No, I did not spend four years reading Shakespeare: What it’s actually like majoring in English

Please don’t judge me until you walk a mile in my Dr. Martens

As an English major, my life is quite the exciting thrill ride. When I wake up in the morning, I toss my hand-knit scarf around my neck, take a stroll to the local Starbucks where I order my soy caramel macchiato and sit down with my latest run at a detective novel. Convinced everybody around me has a shallow thought process and an inability to express themselves through the ballpoint, I scribble entrancing lines and flip through my gigantic copy of Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace.

Despite being an English major, none of this describes who I am. For starters, I hate reading. I absolutely loathe it. But hey, I am an English major so I have to like reading right? It is not until somebody opens Carmen and see’s that a deadline is quickly approaching and have yet to compose a single page of their self indulgent narrative titled, “My Journey to Ohio State” that they realize, “Oh shit, I have no idea how to even start this.” It is at that point they quickly recall that they have a “friend” who is an English major (note: friend is in quotation marks because just about anybody, no matter their relationship to you, finds that this skill set is now advantageous for them).

Oh look! Just over the horizon there, it’s finals season! At this point in time people begin to panic because they realized they never actually took the time to learn anything and now are in an Adderall fueled panic to cram 15 weeks worth of learning into a single weekend.

Assuming your token English major friend has nothing of importance to do during finals, you send him your eight page, single space, horse shit analysis about a book you were assigned to read but only skimmed on Sparknotes the night before, authoring a horribly written atrocity you have the audacity call a paper, but he’s an English major and he loves to read, and write, and teach you about run-on sentences, right? Wrong.

Any prospective English major should consider the following: as soon as you assign yourself to this major, you are going to be asked one question every single time you explain your collegiate major: “Oh, so you want to be a teacher?” How you decide to handle this situation is up to you.

As far as I see it you have two choices: you can either calmly explain to them that the ability to write clearly and professionally is actually a trait that is easily transferable to a number of fields and there are many opportunities to be had with this major, or you can flip out, set a small fire in the front seat of their car and walk away. I do not encourage the latter, but to each his own. But despite not having the vanity of having a major that sounds so holier than thou, one might be surprised at the functionality an English major has.

Before you hop on the high horse of, “Oh, I am a Microbiology major, I am clearly far more intelligent than you,” you should probably take it easy. Would you like to know why? Because there is a very good chance that when you apply to a company to work as a lab technician or what ever it is you do, you are not sending your application to another science oriented person. Instead, you are sending it to somebody who may not have a clue about just how cool your major is, but based off your inability to format a resume or the email that contains it, you are not getting what some may call “a hot start.”

What I have found from being an English major is that I am not restricted to anything. I have worked in Human Resources, Marketing and various other jobs. I have found that I am glad that my skill set is transferrable. No, I did not spend four years reading Shakespeare, some people have and that is great for them, but that is not what being an English major represents.

Instead it represents your willingness and ability to invest full fledged thought into a topic you may not otherwise have analyzed. You can showcase your full comprehension of a piece of writing that was written in the most god damn obscure way that is barely understandable. Take for example, Beowulf — no, not the trippy ass movie that is half cartoon, half reality — but the writing that is hardly considered English.

I can assure you that I never would have chosen to write an in depth analysis about Edgar Allen Poe’s writings, but by being forced into this position, I’ve developed a true admiration for a person’s ability to pick up a pen (or in this case a quill and ink) and transcribe their deepest thoughts for all to read.

Quite frankly, you don’t have the right to critique English majors, considering you only took the one, required, extremely thought provoking, ENGL 1101 class.

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