How to be an English Major.

Accept the fact that your spare time will be whittled away nose-deep in a novel. You’ll have anywhere from 20-30 to read a semester, if you’re dedicated. Learn quickly which ones you must do a thorough read-through of and which ones you can skim. Idealistically, this should be done more than a day in advance. Buy a good coffeepot and some eclectic mugs. Develop an identity. You spend your academic pursuits bombarded by different personas, problems, and settings. How do you expect to understand others if you don’t understand yourself?

Try reading outside. You will quickly learn that although you look cute sitting under a tree reading Pride and Prejudice, you will get grass stains on your pants and bugs will inevitably crawl inside your book. Pretend this doesn’t bother you until you can privately freak out about it and pack up to go inside. Read the classics. Contrary to popular belief, you don’t have to love them. You should respect the impact they made during their time periods, and if they happen to resonate with you, that’s an added bonus. Explore different authors and various types of literature. Remember that the words you read mean something to someone, somewhere.

Pick up a pen and take a shot at poetry. Count beats, recognize rhyme scheme and meter, then scrap it and start fresh. Let the ideas flow and see what you produce. Chances are, there is a genre of poetry your work will fit. If you like poetry, read anything and everything poetic you can find. If you dislike it, there are better uses of your time.

Write and write and write and write and write. Do this until your hands cramp and your eyes burn from staring at the computer screen. You should have perpetual ink stains on your fingers. Create vibrant characters and rich settings. Make your characters laugh and cry and dream and dance and fight. Your antagonists are just as important as your protagonists, so invent people you love to hate. Words are meant to make us feel. If your own writing doesn’t stir something inside of you, it’s time to toss it and begin again.

Listen to the engineers and physics and math majors who ask you sarcastically what you’ll do with a degree in English. It’s not very nice, and I know you’re tired of hearing people put you down for doing what you love. Don’t tell them to go to Hell. You’re articulate, remember? You can do better than that. Instead, tell them that you’ll be able to communicate with others and spell words correctly when writing a letter. Tell them you’ll know how to formulate a professional resume. Tell them you have knowledge of people and emotions and the ability to get lost in a place. Your degree is not useless, and you know it. Do this, of course, with vocabulary they will never understand. They will most likely stop harassing you.

Most importantly, realize that you possess something that not everyone does: the gift to mold words and use language to create something beautiful. Now go do that. I expect to see your name in a Barnes & Noble someday. Yes, you can do it. You’re an English major.

Source

I find it surprisingly common that I have so much writer’s block in such a small span of time.  For example, I should be writing a short response essay (500-900 words) on the first book of Milton’s Paradise Lost right now, but I’m so distracted it really isn’t even funny.  I’m looking at my word count right now, for example, and including this quote, I’ve already surpassed 600 words…if only analyzing a piece of classic literature were so fun that I could just eloquently bust out an A-worthy essay in the same amount of time that I can write a blog post.

So this quote up here is another one of the many reasons why I decided to become an English Major.  I should probably preface this one with the fact that last fall, I was a Biology major.  I changed two weeks into the Fall semester, after many tears and long days that I absolutely hated.  One of my friends at the time was trying to talk me down after a particularly horrid day and he said to me “Katie, you only have two speeds:  fast and faster.  One day, you’re going to wake up and not be happy with your life.”  He and I don’t speak anymore, and that’s slightly my fault.  (And yes, sometimes I do miss speaking to someone who knows me better than I know myself, but that’s a story for another blog post).  Regardless, the next morning I woke up and I wasn’t happy- so I made an appointment with my adviser and transferred from the School of Natural Sciences to the School of Liberal Arts.  I didn’t really have much direction at that point, I just knew that I couldn’t be in Biology anymore.  It wasn’t that I couldn’t do it, believe me (I got a 4.0 that semester in Honors Bio, Calc II, and Honors English, I dropped Chem when I transferred because I no longer needed two sciences), it’s just that I didn’t want to wake up in the morning dreading what I was about to do.  Because what kind of life is that?

So I decided to change my major to English.  I didn’t really have a specific career goal in mind when I did, but I knew that English was something that I could wake up in the morning and be excited that I was going to my job, no matter how much I was getting paid.  That’s the thing- books have always been my one great passion.  The practical part of me that had wanted to be a doctor, for however short-lived that was, did realize that I needed to have some sort of trade (because I could not be a teacher.  I have no tolerance for children.  Yes, I do want three of my own, but that’s rather besides the point.  I can’t handle the ones that I don’t have any direct power over, of this I am more than certain.)  So my mother was looking through my University’s course catalog and suggested that I look into Public Relations.  I didn’t really think much of it, but agreed, deciding that there wasn’t any harm in at least taking a class about it.  And you know what?  I fell in love.  I am absolutely head-over-heels with my two majors.

Do you know how much crap I got from my biology friends when I changed, though?  Some kid told me that I pretty much was no longer valid to him because I didn’t have a “real” major.  Well, I might not have real majors to him, but they couldn’t be any more real to me.

English and Public Relations allow me to be both creative and smart.  I don’t have to pick between the two sides of myself- I get to be both.  I critically analyze, but I also conceive of my own ideas.  I look to history, psychology, art, literature- everything, to kind of get this feel for human beings.  And for someone who’s been pretty bad with human beings her entire life, being able to recognize and relate to feelings and emotions is a wonderful thing.  I get to read all different kinds of books and glimpse into the ideas of strangers, but still know exactly where they are coming from.  I also get to write.  Writing is and always has been my passion.  The first serious career that I ever considered was my 7th-grade self’s desire to be a journalist for the New York Times.  Well, my tastes have altered a little bit since then, but I still want to be an agent of change.  And that’s what I can be.  I want to change the world, whether it be of one person or of millions.  I don’t know if I’ll ever write a book.  I don’t know if I won’t eventually end up becoming a professor, even though my 20-year-old self doesn’t foresee that happening.  I don’t know if I’ll work for a PR agency or take care of one of the biggest communication crises of all time.  But I know that I’ll be doing something that I love, not something that others chose for me.  I know that living in books isn’t much better than living behind a microscope, but for me, the choice has never been clearer.

I’m an English Major.  I haven’t always been in document, but I always have been at heart.  So my message to anyone reading this, whether English is your passion, or math or art or anything- do what you love, because that’s the only life worth living.