"A writer is a world trapped in a person" -Victor Hugo

Never again I tell myself as the clock strikes 2:30 AM and I am frantically attempting to finish writing a term paper about Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and the homoerotic undertones between Victor and his monster for my Victorian literature class (they're there, trust me).

I constantly check the word count, which in this case has a requirement of 2,000 words. Other times, a page minimum is set. Both stress me out equally. It has become a routine to finish my essays mere hours before they're due. Sometimes I'll wake up early, write the last closing paragraph, and send it in minutes before the deadline. It gives me a rush, like reading my favorite poem does, but definitely not as intense.

I was not always an English major. I spent the first two years of my college career as a History major. I loved World War II in particular, and I still do, but it wasn't for me. I learned facts after facts, but I could never create my own. I officially changed my major to English at the beginning of my junior year, and thought, "well, this is it" to myself as I waited for my change of major form to be signed, but English always intimidated me.

I have always loved Shakespeare and poetry. That's what English majors do right? Read Shakespeare and write poems. Right?... But the real questions began to emerge after my first few weeks as an English major: How could you prove an argument with just a single sentence? Or perhaps there were too many counter-arguments and maybe yours just isn't specific enough. How many ways could a text be analyzed, and what made my interpretation so great? Why the hell did I change my major?

The thing with being an English major is that you have to understand that there are no completely right or wrong answers; as long as you have evidence, your argument stands, and you will defend and support that argument no matter how late you need to stay up to do it.

To me, essays are the most mundane part about this major, but only because they pale in comparison to what being an English major means. Once you take classes about analyzing texts and applying one or more theoretical lenses to a specific work, it is virtually impossible to read even a single sentence without trying to find multiple meanings within it. There are plays, stories, films, and even songs that make more sense to me now than ever before.

By learning all of this, the payoff comes in the form of inspiration. All English majors are writers. Poetry, Creative Nonfiction, Fiction. I've done it all (or at least attempted to) and however bad or good it may be, I was inspired, and I thought about it, and I wrote it. I don't expect to write the next best-seller, but I expect to write no matter how difficult it may be sometimes to get words down on a piece of paper or a word document and believe me when I say that it is, indeed, difficult.

However, the struggle, the push, the frustration is what keeps me going. How can I be better? How can this poem or this story be more real? There is constant change, and knowing that something is never finished and can always be improved is humbling.

When I tell people what my major is, and as of recently, that I am graduating at the end of the year, 99.9% of the time get the following: "What are you going to do? Are you going to teach?" I honestly don't have a straight answer because I am unsure of what the future holds for me, but with every application I submit, the answer becomes closer and clearer. For now, I am an English major and writing is what I do and what I will always do.