The minute you put English majors in a room and ask for their opinions, be warned -- sides will be drawn! Whether it's interpreting what Chaucer meant in The Wife of Bath, the Oxford Comma, or the meaning of a poem, sides will be drawn.
Here are some things you should know about English Majors:
We Make Mistakes, too.
We make mistakes, too. Please remember that we are people. I personally tend to catch more of other people's mistakes than my own. I like to think the paper I just handed in -- despite the coffee stains, is grammatically correct. There's definitely going to be a few mistakes that I haven't caught before I send this article to my editor(s) for approval. That is why I'm glad to have Kyra and Jess. They proofread my work and it definitely helps to have another set of eyes.
We cringe at grammatical errors on Facebook posts, images, and more.
Yes, we all know that texting is an informal way of writing. Yes, we know that autocorrect hates us. So, we'll give you a little leeway there, but don't worry, we're still secretly noticing your grammar mistakes. We're still secretly cringing at your texting vernacular. Oh, and we shed tears when we catch our own mistakes but we've already pressed send.
We may or may not edit your essays.
If you're like my brother, Travis (who loves to text me at midnight to alert me of an incoming email asking me to edit his paper that's due at 8am the next day), just know that your paper may or may not be edited. Editing your paper is not the only thing that we need to do. We have our own assigned reading and annotations to complete by 8am as well. We have our own essays to write, editing yours comes last on our list of things.
I'm happy to edit your paper, though. Just let me know, and give me notice.
We get annoyed when you say English is an "easy major."
English is just like any other major. It requires a lot of hard work and dedication -- we also have our days and nights where we are working through massive piles of assignments, not just reading books. Just like a Bio-Chem major is expected to know all of their formulas by heart, we are expected to know all of the rules of grammar. That's just a small portion of our major, though. Majoring in English isn't a cake-walk, and by no means "easy." We have to work just as hard as everyone else.
Without English Majors, there wouldn't be anyone to teach people how to write a proper paper, or even edit all of the textbooks and other reading materials needed for other majors. "Easy" is subjective. What may seem easy to you, might be a challenge for someone else. Just because you can speak, read, and write in English doesn't mean it is an easy area of study. There's much more to being an English Major than you could ever imagine.
