A week or so ago I sat in a seat across from my academic advisor, and she said something that, as I have meditated on these exact words, has changed my entire perception of my current and future stages of life.

We were talking through the classes I was currently taking and the ones I was planning to register for, and I shared with her my experiences with a class I am still currently in: a global studies course that discusses the complexities and nuances and impacts of globalization. I shared with her how my perception of the world has been evolving in light of seeing the inter-connected humaness I'm exploring; this also related to helping me understand and read the literature I was engaging with in my previous and current classes. Her response to this is forever ingrained in my memory:

"And that's what being an English literature major is all about: exploring what it means to be human."

I cannot shake these words, and they ignite a fire inside of me that has been missing all along.

When I share with people that I am an English literature major, I will only ever receive one response for the rest of my current life: "Oh, so what do you want to do with that? Teach?"

Out of compassion and grace, I have to now respectfully show others why that is such a misguided assumption, because being a scholar of literature means (to most people) putting me into a pre-assumed box of what I will become in the future. But that is entirely missing the point. As I study and reflect and seek to understand the literature of different people groups, I do more than just prepare to tell high school students how to read "12 Angry Men" and how to write five-paragraph essays.

Studying the literature of different peoples and cultures and communities reveals to me the profound human stories and experiences everyone is experiencing. It invites me to remove the 21st century, white, modern American assumptions of how to read literature and what literature does and doesn't do; it invites me to enter into different views of life and the world, and to humble myself before others, to seek to understand that everyone else across human history is just as human and perceptive and insightful as I am.

When I say that everyone should "major" in English literature, I am saying that everyone should rethink what it means to maturely and humbly approach the texts of different peoples. In doing so, we elevate the voices of those we often belittle and misinterpret. By becoming our own scholars in the literature of others, we actually begin the beautiful life-long process of seeking to understand other peoples' humanness and restore a view of humanity that is all-encompassing in love, grace, and compassion.