these fields and a GPA generally over 3.0 you can:

1. Get into law school. However law schools today graduate far more lawyers than there is business for lawyers.

2. Get into graduate school in a different field. Hopefully one without too many prerequisites you do not have. Consider getting a masters in Technology Management. You can make a similar salary to an engineer but you need essentially no sciences prerequisites.

3. Get into graduate school in the same field and eventually into a PhD so you can become a college professor in this field someday. However, there are far more PhD grads in some fields like Philosophy than there ever will be professorships or any kind of teaching programs.

4. Take a teaching qualification, which is usually 2 more years, so you can teach the subject at a public K-12 school.

5. Look for a job in a field where they want you to have a degree without any concern what it is. Where they only want the degree because they want educated people who have proven they can stick with something difficult and see it to completion. Like the insurance industry.

6. If you join the military you are more likely to enter as an officer instead of enlisted personnel.

Do note that if you do go for a more advanced degree, no one cares where you got your bachelor’s degree. Only the school where you got your most advanced degree counts. And that counts for a lot less than the name schools would have you believe.

If your GPA is over 3.0, don’t take a second undergrad degree if you already have one of these degrees. A graduate degree will be more valuable to you.

So, what exactly IS an English major supposed to do after college?

http://www.publicradio.org/columns/prairiehome/pos...

Here is a listing of the average starting and mid-career salaries for most 4 year majors.

http://www.payscale.com/best-colleges/degrees.asp

The ones with the highest salaries are the ones in the most demand by employers. And the higher they pay, the harder they are. And remember this survey only covers the students who got a job in their field of study. The lower paid the job on this list, the few the number of graduates in a particular major got a job in their field.

http://education.yahoo.net/articles/six_in_demand_...

The Highest Starting Salaries of 2010

http://hotjobs.yahoo.com/career-articles-the_highe...

Studying Classics, I do both Latin and Ancient Greek. Both languages are far from simple, but it remains entirely feasible as long as you have a good head for languages, and for grammar in particular. Both languages are far more complex grammatically than western languages (I have little to no knowledge of the grammatical systems of non indo-european languages), and a much greater morphological paradigm to learn (word endings, that is). It doesn't help that while the two languages are quite similar, there is sufficient difference between the two as well as extra complication within each separate language that beyond the basic principles you cannot really use either as a means to learn the other. I don't want to put you off. Both languages are genuinely interesting to study, and with the level of preserved texts undoubtedly rewarding. Would it be hard? Quite probably, of that I will not deceive you. That does not however mean that it can't be enjoyable at the same time.

You'll probably declare a Classics major rather than Greek or Latin singularly. See what the requirements are for a Classics degree; you may be able to fit both the Latin and Greek tracks into your scheme.

It doesn't have to be a double major; simply major in classics. Whether it's hard or not depends on how you do with languages.

It is do-able.

You can give yourself a head start with Latin, by spending your summer immersing yourself with the audio course Latinum

Hundreds of College students use it regularly, even doctorall students and professors use it . Latinum's Adler course, couples with Comenius and Corderius and the other pedagogical materials, can take you to a good level of fluency, but it takes daily application, and a lot of listening.

Latinum's goal is to get you to be able to think in Latin.

http://latinum.mypodcast.com/