B.A. in English: Majors & Minors

Right about now, during the back half of the semester, I normally panic. My throat pulses and numbs, and my gut tingles–both reactions, I’m sure, result from the possibility of the varying degrees of academic perdition hereafter. It all starts as a mote. It springs from the center of my torso, crepitates, then subsides; then it whorls inside my chest, and buoys to my eyes. 

I haven’t procured a conclusive explanation from any doctor, but I’m sure its more than merely a college student’s anxiety with grades–its the shadow of something horrible, and surprisingly irradiating; it’s indecision and uncertainty about my major, English. On a usual basis, my zest for literature–analyzing it and trying to best convey it–is roiled when people ask me what my career will be in the wake of “this terrible economic climate”. I usually return home, and re-evaluate my life, cloistered and weary. 

This year is different though. It’s almost as if the barrage of condescending insults about my major has transformed, from arrows to wings. The more I ruminate about why I chose my major, the more confused I get. Yet I find peace when I’m in the act of reading, writing, and discussing lit with classmates and professors–hell, with anyone.

What I’ve gathered thus far is that to be an english major isn’t about slaving through texts, but cleaving to them, so we can learn how to live better. If there was an orgy, and Sociology, Anthropology, Philosophy, Linguistics, and History were invited, English would be their child, an intersection of all six. Thus, studying literature enables us to dive in, touch the bottom, surface, and obtain a bird’s eye glimpse of the human purpose. What’s the shame in being sure that I breathe, shit, or feel just like everyone else–or, rather, that I want to express that I do, and how I do?

It seems to me that English Literature requires much more than what others chide it with. Upon my reflection, I hold the following: To be an english major is to empower and reveal yourself. Its discovering what it is to be human–how you are human, how you became what you are today. It’s about puncturing and exposing the vain patinas we erect in our vulnerability. It’s about assembling the components of human suffering, and valuing the rebirth afterwards. It’s about proclaiming an identity and embracing the human capacities we all share. It’s about arrogating the darkness; it’s the plaiting of light into hope.

It turns out that there’s nothing arcane about choosing the English major after all. Remembering why you chose it can portend the beatitudes of your path and expiate your insecurities in the process. It’s a capitulation between your sensory and your rationale to something powerful, and it’s difficult. At least class will be exponentially easier to get up for now, right? Oh, and that physiological writhing, that rankling uncertainty–it dies more and more each day. Let’s piss our pants and plunge in, shall we?

(2012)