The Trials of the English Major

For some reason I’ve been thinking lately about something that happened to me a couple of years ago. I was right in the middle of my undergraduate education with a major in English. Now English majors are used to getting a certain kind of reaction when they tell people what their major is. I thought that once I graduated I would not have to go through the all-too-common scenario of having to justify what I had decided to major in to other people who I didn’t even know. It turns out that post-graduation the question “What is your major” transfers fluidly into “What was your major?” resulting in the exact same problem. Most English majors I know got so sick of the reactions they get when announcing their major that they began to try to avoid the subject all together. It is not uncommon to start the sentence, “I’m an English major” with a kind of reluctant sigh, an “oh-boy-here-we-go-again” sort of feeling expressed in a brief hesistation. “Oh,” the other person says, clearly puzzled. Once and awhile that’s all they will say. Most commonly, however, they invariably say, “And… what are you going to do with that?” English majors hate that question.

The question assumes two things that bug me. First, it assumes that the only value of any knowledge gained in life is what you can do with it. By “do,” of course, we mean make money. This is perhaps why nobody reads anymore. Nobody is going to pay you for making your way through Moby Dick. But I like to believe that some knowledge is worthwhile in itself, as an end unto itself. Not to mean that it doesn’t have any practical use or can’t affect your life. I believe that some knowledge simply makes you a better person. But in our capitalistic society, that which does not make you money has no worth. But I digress (and exaggerate). The point is, I liked my English studies, and I feel that because of them I am a better person. That, for me, is worthwhile reason enough to major in English.

The second thing the question assumes is that, as an English major, you aren’t learning any skills which may prepare you for the job market. In some people’s eyes, majoring in English is like flushing tuition money down the toilet. I suppose these people believe that being able to think analytically, understand big words and complicated sentences, and write clearly and eloquently are not in high demand by employers. After all, aren’t computers doing all that for us now? Admittedly, it is a bit more difficult to sell yourself as a potential employee with just an English major on your resume. It isn’t as clear what you can pursue, like if you were a computer science or microbiology major. But I have already found that at my new job, my employers are very impressed with my clear writing and verbal skills. Reading and writing well is becoming a rare quality, mostly because people don’t think it brings you any money, and so I predict a higher and higher demand for English major types. That or a total breakdown of communication between human beings.

At any rate, I was lucky enough during college to be able to usually avoid talking about my major with people who didn’t understand it. I spent a great deal of time with other English majors and the rest of my time with acting majors. And if there is anybody who is not pre-disposed to give you grief about having a worthless major, it’s an acting major. I loved them for that. So I eventually got into my own little bubble in which I no longer even thought twice about the validity of my academic studies. And I worked hard in my classes. I was mostly a straight-A student and thats not necessarily easy to do in English. I never had hours upon hours of homework like my accounting roommate, but I feel like my courses were just as challenging, if in a different way, than those of any other major.

Then came the day I went to get my haircut at the BYU Barbershop. The only reason I used to get my hair cut there was because it was close and because I didn’t know where the heck else to go. I now have my own personal hair stylist named Melanie who is better at her job than words can possibly describe and to whom I will go for my haircut until I die (or move). If haircuts were art, then the BYU Barbershop draws stick figures while Melanie rivals DaVinci. But I digress again.

It was a couple of years ago, as I said, when I got my haircut at the Barbershop by some guy who seemed to be more or less about my age, maybe a little older. He was one of those barbers who seem unable to cut my hair unless they carry on a conversation with me. I myself am more disposed to sit quietly and think during the procedure, excepting only the case of Melanie because she’s a great conversationalist. But this young guy, lets call him Bob for the sake of the story, starts chatting the minute I get in the chair. If memory serves, he started with something like, “Can you believe the Pistons lost?” Have you noticed that for a lot of college-aged guys sports is a neutral topic of conversation, much like the weather is for normal people? He was assuming that I, as a guy, knew immediately what he was talking about and somehow cared about it as much as he did. We were already having communication troubles.

Knowing me, I probably considered faking interest for the sake of the conversation, but I probably chickened out since I don’t know enough about sports to appear convincingly interested. “Yeah, they sure got the ball in the thing at lot, didn’t they?,” I might say, “That one tall ugly guy sure is good.” Most likely, I said something neutral and sat quietly, hoping he’d take a hint and be quiet. Instead, he popped the question. No, not what you are thinking! Asking me to marry him when we had just barely met and clearly had nothing in common is a bit extreme, even at BYU. He asked me what my major was. Oh-boy-here-we-go-again.

So I told him. As I feared, I got even a greater reaction than normal. In fact, Bob didn’t even seem to know that English was something one could study in any depth beyond the class you have to take as a freshman. “But you seem to speak it O.K.” he said, confused. I thought he must surely be joking, since it was a joke I had used myself at times to ease the awkwardness of discussing majors with other people. But he wasn’t.

“What do you do?” he asked. “Just study spelling and stuff like that?”

“Well,” I said, patiently, “actually we spend a lot of time studying literature.”

“You just read books?” he said, incredulously.

“Well, yeah… sort of.”

“Wow, I hate to read,” he said. Go figure.

“I love it.” I said. He didn't know what to say to that for a while. Who likes to read?

“Still, I’d love to just have to a read a book instead of the homework I have to do,” he said, clearly being dismissive of my classes as being easier than his. I got this a lot. I agree whole-heartedly that Calculus classes are harder than American Lit, for me; but I bet some of the people who get A’s in the former would struggle through the latter. Its all relative.

“We don’t just read the books,” I said, defensively, “We also write a lot of essays about what we read.”

“So, you just write book reports,” he said. I could tell he was feeling sorry for me, because my major sucked so bad and was totally unimportant.

“No,” I said, quite upset by this time. I was just starting to fall in love with literary theory at that time (which, by the way, has literally changed my life), so it hurt to have it dismissed so easily. I tried to explain, “We analyze what we have read from a variety of different interpretive strategies. We put what we read into the context of history, or psychology, or sociology. We try to understand the nature of symbols and their influence on how we perceive and interpret the world.” I was rambling.

“Oh,” Bob said, sounding like he was already bored with the conversation, “So basically you just make stuff up.”

He said it with such dismissal in his voice that part of me wanted to jump out of the chair and attack him with his own clippers, or shout, “Well, you cut hair all day, you loser!” or just sob in frustration but I sat there and stewed. Bob didn’t say much to me after that. I guess he decided that I was beneath his conversation. Somebody who spent all his time making up book reports on stuff written by dead boring guys clearly didn’t have anything worthwhile to say. And anyway, the TV in the barbershop was showing a basketball game.

Its two years later and I’m still bitter.