While having a discussion with another student at my university, making polite and pleasant enough small talk, I happened to mention that I was an English major. He chuckled at this. “So, I guess you have a lot of free time on your hands, huh?”
Yeah. I get this a lot.
Maybe he was just teasing and didn’t mean for it to be insulting, but it is. It always is. I take it personally every time someone makes some kind of quip about my major. Literature and creative writing aren’t important fields of study, they seem to say. You must have a lot of free time, since you don’t actually do something that’s important. Sure, you work hard and spend a lot of money to attend this university to study, but if you’re going to study English… why even bother?
If I said to you, “Yeah, I know you absolutely love this and you’ve spent a lot of time and hard work on it, but, in all honesty, you’re wasting your time,” how would you feel? Well, that is what you are essentially saying to me every time you question my choice to major in English.
I am aware that English is not the most financially secure major. I know that writing a novel will not necessarily cure cancer, end poverty, and save starving children in Africa. I understand that my work might not sell. I don’t need you to remind me.
You see, I chose it anyway.
Writing brings me joy. Thinking that my words made any sort of difference—no matter how small or insignificant the impact—in someone’s life is fulfilling to me. Maybe I won’t save anyone, or maybe I’ll end up as the stereotypical wannabe writer who will never really make it big-time. But words run through me like blood. They keep my heart beating. And I am not trying to speak for all English majors here, but most of them have chosen their course of study because they have, in some fashion, fallen in love with the written word. It is not your place to judge their love affair with words.
