English Major in the Business World

Posted on January 22, 2024 by brooke

Throughout my life, I have always been naturally in tune with the world of reading, writing, and thinking. I’m a big feeler and intrinsically identified with the emotive, the introspective, and the passionate.

My parents— big in the business and finance fields— were NOT happy when I told them I was going to be an English teacher. But I knew that it was something I had to do for myself. After my first shot at student teaching, I quickly came to realize that being a high-school English teacher is A LOT more than just loving literature and wanting to share that passion with your students. I truly couldn’t see myself restrained by academic legislation and confined in a classroom for the majority of my career. Although, reading “Poetry is Hospitable to Strangeness and Surprise,” reignited the spark I have for sharing the joy of reading and writing. I loved when Rosal wrote,

“Not enough is about how everyday people are moved by poems. Truth is, they are hungry for it — especially when it’s written, read, performed and listened to with the whole body. If you saw the audience at Brave New Voices this week or the young folks at Sarah Lawrence College’s Summer High School Writing Conference, you’d see a heightened listening. Educators crave that kind of listening.”

And that is completely true— educators do crave that kind of engagement.

I remember distinctly when my best friend was student teaching in the classroom (English I, a majority Spanish-speaking class) with me and she gave a short lesson on poetry. She had the students (most of whom usually put their heads on the desk and slept throughout the period) rip pages out of old novels and magazines to create blackout poems. It was one of the most amazing things to witness as these incredibly frustrated and uninspired kids turned in not just one but multiple beautiful blackout poems. Getting to read them afterward was so rewarding because the students finally got a chance to express themselves and let out their emotions in a healthy way at school.

Being able to be part of that is something I will remember forever and makes me wish that teachers would receive the salaries that they so incredibly deserve. Reflecting on my time at the high school makes me remember Jasmine Guilllory’s article “Reading Anti-Racist Nonfiction Is a Start. But Don’t Underestimate the Power of Black Fiction.” She says,

“Multiple studies have shown that reading certain types of fiction increases a reader’s empathy for others. Fiction gives you a window into both lives you know and recognize and ones you don’t It helps you to put yourself in the shoes of those characters, even when you have a different perspective when it comes to race, gender, or sexual identity.”

I will never forget the feeling of absolute dread in the room at 8am as the kids staggered in knowing they were going to be forced to read and write about stories that were so out of touch with their realities. It’s just common sense but you can read about the value of black fiction for black children and teens here.

After months of reflecting during my student teaching semester, I discussed heavily with my parents, peers, and advisors, about if I should explore other career paths. The harsh reality is that I would not be able to support myself, let alone a future family as an English teacher. With a lot of back and forth and inner turmoil, I cut my degree in Education short and decided to pick up a Marketing minor. And this has been one of the best decisions of my life so far. With the heavy support of my advisors and professors, I learned there is so much you can do in the business world with an English degree. Effective communication and critical thinking are major skills needed in marketing and sales-oriented careers. I’m experiencing every day the joys of expanding my professional network in the Business School while working towards a career in medical device sales. I feel like I’m in a space where I get the best of both worlds.

Pluto (black), Penny (tabby), and Maple (tortie)

I Hate AI

Posted on January 21, 2024 by lilly

I’ve always been an emotional, sensitive person; my mom once said that no one would care as much as I did. I’m almost totally sure this is why I feel literature or any piece of writing so deeply. Even if it doesn’t directly relate to me or any category that I fit into, I know that the person who does relate–if it’s written well–will be affected in a positive way and that meant something to me. Poetry and fiction were made to be emotional even if it’s not directly the story’s tone. The novel may not be sad by the author’s choice, but when we read we connect with characters we may have never met in real life or never could have related to in passing. One of the books that first inspired this in me is Sharon M. Draper’s novel “Out of My Mind.” This was one of the only books I have read multiple times, I’m not a big fan of rereading my books, but I couldn’t help but I love that book; even if it made me cry, I wanted to be the main character again and feel her stress and eventual triumph.

To me, English, writing, and any form of words have always been about emotion and being able to be empathetic. I felt sad for every character, every author, every imaginary person that’s reading it in the past, present, or future. Like Jasmine Guillory in her article “Don’t Underestimate the Power of Black Fiction” I felt very deeply what the characters were feeling. I’ll find something in every character that’s similar to me or take something from each character and I take a piece of the story with me. Maybe it’s odd for me to say I find something like myself in every character I read, but honestly, as someone who wants to create things—create films, novels, something tangible—I want everyone to find a book that they see themselves in. I think that the whole point of reading is finding those shared experiences or discovering your feelings along with the character. And I think that’s part of why I also want to write is because I want to be able to experience so many things that I feel like the way to do that is through reading and literature, it’s not just going places within a book, you get to experience so many people’s lives. I want to be them and take a little bit with me too.

