I am an English major. I chose my major because I like to write, and because I’m good at writing, but not necessarily because English literature is my passion. I chose my major with a concentration of professional writing because I want to go into editing someday, but I also considered doing business or marketing.
So there are a lot of days when I sit in class and I feel like I stick out like a sore thumb because most of my classmates are creative writing minors and they really, truly enjoy reading Shakespeare. That being said I don’t really regret my major because my writing has gotten so much better in my last three years of school, and so has my ability to think critically.
But there are certain things that ensure my success as a professional writing English major, and I’m going to write about them now for anyone else can relate to me.
1. Sparknotes
This magical little site has been my actual lifeline since I took AP English in high school. In college I discovered “Shmoop,” which has the same basic plot summary as well as more in-depth chapter summaries, but with the added bonus of snarky comments thrown in. Now I use a healthy balance of both websites for virtually any assignment I have for class. I guess this can be considered “cheating myself of my education” but considering the amount of homework I have for all of my other classes, it’s physically impossible for me to do the 50+ page assignments between my core English courses. Granted this can be a problem when in-class short answer finals come around, but I’ve had a fairly high success rate by memorizing the main plot points and simply listening to what we discuss in class.
2. Use words like “juxtapose.”
Seriously. It’ll sound like you know what you’re talking about if you say phrases like “juxtaposing images” or “a stark juxtaposition.” I still really don’t even know exactly what juxtapose means but it has definitely made an appearance in most of my papers.
3. Find professors you like.
Sometimes the only thing that makes three-hour literature classes (yes, three hours; I have a class from 7-10 p.m. every Wednesday night) is a professor you love. There’s a select few professors at my school that I’ve truly loved, and those few have made my incredibly long classes actually pretty bearable.
4. Get used to the same 10 people.
No exaggeration, if you go to a small private school like I do and you choose a less-popular major, there won’t be more than 10 students in any given class. Sometimes this can be nice, if you really like your fellow students, and sometimes it can be awful because they all annoy the hell out of you and you sit by yourself and talk to no one. I’ve had it both ways.
5. Get used to some really pretentious people.
Especially if there's grad students in your classes, which is also something that goes along with going to a small school. Some of the shit I hear people say in class makes it really hard not to roll my eyes.("I was reading Titus Andronicus for fun last night even though it wasn't assigned, because I wanted to compare Shakespeare's iambic pentameter in his tragedies with his iambic pentameter in his comedies.") Also, prepare for a lot of emphatic hand gestures when said pretentious people are explaining their take on The Aeneid/King Lear/insert classical text here.
6. Prepare for intense back pain from carrying around all of your books.
Also, bookstore receipts that are a foot long. For all of my classes I have seven or eight books to buy each semester and usually an enormous anthology to top it all off. Here’s a picture of the anthology I had to buy for my European Renaissance & Enlightenment course this semester:
In case you’re wondering, that’s my roommate’s hand on the bottom there. I had to have her help me because the book is too damn heavy to hold with one hand, and this picture still doesn’t do it justice. Ladies and gentlemen, this anthology is 3,078 pages long. YUP. And what kills me is that there has only been four or five assigned readings in it. The rest of our readings have been in separate books. So basically we had to pay $60 to rent this book when we could have just found the readings in it elsewhere. Having to lug this book around from class to class has been the bane of my existence this semester. I daydream about the things I’d like to do with this book. Burn it for kindling. Throw it at people I don’t like. Basically anything would be better than actually reading it.
7. Know how to write a really good paper.
This sounds like common sense since of course you would assume that every English major is a good writer, but I am here to tell you that that’s not the case. I’ve had many a peer-editing workshop in class where some of the papers I read were... like, terrible. If writing isn’t your strong suite, I would not recommend becoming an English major. Because if you don’t want to do the readings, and you can’t write a decent paper, you’ll probably be happier doing just about anything else.
8. Really love to write.
This is kind of the same thing as number seven, but not quite. There are definitely people who can write really well but don’t actually enjoy doing it. Thankfully, I’m a person who’s good at writing but also really loves to do it. As much as a pain in the ass it can be to have three fifteen-page papers due at the end of the semester, and as much as procrastinate before doing them, when I actually get down to business I get in this mindset where I could just type away all night. And when your end result is this really brilliant paper that your professor rages over, it makes it all worth it.
