You chose to be an English major because you aspire to become a journalist, lawyer, publisher, author, poet, etc., or you just love to read and write. Now that you are an English major, you spend your academic life by reading hundreds (yes, the plural form of "hundred," meaning: greater than one hundred) of pages each week, by interpreting what you have read (both during and outside of class), by synthesizing your interpretation(s) into a thesis statement, and then by writing a paper in order to support your thesis statement . As an English major, you have noticed that there are certain things that are unique to your major. You have also noticed that there are certain things that only an English major could understand. Here are 26 things that all English majors understand:
1. To state the obvious, you LOVE to read and write.
2. Your English major has made you a master of BS-ing papers, which comes in handy for your other classes.
3. Sometimes you get the feeling that some of your professors can't distinguish fantasy from reality.
4. Writer's block is your kryptonite.
5. When people use "your" as "you are" instead of "you're," begin a sentence with a conjunction, or use "who" when it should be "whom" (or vice versa), you die a little inside.
6. There are many English majors who talk like they are one of the players in a Shakespearian play, a knight of the round table, or an aristocrat from 19th century England.
7. There are many English majors that will correct your grammar while you are having a conversation with them.
8. There is always that one kid in your English class that always incorrectly interprets the assigned reading.
9. Only an English major can describe what it feels like to pray that your English professor doesn't call on you because you forgot to read. After all, reading is one of the two most essential aspects of your major (the other aspect is writing).
10. You spend more time proofreading a friend's paper than you do on your own papers because, as an English major, you will never hear the end of it if your friend loses points for grammar errors.
11. This is you when non-English majors complain that their professor(s) are hard graders when it comes to papers:
12. The professors of your non-English courses deduct points from your papers if your paper contains "purple prose;" but your English professors deduct points if your paper does not contain "purple prose."
13. You begin to wonder if having a beard is required in order to be a male English professor because the majority of your male English professors have beards.
14. The number of times that you started/finished writing a paper the night before it is due is greater than the number of times that you decided to start/finish your paper early.
15. You when your non-English major friends complain about having a week to read a 200 page novel:
16. You prefer to write a paper instead of studying for either a midterm, or final exam. This is because, in an English class, they are basically the same thing. The only difference is: one you get to write at home, and you have the ability to refer to the necessary texts; and the other you get to write in an exam room without the ability to refer to the necessary texts.
17. There is always that one person in your class that participates way more than everyone else. If you have no clue what I'm talking about, there is a 99.999 percent chance that you are that person.
18. After you read your assigned reading (especially before a reading quiz), you sometimes decide to use Sparknotes in order to reinforce what you just read.
19. Sometimes, however, you decide to only read Sparknotes because you don't have enough time, and/or the motivation, to read the 400 pages that your professor assigned.
20. You lost track of the amount of times that your professor blatantly used an esoteric word in order to make it clear that s/he is the smartest person in the room.
21. You instantly get a stomach ache when you see one of these:
22. You become a master at interpreting poetry, which means that you can interpret poems such as this one:
23. All of your books are covered in annotations.
24. Additionally, you sometimes write funny comments in a work of literature's margins.
25. This is an English major's Disney World:
26. Ultimately, an English major does not only study literature, but also the politics, religions, philosophies, and social aspects of the historical periods in which a work of literature was written.
