He said the WORST thing you can do is major in English! And now I have the answer to all those people who kept asking me why I didn't major in English. The truth is, college English professors care more about "literature" than anything else and their rules for hwo you should write are sometimes flat out wrong.

The other problem is that all your focus will be on writing, and not on living. Even assuming they did teach you something useful about writing, what do you think you're going to write ABOUT? Writing about writing is pretty boring.

So what should you major in? Whatever you're interested in, and especially whatever will get you a stable, paying job after college. "But I want to wrtei for a living!" Yeah, me too, and I'm still working on it, but let's be realistic. This is not an easy field to break into. It takes time, effort, and luck, and even then you might not get paid enough to make a living at it! A first novel probably won't bring in enough money to pay for your living expenses for any length of time, and you probably spent years on it.

Personally, I majored in Computer Science and Psychology, mostly because I didn't know what i wanted to do and ended up getting enough courses for two majors. The Computer Science pays the bills, and has taught me a few things about people (in the work force) that I can write about.

A degree in humanites will get you nothing. It won't improve your writing, at least not by much, and it certainly won't get you a job.

In addition to whatever you choose for college, read and write. Perhaps your education would be best if you majored in something for a future career while taking courses that would help you in a particular field of writing. I talked to a musician once who took a class in poetry only because he needed to add an extra class. He later said it was THE best course he could have taken for how it helped him with his music(and I'm guessing lyrics). So you might never know until later how much a little knowledge of, say, geology might help you with an archaological setting. But think career first ) Get something stable first.

Then write, write, write.

I don't think anything will improve and mature your writing skills better than to just sit down and write. However, you might be making errors that you are totally unaware of. Read books on writing. Then read them again. These message boards are wonderful at times for being able to look for certain things in your stories--crutch words, for example. Would you have noticed them on your own? Have other people read your work and give you honest opinions about not just the story, but the writing itself. I will never mind it when someone reads my story and doesn't like it, BUT I want to know why so that I can improve it.

I must state that I disagree with some answers listed above. I think an English degree is an excellent degree...and one that can be a great launching pad to so many other things.

Anyway, the key, I believe, is picking a liberal arts college/university that teaches you to READ, WRITE and REASON.

Once you learn to do these three things well, you can write about *anything,* no matter what your major is.

I cast my vote for you going to a four-year, liberal arts college or university. Immerse yourself in everything the place has to offer, open your mind to every inch of its diversity...and then put your pen to the paper or your hands to the keyboard and WRITE, using every bit of every thing you learned and all of what you thought/experienced/dreamed and still dream.

If you're destined to be a writer for a living, you will be. No matter what your chosen degree.

As for being helpful in preparing for a career in fiction, it really depends on the program. The one I attended, through Brandeis University in Massachusetts, allowed me to work with some top authors and gave me a solid foundation in storytelling and editing that I still use today.

I can't say every program out there is as useful(although I've also heard really good things about Carnegie Mellon's writing program) but you shouldn't dismiss them out-of-hand. The nice thing about a liberal arts program is that no matter what you major in, you can still take classes in other areas, such as Medieval History, to give you the well-rounded education to which Christine referred.

Teaching could be very good, though it pays little. You would have little time to write during the school year, but in the summer you could have mad writing sessions for a couple of months.

I considered writing professionally straight away through journalism, technical writing, manuals, and the like, but I decided not to. I think I was afraid that if I went to work and wrote forty hours a week then I wouldn't want to write for myself when I came home. If you think that wouldn't be a problem for you, then go for whatever degree can get you there.

Just don't do the one thing I did wrong in college...stop writing. Ugh, I thought my dream was over because I couldn't figure out how to write novels full time and get paid for it. I figure ok, here's my life, I'm going to work with computers (at least in my case). So I pretty much stopped writing. College was still valuable, I still learned a lot and soaked up all I could, but I missed out on four precious years of practice!

The pay differs depending on where you teach - my understanding is that Connecticut and Pennsylvania pay well. Many private schools pay less, but the very top ones pay well to get the good teachers - but you would need experience and a great record to get such a job. You could plan to teach at a community college where you might earn more. Also, where I worked the pay was ok, plus extra pay if you were say a team leader or took on clubs or other leadership roles. The health insurance was a real benefit - the cost was low, what was provided was extensive, co-pays were low... so really, my salary did not reflect my real income. Now I'm on leave and we must pay for health insurance through my husband's company - we pay a lot more for a lot less coverage.

I teach secondary social studies. The first job I got was while student teaching - a vacancy opened and they wanted me. It was teaching social studies and english, for which I had not prepared. Well, I got lots of help and did fine because of that and my liberal arts background. You just never know what will happen out in the real world!

One caution - teaching can take an inordinate amount of your time - lots of after school, evening, and weekend hours. Don't count on vacations for writing - you may be grading. You may find yourself working during the summer too. If you get into a good system that values teacher planning time and small class sizes, you'll be in a good situation to find writing time. Ask around before applying. Hopefully you won't need to use your karate (I did demonstrate my kung fu sometimes, but never had to use it!).

In college I also took an acting class, a film class, horse-back riding... when you are not sure what you want to do, take advantage of the freedom to choose interesting classes!

Go with what you will really enjoy, but try to do the best you can to be employable in some way. Don't pick the party dorm - just visit it! If you have a college counselor at your high school, talk to him or her about your situation - it's their job to help you find a way to go where you want so you can do what you want. I'm not saying they all work out - I don't remember mine, and my mom's told her not to bother applying to Tufts - that she'd never get in (but she applied and got in).

I don’t think you have to necessary go to a liberal arts college to get a wide range of experiences, or to have opportunities to read, write, and reason. I went to almost purely technical university, which had a grand total of 1.5 humanities buildings (versus 10+ for Engineering and Science disciplines), and reasoning skills technical degrees force you to develop can be applied equally well to non-technical topics. The logic I developed for mathematics, computer programming, and science always served me well in my humanity electives, and I find that set of analytical tools very usable for writing. This is not to say I’m recommending you go to a technical university given your stated interest. Simply, that math, computer science, and the hard sciences can be valuable additions to the course schedule of a future writer, as well as history, philosophy, literature, etc. (Curious here, Christine, if you agree with that, seeing as you’re coming at this topic from a different perspective than I am, but having gone to the same university.)

I don’t know about the small colleges (haven’t attended one), but my experience with the larger state schools is that they have a diverse curriculum (good if you change your mind about majors, plus more course options), a wide variety of activities available, will draw cultural events to the area even if in a small town, and attract a really wide range of people. College is sort of this strange subculture, with its own, usually rather weird in their own way, factions. Just the day-to-day life is a smorgasbord of human behavior, made all the more interesting thanks to healthy dose of stress applied, that could be used to create some very vivid characters.

It wasn't actually the writing programme alone that improved my skills, it was also the fact that at least three major research projects were required each year, and there was encouragement to find where each subject one studied intersected with other subjects of interest to each student. I have found the research skills I learned endlessly helpful in my current writing projects. I have also found that spending four years writing numerous essays (instead of memorising facts for exams) improved my ability to express myself.

There is also an early learning centre there which would be of value to anyone interested in teaching.