More often than not, the English major has been associated with privileged hipsters who partake in slam poetry and work at their neighborhood coffee shop to offset their student loans. And unfortunately, stereotypes do exist for a reason, but I’m here to tell you the English major is so much more than a bunch of students wearing thick-rimmed glasses discussing the role of the patriarchy in the realm of literature.
While recent English graduates don’t usually have a starting salary like business or science majors entering the workforce — hell, we’re lucky if we have a salary — we usually have a more meaningful academic experience than other majors.
For example, it seems as though everyone I know who is not an English major claims to love reading, with the caveat that they don’t have the time to sit down and read Anna Karenina or White Teeth. This results in these so-called “bookworms” having a stack of books on their nightstands that they plan to get around to over winter break. They never get around to them. This is where the English major wins. As an English major, I am assigned to read not textbooks, but novels, poetry, sonnets and other literature. I even get graded on how well I read. While everyone else is off pouring over textbooks and graphs or distracting themselves in lectures with BuzzFeed quizzes, I’m reading classics such as The Taming of the Shrew, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Frankenstein and a canon of other great works.
Reading not for you? Then how about the fact that English majors also learn about culture, history and essentially life itself? English majors shape, create and defend ideas and arguments based on this acquired knowledge.
Sure, I won’t be rolling in hundreds of thousands of dollars in my early 20s like many university graduates of this university, but I believe that other English majors and I will have learned more about life in the deepest sense than other majors.
People who major in English will face endeavors in their professional lives that will be challenging. After I graduate, I might have to be the trope and work as a barista for a (hopefully) brief period of time to make ends meet. But if an English major can love the written word and work hard enough, then hopefully the spirits of writers past will smile down on all English majors and help them earn that Academy Award or Pulitzer Prize they so desperately want. If you can’t handle the challenging nature — despite popular belief — of being an English major, then you shouldn’t be an English major. As Robert Frost once wrote, “Two roads diverged in the woods, and I—/ I took the one less traveled by,/ And that has made all the difference.” Being an English major can make all the difference.
Maggie Cassidy is a junior English major. She can be reached at mcassidydbk@gmail.com.