A lot of what we read this past week stuck with me because it talked so much about the emotions surrounding the English language and literature. Former US poet laureate Tracy Smith spoke in her opinion piece in the New York Times titled “Wipe that Smirk Off Your Poem” about how now poetry authors have the tendency to steer towards irony almost as if they’re afraid of being made fun of for being too emotional or too cheesy in their work. In turn, I think that has turned a lot of people off to poetry. One quote from Smith stood out to me in her piece, “Irony refuses to be life-giving or world-creating. Irony negates wish.” I think as a society we have become so steeped in irony that a large portion of people have decided to stay away from any sort of emotion as a sort of protection. If we aren’t vulnerable we cannot be hurt, but isn’t being empathetic and vulnerable part of what it means to be human. In a larger conversation on another day, this is why the issue of artificial intelligence concerns me. With the development and improvement of AI it makes me wonder if we will ever be able to return to openly being emotional, without shame or worry for compassion. I firmly believe that as humans we were made to create stories to deal with our emotions and share our experiences, none of which artificial intelligence could replicate. The act of reading fiction or poetry was created with the purpose of empathy and I was made to care.

Cats Cuddling: 23 Purrfect Moments Of Furry Feline Love - I Can Has Cheezburger?

works cited

Agarwal, Pragya. “Emotional Ai Is No Substitute for Empathy.” Wired, Conde Nast, 31 Dec. 2022, www.wired.com/story/artificial-intelligence-empathy/.

Guillory, Jasmine. “Jasmine Guillory on the Importance of Reading Black Fiction.” Time, Time, 30 June 2020, time.com/5861861/jasmine-guillory-black-fiction/.

Smith, Tracy K. “Does Poetry Matter?” The New York Times, The New York Times, 2015, www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2014/07/18/does-poetry-matter/wipe-that-smirk-off-your-poem.

Emotions vs. Science

Posted on January 21, 2024 by Mallery

Reading has been a part of my life ever since I could remember. As the daughter of a teacher and a writer, consuming literature was ingrained in my daily routine. As I progressed in school and grew up in general, literature became more of an escape, away from weird teenage emotions and mean kids in the lunchroom. It became a place where I could trade my own emotions for another’s for a minute or two. That’s why I found Claudia Hammond’s article titled “Does Reading Fiction Make Us Better People?” so interesting because it introduces an argument that backs up people’s emotional attachment to books in general. Hammond seems to link empathy as the main trait of being a better person, and while empathy is a good trait to possess, one could say it takes a whole lot more than empathy to be labeled as a good person in society.

Nevertheless, Hammond explains various experiments that research people and how empathetic they are based on either being an avid fictional reader or having just read a short piece of fiction. By the end of the article, Hammond seems to believe in her argument that reading fictional literature unlocks an empathetic trait in people. I do believe that consuming fictional literature has made me more in tune with my emotions and able to see them in other people. But I do not think that empathy is the only emotion that we should take into consideration when asking the question if literature makes a person better or not.

My thought is that all literature is intentional, always carefully planned, and edited until the last second. Society does not work that way; it is chaotic, messy, and unexpected. I do find that the experiments themselves are engaging, and the prose is compelling, asking a good question that links literature to how we as people function in a society. I just found that the research focuses mostly on the empathy in others rather than allowing other emotions to be categorized as well when people consume fictional literature.

At my high school, the English classrooms were clumped together in one old, dingy hallway, while the science classrooms spanned two gigantic hallways that had been recently renovated when I got there. From then on, those two subjects—science and the humanities—were always pitted against each other, and where I grew up, it seemed that science was the more favorable one.I believe that’s when I realized that reading books was more than a hobby for me, when there was time for a choice. The choice had never been easier.

That’s why I found Patrick Rosal’s argument titled “Poetry is Hospitable to Strangeness and Surprise,” which presents the dispute that poetry and science go hand in hand rather than being opposites of one another. From this article, I am able to understand why people pick science, why there is even a choice in the first place, and why there doesn’t have to be anymore. Rosal states, “poetry and science are kin.” These two subjects share much in common, even when neither party wants to acknowledge it. I believe the most prominent similarity that they share is “observation” (Rosal). Observation is how poetry gets written; the subject that is observed gets described by the poet on paper. Observation in science is the foundation for any solid hypothesis.

