While every class of majors have their own quirks, some majors have their own subdivisions of quirky types. Since English is one of the most common chosen majors, it's no surprise that your local English college class is one such example of this. Here are the five types of English majors you'll meet in college:
1. The Historian That Will Refute Your Literary Interpretations.
This classmate usually loves literature because of its unique marriage of art and history. This usually involves a lot of brooding and tying linguistics back to its Old English or Nordic roots, and correcting other students' interpretations of literature based on a piece's historical context. The Historian is good for helping you when the professor wants a paper on the Latin and Greek origins of words, or how Scandinavian languages branched out over different eras.
2. The English Major Who Wants a Career That Has Absolutely Nothing To Do With English.
This character is usually pretty aloof and somehow manage to avoid answering any questions about their future. Eventually, it'll come out in senior year that they've decided to go on to law school or to get a master's degree in international business communications. Usually, this person is quiet and the most structured person in class but is secretly petrified that everyone will see through their ambitious ideals and discover the soft romantic inside. This classmate will help you out with most of your general subjects but will make up excuses for why they're reading way more Spenser than your professor ever assigned.
3. The Teachers Who Hate Being Asked to Write.
The future-teachers in the class are literature lovers like the best of us but are perpetually put off by the idea that English classes involve a whole lot of writing. These are usually the fun-loving, parent-like figures of the friend group who whine "there is not one creative bone in my body" whenever the professor assigns non-structured essays.
4. The Pedant Who Edits Your Facebook Rants.
The English type that makes the most noise, and therefore has become the poster child for English-lovers, is the Pedant. Pedants in your class consistently annoy you in class by correcting your English in the English class you are taking together. These types usually congregate together and are die-hard Oxford comma fans, correcting your sentence structures and making you mentally practice what you want to say before it comes out of your mouth. Beware, though, these classmates will become the editors you wish you had been friends with in college.
5. The Creative Writers Who Hate Being Asked if They're Going to Teach.
If there's one label that Creative Writers as English majors hate to be stuck with, it's the teaching one. Sure, teaching is a great job but would you want people to assume you're wanting to shape the minds of America's next generation when you'd actually rather be on a solitary house by a lake, weeping over our laptop keyboards and asking Virginia Woolf for advice aloud? These writers are usually partially oblivious to what's going on in English class, storing away their deepest literary theories, murmuring "all is narrative" and only focusing on the poetry that really means something to them.
