The number of English majors has fallen by nearly half since the late 1990s- Benjamin Schmidt

I’ve found it strange that we as English Majors must consistently defend the major against most others. Finance majors generalized probably do not have to defend their major, yet multiple questions arise from the morality of increasing the fortunes of the quickly accelerating upper class. I will not spend this time discussing class inequality, but it seems to make a point more in our current time.

I do not like grammar, which is about 50% of English. The other 50% of English is vocabulary, I do not have a favorite word. I do however like reading, watching, and listening to English media. Most likely due to it being the only language I can understand. To say my decision to be an English major comes from an empathetic lens would make most of my friends laugh. I think at the end of the day I’m just a consumer that wants to have an excuse for my gluttonous consumption of media. Movies and Music surround my roommates and consistently a silent moment is not often non-existent. It is in this over consumption and my love for media that I have found my interests deeply intertwining with the ‘values’ of the English Major. I wish I had an interesting heartfelt story on my decision, but I do not and like George Washington, “I can not tell a lie”. Humorously, I have actually cut down a cherry tree.

Richard Bolles states, “It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop.”. Judging by my submission time on this blog post that I live by these words. Procrastination has always been a problem for me. I have been described as apathetic by friends much to my chagrin as they did not use apathetic and used ‘uncaring’ when apathetic would be a much better word to give me a descriptor. I do however feel as if despite this post, I have gotten much better at procrastination… or worse… better at dealing with my procrastination.

I have an important assignment that highlights my procrastination much in the line of the hero’s journey, If the hero was a 19 year old college student doing a project on photography. I hate to say it but I do not care about photographs, much to my own demise as an appreciator of art. For example, I have been told a photograph is good about 300 times in my life and never understood why. Despite this, someone who was teaching a class which I signed up for thought it would be a good idea to make me participate in photography in a photography class. I was tasked with taking multiple photos that make someone ‘feel’. I did not and still do not fully understand what that means. I spent the next week wondering what to do. That is a lie to be fair however as I spent the next week completely forgetting about that responsibility. It was only a day before that I remembered my photos. Luckily, when I most needed a quiet space, we had planned a party that night. As the party went on I decided to take photos of what was going on. To clear the air, I was taking photos of people I know, I was not taking photos of strangers. It was in my hasty arranging of my collage of photographs that I started to slightly understand what feeling from a photograph meant. As I surrounded myself with photos of my close friends, while slightly blurry, I was able to feel a sense of connection with my surroundings and the larger world around me. While not specifically an English Class, it was with my tutelage from various English classes that I was able to understand how a piece of media is supposed to make you feel, and furthermore connect it to the outside world.

This idea is what I truly think makes the English Major important, as I have been given the ability to contextualize anything within our world. It is with this humanist perspective that I have been able to extrapolate the importance for anything, and there is an importance for everything. I would not sacrifice these lessons for anything as I have been a more caring person because of it. I have learned not only how to fix my ability to procrastinate but also configure that with not getting lost in the moment. Learning the best time and place to do work, rather than doing something too early when my head is not in it. It’s important for me to put forth my best work, while this does not always work within the confines of school, I understand that this skill and understanding of my work ethic will better help me contextualize my skills within the job market.

Jean-Paul Sartre wrote, “A man is always a teller of tales, he lives surrounded by his stories and the stories of others, he sees everything that happens to him through them; and he tries to live his life as if he were recounting it.”. This is about novels, but I think it says more about the English Major as a whole. It is not what we are able to learn, but what we are able to do with the information we gather from our studies.