The simplicity of Rosal’s list of similarities struck me because there were only five reasons, but each brought multiple examples to mind. From there, I could actually believe the argument that science and poetry, or the humanities, are similar in various ways. The two do not have to go hand in hand, but we, as a society, should “give them enough space and support to work in solitude but talk together too.” (Rosal). As shown, these two subjects can work together, but neither has to be favorable to the other.

Life is interdisciplinary: a defense of the literary as practical

Posted on January 11, 2024 by Michael

The Team at the Pediatric Service of Remembrance

A labyrinth for grieving families to use

My parents questioned my major choice. My dad, of course, wanted me to go straight to med school (“I know you’re a senior, but if you want to stay a few more years and take the pre-reqs…”), and my mom – well, she smiled and asked me “are you sure?”

I’ve realized that no matter what discipline I end up in, I’m going to have to learn how to think in an interdisciplinary nature. Each text read in an English class ends up discussing a social/political/economic issue. Further, I’m minoring in Medical Humanities and Jewish Studies. My minors, in combination with my major, have led me to pursue a career in end-of-life healthcare, specifically law concerning bioethics and the elderly. So even if I tried my very hardest to avoid thinking this way, it would be impossible. When it comes down to it, the most personal and private pieces of ourselves seem to find their ways into the wide open at the end of life. I’ve worked as a palliative care volunteer for the past few years, sitting by the bedside when someone is dying alone, or providing respite for a family member who just needs to go eat or shower.

Although I’m some random kid, people decide to tell me everything – from stories of their favorite family meals to trauma and abuse stories. Although this is the career I want to go into, there is no possible way to approach it coldly. Every aspect of the job requires delicacy and empathy, or at least an attempt at empathy. I have found that even though I don’t always find the right words, the attempt is worth it. When I see how the patients are treated, I realize why this matters. It’s not that the doctors or nurses are bad people – in fact, they’re absolutely amazing — but the modern American medical system simply focuses on the maximum number of tests and divisions between parts of the body and their corresponding hospital teams, which results in the patient feeling left behind. So how could I, being one bright-eyed kid, do anything about it? Well, it started with reading about the subject – both fiction and non-fiction.

I took a course called Religion, Healthcare, and Ethics, and we read work from bioethics experts, religious experts, and laypeople. Here’s where it all got started – I learned about topics I had never heard of (namely, palliative care and how it’s different from hospice) and re-evaluated my viewpoints. I found my personal religious views challenged, and I was excited. As Jasmine Guillory acknowledges in her TIME article, “Reading Anti-Racist Nonfiction Is a Start. But Don’t Underestimate the Power of Black Fiction,” “[m]ultiple studies have shown that reading certain types of fiction increases a reader’s empathy for others in the world. Fiction gives you a window into both lives you know and recognize and ones you don’t” (Guillory).

Guillory’s article is specifically about reading Black fiction as an act of anti-racism. She’s 100% right, but her argument expands to helping understand anyone different from you. Whatever your difference, reading about it can give you a better understanding (although not always a correct or close to complete understanding). For me, Atul Gawande’s book Being Mortal was a great start. But one could simply respond: well, that’s your career, not mine, and I need something practical.

In his New York Times Op-Ed, “Poetry is Hospitable to Strangeness and Surprise,” author Patrick Rosal asks a simple question:

“For whom?”

Who is poetry for, he asks. He continues on, stating that “you may want something ‘practical’” (Rosal). And haven’t each of us heard that a million times – just like the way my dad said it. But it means something different to me. On my first day as a volunteer with palliative care, I didn’t know what to do. I was so nervous that I was sweating through my shirt, and I actually got lost in the hospital. It was terrifying, and the whole time, I was thinking “what if it doesn’t do anything?” “What if I just can’t find the right words?” I always thought that I needed something practical. I asked the few others on the team if they had some sort of guidebook, and they pretty much just laughed at me.

But what I realized is that the words that we offer are the concrete and practical business. Everyday we interact with people and without proper and effective communication, nothing is going to happen. And further, everyone’s going to feel bad about it. Using the right language is the foundation of a successful process and career.

So maybe I don’t know how to be a surgeon, or how to diagnose an illness, but because of literature, I feel equipped with the everyday decisions as well as the end-of-days decisions.