Sorry to all the STEM majors out there, but your world is not nearly as beautiful as mine.
English majors receive a lot of bull about being in a soft or easy discipline. The general response is "Oh, so you want to be a teacher?" Come on people, there are so many more things a person can do with an English degree! Incidentally, in my personal case, I do want to be a teacher, but the field of education is not for everyone. More and more, professional environments look for a person with the qualifications of an English major. We focus obsessively on our writing, reading, and critical thinking skills. We can extract the most obscure meaning from a few lines of text, but we have the knowledge to back it up. You're up to your necks in formulas and equations? We're drowning in theories, as well. In science and math, there's always (usually) a correct answer. In literature, everything is open to interpretation.
And that's the beautiful part.
A literature course is not a book club. Sure, we read a book and talk about our thoughts and feelings, but there's so much more that goes into it. Historical context of the time it was written, historical context of the time it was set, the author's personal life, the era of literature that was popular at the time, the analytical perspective you adopt as you read, how your own background influences your reading and subsequent reading.
A literature class is so much more than what your high school English was like; a literature class is also a history class and an art class and religion, philosophy, and psychology classes.
For some reason, people don't take English majors and their work seriously. My friend put it the perfect way when she said, "They think we're writing glorified book reports!" Listen, our papers are so much more than that. Book reports are summaries, and more often than not use Reader-Response Criticism (yeah, there's a term for it).
But really, there are so many different criticisms, lenses, and theories you can utilize when writing an English paper. What we're doing is not summarizing and reviewing the text, but analyzing it, putting it into context, asking "why does this matter" and then answering it. Last semester I wrote a 12 page paper on the play "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead" by Tom Stoppard. The play is relatively short, just 126 pages long. So how could I possibly write 12 pages on it? Because I wasn't just writing about the play, I was writing about what the play was about. I wasn't just pulling from literary criticism, I was utilizing medical, historical, and religious sources. It wasn't 12 pages of "Rosencrantz said this...then they did that..." It was a well-researched inquiry into the fine line between life and death, what our motivations are as human beings, and what the absurdity of the play tells us about our own lives. So much more than a mere book report.
As an English major, I'm exposed to ideas and cultures unlike any other major, with an exceptional perhaps for other majors in other humanities like history. My scope of the world shifts and widens with every page, my view of myself evolves with every sentence. Every word is meant to make me think. Though I do say that reading and writing has helped me to better understand myself, at the same time it's about so much more than just myself. I focus on bigger issues, on events and ideas much larger than myself and my suburban life and private university education.
On the very first day of one of my literature classes last semester, my professor said something to us that I will never get. Talking about the importance of studying literature, he told us "You are exceptional, and you are the exceptions to the know-nothing, think-nothing American culture."
As an English major, I'm not just memorizing facts and formulas. I'm being taught to think for myself, and I'm being encouraged to push back against what I'm being told as long as I can back myself up. I don't know if any other discipline allows students the privilege to be so much of themselves.
If you're a STEM major and you've read this far, I sincerely hope you're not offended. I could never do what you do, but you could also never do what I do. It's simply exhausting being told by someone who has never taken anything above a 100 level literature class that what I've chosen to dedicate my life to is "easy" or "a joke." STEM majors are given a lot of credit and a lot of recognition, but hey, it's okay if sometimes we afford a student in the humanities the same luxury.
Long article short, I hope you love what you do because I love what I do; but no matter what it is, it's probably not affording you a world as beautiful as mine.
