Part 1: The Value of English

For me, my college career has been everything but straightforward. After majoring in Communications and playing volleyball at Wake Forest University for two years, I realized that if I continued to focus on my sport and major in something I had no particular interest in, I would end up completely lost at the end of my college career.

After transferring to the College of Charleston, I majored in arts management for two years until I realized that that was not my path either. It was during the summer of 2022 that I was registering for classes (to complete my arts management degree), and I called my parents crying because none of the classes I had to take were ones I felt passionate and curious about. Instead, they all felt like a chore. So, we began brainstorming my options, which I was completely reluctant to at first. But then, as the conversation continued, the idea of being an English major came up, and suddenly, it felt as though everything began to fit together.

I realized that when I looked around my room, it was covered in books. When I reflected on the things I enjoy the most in life, it was writing poetry, journaling, and reading. And when I thought back to my favorite classes and teachers growing up, they were always the English ones. At that moment, the lightbulb went off, and the steps forward became so clear.

It was then, too, that I thought of all the possibilities being an English major would offer me. All the things that I really love in life, all the things that bring me the most joy, were things I could be a part of, having majored in English.

One of the important aspects of English is that it is rooted in sensemaking, an idea presented by Christian Madsjerg in his book Sensemaking: The Power of the Humanities in the Age of the Algorithm. In this book, he breaks down several principles that make up this idea of “sensemaking” in the humanities and applies these skills to the professional world.

One of the principles that stood out to me was principle 3: “The Savannah-Not the Zoo.” In this, Madsjerg explains that to properly understand and relay information about the human experience, you have to be a part of that human experience (16-18). True knowledge and wisdom, when it comes to human nature, cannot be simply observed from an outsider’s perspective. It is something that you, too, have to personally experience. This knowledge not only comes from observing others on the inside but also from observing yourself.

Part 2: The Potential of Projects

When I considered how an English major might translate to the working world, the first project that came to mind was an essay I wrote for my 299 class. My primary source was my favorite film, Maquia: When the Promised Flower Blooms, and I focused on the film’s theme of motherhood. Through researching and writing, I dove into the multifaceted aspects of motherhood, exploring its themes of love, sacrifice, and societal expectations. By studying and pulling from books, personal memoirs, and scholarly articles, I gained insight into the different experiences of motherhood. I learned more about adoption versus birth mothers and the evolution of the mother-child relationship as both parties age. Through this research process, I got to better understand why people have children and the deep dedication and grit it takes to be a parent.

In an excerpt from Ramsey and Grobman, Major Decisions: College, Career, and the Case for the Humanities (2020): Chapter 4, “Beyond Jobs and Careers: The Enduring Value of the Humanities,” they discuss how English contributes to the common good. They explain that intellectual, artistic, and moral pursuits have intrinsic value. These types of pursuits (much like this essay) “enrich our lives and the lives of those around us. They open up new worlds and new ways of thinking to us, and they challenge our traditional, and sometimes even mindless or outdated, ways of thinking and acting” (54-55).

Going into this essay, I was convinced I would argue against being a mother. I sometimes feel as though having children as the main goal in everyone’s life is incredibly outdated. When I think about the world we live in and how difficult it is to be a “good” parent, I wonder why we do it. It was not until writing this essay that I began to change my mind. Not entirely, as I still have my reservations, but my empathy and understanding of this human experience expanded exponentially and can be applied in my future ventures.

The second project that seemed to have a sense of viability was a poem I wrote for a 220 poetry course over the summer. Poetry is something that I have loved my entire life but have not really been keen on sharing with other people. It was not until this class that I realized how important it is to share. The feedback I got from this particular poem was overwhelmingly positive and made me realize the power of sharing your work. I wrote about my memories in the house I grew up in, and although my childhood was pretty unorthodox, everyone commented about how they, too, had felt they grew up in that house. It was through this experience that I learned how easy it is to find commonality between people and how important it is to share your life through words.

The third project is a final paper I wrote for my ENGL 300 class. I chose to do the more creative writing option, and I ended up rewriting a couple of chapters of Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels from the perspective of a woman. As a primarily “man vs nature” novel, I found it incredibly interesting to reinvent it through the eyes of a woman. Going back to Ramsey and Grobman’s book, they discuss the importance of reading canon.

“Simply put, we teach the canon because it’s important to see where we’ve been, and much of the work is valuable…We believe that teaching the canon and challenges to the canon encourages students to question, interrogate, evaluate, and judge through and within all the complexities of history, power, ethics, justice, reason, facts, science, and more” (54).

I think being an English major, you can easily get bored or annoyed by how often we read “classics,” but I believe there is so much value in taking the time to do so. Through a project like this, I got to reimagine this old story from a completely new perspective. I began asking questions about what would change about the story (little things, big things)? How would the relationships in the novel develop differently? Would the portrayal of the relationship between humans and nature be different? Through this type of evaluation, I feel as though we gain so much from reading canon and classics. We better understand where we have been, where we are now, and where we want to go.