A Defense of the English Major

[vc_row][vc_column][title type="subtitle-h6"]Lauren Gonitzke[/title][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width="11/12"][vc_column_text]Just this past semester during the last class of my seminar in English, my professor asked the roomful of upperclassmen in the English major what could be done to improve the English department. She said the department was trying to attract more students and their pitch was to sell the utility of English in the ability to write and communicate effectively -- in addition to thinking critically. But she confessed that she didn't agree with this method; those were bonus skills one obtained from reading and analyzing literature, and not the main, driving reason that should be behind a student's decision to declare.Like many others, it took me a while to decide on a major. I applied for college, tentatively putting Linguistics as my anticipated major. I began my freshman year at UW-Madison knowing that there was a Creative Writing major and telling myself that I wouldn't major in it and that I would be practical and choose a more ìusefulî major. I bounced around from a myriad of combinations: Chinese and Business, Chinese with a business certificate, Chinese and English Language and Linguistics with a TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) certificate I was desperately trying to find congruence between my interests and a possible career path. I just couldn't bear the thought of doing something I didn't absolutely love for the rest of my life. That is the difference between a job and a career. I wanted my labor to be expended on something I thought worthy of my time and energy. After almost two years of constantly re-routing my academic path, I finally came to the realization that the most enjoyable courses I took were all literature courses. When I sat in the English advisorís office to declare my English Creative Writing major, I thought back to the irony of my explicit vow freshman year.My beloved high school choir teacher from Northland Pines was dedicated to building up the music program. Not only did Mrs. Janssen put on a winter and spring concert. She also spent a lot of extra time and hours after school and numerous weekends required to create a Madrigal Singers group, a cabaret concert and dinner in collaboration with the jazz band, and undertook the huge project of a musical production. She put on all these events annually. And yet my school made it difficult for students to fit choir and band into their schedules.Liberal arts are always shortchanged in favor of sports programs. But I loved the creative arts. Throughout my life I spent my free time reading, writing and drawing. As a child, my parents would often tease me about becoming a starving artist. I received more positive reactions to my writing because my parents could see the usefulness in being able to write well. Itís rather insidious how this kind of diction and vocabulary shapes the way we perceive the world. Productive, useful, and practical: these words make value-statements about majors, careers, and people's worth. Most students in the Humanities find a certain line of questioning from acquaintances, friends, and family alike rather irritating. It goes something like this: "What's your major?" followed by, "Oh, what are you going to do with that?" Indeed, what is the utility of the English major? Literature has plenty of utility, but none of it is quite tangible or quantifiable. And sadly, my generation has come of age in a world of quantification. It's easy to see the utility in STEM sciences and business majors, but the arts? The trope of the starving artist remains in popular culture and today's current consciousness. To be an artist, one must be of the few, lucky elite or starve. It is true that the creative fields are extremely competitive, but it's not impossible to make a decent living in line with oneís passions.After declaring my English major and focusing on my literature classes, I feel more fulfilled than ever. Through literature, I can ask and explore larger questions, such as what it means to be a woman of color, or the roles culture and family play in identity. I exercise critical thinking skills because my major encourages me to question what Iím told and the things I think are a given. Everything has context: time and place, target audience, key players, and implications. Everyone and everything is trying to sell you something, whether it be a product or an idea. Through my major's coursework, I have become more attuned to the complexity of contexts outside literature. As a result, I am more critical in my consumption of media. By reading a variety of authors, I am also able to learn about different perspectives and expand my world. I read about and from the perspectives of a myriad of different people. Through literature, I am mindfully thinking outside my own existence about the world and people with experiences similar and dissimilar to my own. Clark Zlotchew once said that [f]iction has been maligned for centuries as being false, untrue, yet good fiction provides more truth about the world, about life, and even about the reader, than can be found in non-fiction. Fiction teaches us about community, about friendship and love, life and death, and everything in between. Every culture values storytelling. Novels, movies, musicals, TV shows, comics, diaries, journals, whatever the medium storytelling is so important. An alternate universe without the beloved Harry Potter or Star Wars series sounds bleak and sad to me.We are a generation riddled with anxiety and existential dread for our futures. Many of us just want to graduate and get a stable, well-paying job. Planning for anything beyond that seems like asking too much. We're willing to sacrifice our health and spare time, burning out by taking on a part-time job, an internship, or too many extracurriculars just to get an edge in the competitive market into which we'll be thrust. I succumbed to this pressure, too, that is, until I broke under it.I'm tired of hearing the urgency of rhetoric about utility and productivity. Why does our society and culture ridicule what it cannot directly convert into tangible capital gains? What exactly is so laughable about taking a class to better understand morals and ethics of issues in contemporary society? Literature is about asking big, lofty questions with no clear-cut answers.Although majors and college in general is supposed to grant one with specialized knowledge in a certain field, general education or gen-ed requirements are attempts to make students well-rounded. The liberal arts are essential in and outside of school. English majors may not always land a job directly related to literature, but their major will have given them very powerful tools. The utility of the English major is learning how to become an individual and to form one's own opinions, question the status quo, and think outside of oneself. Those skills are not tangible, quantifiable, or things can be readily monetized, but they are no less valuable. In fact, those assets are probably more valuable because of that very reason.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]