Listen to your heart, they said…

Most fairy tales start with the phrase ‘Once upon a time’ and I feel that’s a fitting opener for this article because, after all,  as an English literature student what’s more romantic than an “airy-fairy” article on why I followed my intellectual calling in the arts?

Whether you’re from Europe, the Americas or some random island in the middle of an ocean somewhere, English literature students have the unshakable reputation of those who never really excelled at anything at school. Those who wanted to go to Uni but never knew what they wanted to achieve in life. Those who never truly knew who they wanted to be. I’m not going to lie and say that I destroy all pre-existing English student stereotypes; that I am a champion of  the notion of the liberated independent feminist – inspired by the likes of Plath and Woolf – is not the image I want to create (although Mrs Dalloway will forever be the pinnacle of literary genius in my opinion).

No, what I’m aiming to do here is not to rant about how us English students deserve to be valued just as greatly as the budding scientists and linguists who are bound to make their mark upon the planet in some beneficial way or other. In fact it’s the very opposite. I wanted to be a doctor for a very long time but it was my love for literature and storytelling, my passion for poetry (alliteration intended) and fierce imagination which finally convinced me that going to Uni wouldn’t be worth it if I wasn’t doing something that was well and truly imbedded in my very being.

I am criticised for the floweriness of my writing and the confusing and nonsensical nature of my essays all the time. Doing such a subjective degree does have its draw backs and I’m not going to pretend that it’s not frustrating when I get essays back and the tutor couldn’t see where the heart of my argument was coming from. Yet, despite all this, it doesn’t really matter because I’m studying what I am passionate about with people who, equally, share this zeal for literature.

My prospects after I graduate aren’t looking that great right now, partly because I have no idea what I ultimately want to do and partly because I’m surrounded with the presumption that I’ll become a teacher or journalist. When asked what I study, often the reply to ‘English Literature’ is ‘Oh…so you like words. Good luck with that…’ said with great distaste. If I tell people beforehand that I’m dyslexic, I’m met with laughter and the disbelief of ‘You’re dyslexic and you’re doing a degree in English Literature’, so that’s not something I tend to bring up anymore! I don’t let it bother me though because the longer I spend writing, reading and experiencing literature in all its forms, the more inspired I become.

Words are some, if not THE, most powerful tools human beings are gifted with. As children, we are taught to read and write and it is through the stimuli of phrases such as ‘once upon a time’ that our imaginations kick into overdrive and we create worlds to escape into and universes that are solely our own. Without our imaginations we wouldn’t have  doctors and nurses,  researchers and lawyers,  builders and  architects, because their aspirations and the goals they wish to achieve would never have been planted in their consciousness if they hadn’t dreamt it up first.

And so I’ll conclude. Not with ‘ and they all lived happily ever after’ or ‘The End’, because that would suggest a sense of finality and a certainty for the future. There is no real knowing of where we verbal vagabonds will end up. We may not have the anticipation of a title at the end of our degree to encourage us onwards, or the knowledge that after all these years in debt, we will be earning enough by the end of it to live a happy and financially stable life. What we will have is an appreciation for what we love and for the foundations which hold our literary past, present and future together. We will have stories to tell our children and an impressive library of dog-eared pages to our name. The end to our ‘Once upon a time’ will still be as vague and blurred as it was when we started, but the journey to get to our ‘Happily ever after’ will be a beautiful one and so will that of anyone who follows their heart rather than the weight of their wallet.