Introduction conversations about college are overwhelmingly repetitive to me. If someone doesn't know where I go, they ask. After I tell them I attend UMass Amherst, the conversation goes on of two ways:
The first being, “Oh wow good ol’ Zoomass Slamherst, huh? I used to party out there back in my day! Haha, always such a wild time, how do you get any work done there? You know, with all the partying you must be doing? Such a party school!”
While UMass is home to a lot of great parties and such to attend, but that is not all my school has to offer. Just because you had a buddy who went to the university back in ’87 and you guys got pretty wild one weekend, does not mean you should degrade my whole college experience into the party scene you longed the school to be a few decades ago.
This first response is manageable, tolerable enough. A typical response is just a quick, “Haha yea we sure do have fun, but I’m still making Dean’s List and study enough during the week to reward myself on weekends.”
The second way the conversation goes is straight into the nitty-gritty, a question that seems simple enough, but has become the bane of my existence as a college student. People hear where you go but they need more, they want more. I try to prepare myself for the inevitable, but those four words always seem to catch me off guard, “What is your major?”
You're probably thinking, “Emily, that seems like a simple enough question, people are just curious about your major!” Right? Wrong.
Now, I am only speaking from my own experience, but telling the people, who are older than the college students, I typically surround myself with that I'm an English major is never a fun time. Unless it’s other graduated English majors themselves, in which case they are always quite overjoyed.
Most of the time the conversation goes a little like this, “I’m an English major, with an Education minor, bu-“ then I immediately get cut off by someone concluding that I want to be an English teacher. It's just someone putting the math together and that's fine, but people don't realize there are far more things that people can do with an English major than what meets the eye.
First you get the inevitable sign and “Oh, thats nice!” Then once you go further to say you want to teach, high school specifically, the pity glares come from every angle in the room. Every once in a while you’ll get a, “You better marry rich!” joke because everyone knows teachers do not get paid enough, yet no one wants to fix teacher’s pay rates. Yes, I am so embarrassed that monetary reward does not drive my passions and interest! Seriously?
Even while attending college, other students cannot conceptualize the life of English majors. If I have a lot of reading for homework I will get comments like “Oh, all you have to do is read? That’s like no homework. I have so many OWLs that I have been avoiding.” While I can imagine your math problems take some real time and effort, so does the reading I have to do. I have to read specific books and articles to be discussed in class tomorrow. I have to have opinions and ideas about these readings so I can defend them to my peers and professors.
Lastly, let’s talking about graded assignments. My major is not very “test-heavy,” but don't think we get a break. No, while you are up studying for your exam we are up typing away at our computers, writing papers that we will never have time to revise, but we sure will pretend to! Anyway, just know that we are all working just as hard as you STEM majors and we are all in this crazy thing called college together.
Long story short, English majors are awesome and deserve a lot more credit than they get! Please, no more sighs, stares, or backhanded compliments about the major that each and every student has the right to choose for themselves.
