I love writing, I mean I love writing, right? I have to love writing because I’m an English major, duh. And I love reading and I must love poetry and Shakespeare must be my favorite dude of all time… because I’m an English major.

That’s not how it works. No, I don’t like reading as much as people expect and I don’t like sitting around staring at a piece of paper wondering what to write about for an essay. I’m not a math major or a physics major so why am I complaining?

Because I can. Because this is not easy and the pressure is on. Because on top of being an English major, I’m trying to figure out what to do with this thing called life, just like you and every other person in the universe.

I’m an English major and that means figuring out how to say what I need to say on paper, and how to say it the right way. There is no formula for the perfect essay, there is no answer key because anything and everything can be either right or wrong.

So why did I major in English if I despise it so much? Why would I care about a piece of work that a dead man wrote hundreds of years ago?

When everyone around me, including me, knows that I can’t spell for the life of me. That I lack the ability to use proper grammar. That I have yet to remember the writings of famous authors, while every other English major can name at least three dead people and one of their famous pieces of work.

I followed my gut. I did what I had never done before, I chose to listen to myself rather than someone else. I made the choice to be an English major, I chose to put myself in a shitty situation knowing that it would be really hard. I wanted to become a better writer and to somehow take the thoughts in my head and put them on paper. I wanted a challenge and the freedom to say what I wanted and prove to people that what I am writing is valid.

Instead of doing something math related, which everyone knows comes naturally to me, I chose to do something that I was, and still am, not so hot in.

I didn’t bother looking at the statistics of being guaranteed a job with a BA in English. I didn’t bother figuring out what I wanted to do with my degree. No, I just went for it. I chose a major that honestly doesn’t have a promising future, a major that can’t promise me a job right out of college… but I put myself in this situation. This is what I wanted.

It’s the fact that I made this choice, that would evidently shape a certain path in which my future takes me. The fact that I put myself in this situation excites me and makes me eager to see where I’ll be in the next few years. If I listened to my high school career counselor and followed the computer science route, if I listened to everyone else who excitingly encouraged me to pursue a degree in CS, if I continued to be in that level one CS class in college rather than listening to my gut and dropping it after day one, things would be different now. Fingers would be pointed at so many people for the cause of my misery.

Here I am writing and it is hard, but I have no one to point fingers at except myself and that only motivates me to prove to myself that I can do this. That right after I’m done writing this, I can finish that pesky essay that is due in two days, because damn I’m in trouble. Every time I get frustrated, every time I have writer's block, I ask myself who chose this path and why?

Life is so much better when you make your own choices and are responsible for your own actions. Trust me. I have a love, hate relationship with being an English major, but I did make this choice on my own.

I have faith that my decision will pay off someday in the near future.

For now, I’ll keep writing and running into walls one line at a time.