Futility, Thy Name is English!

I saw an article today, talking about the end of the English major. It was about how there are less and less of the students actually undertaking this field of study. It's going the way of the Latin major, a useless holdover of a bygone age.

This does not surprise me.

Before I offer my opinion, let me show you my circumstances. I attended North Carolina State University, majoring in English with a concentration in Creative Writing. I wasn't particularly in love with NCSU over any other college, save for two things: one, that I went to high school just down the street from there and two, that they reached out to me while I was in high school. I was the first person in my family to attend college, and the first to graduate.

To come back to it: this article is a rallying cry. It's not over, the author says. English is a good thing, and it's worth teaching.

I agree with the heart of this concept, on the whole. But I don't think it really applies to me.

I'm a writer. My job is to tell stories. Some of them are not fictional, but all of them hopefully have some element of the truth in them. So here's a true thing: my being a writer is not now, nor has it ever been, defined by me having a piece of paper. I could have gone off to be an auto mechanic, and sat down at my computer at the end of the day with grease in my fingernails, stinking of sweat and motor oil. But the story would still come out if the words were in me. Like they do now.

Here I am. I am a borderline bro. I have a total man crush on my biceps. I fret over my workout programming and how many pull ups I can do. My hands are calloused from hanging from the bar, from swinging the kettlebell. But the words come, and I can bleed on the page with the best of them.

Did I really need to spend tens of thousands of dollars just to learn to do something that I was doing already anyway?

I don't know. I don't claim to have any answers for anyone, here. But if I don't need the Major to be who I need to be, and my freaking vocation is tied to it, then what use is it really?

(Perhaps the argument can be made in the value of English Major as the shelter of those souls who find themselves in the works of the past, in Shakespeare and Chaucer and Bradbury. But keep in mind: all that means is that you're running away from the real world, choosing to engage in an extremely limited fandom and asking to get paid lots and lots of money for it. At best, it's an extremely sanctimonious con: you write your fanfiction, call it a thesis, and everyone loves you. At worst, it's cowardice, taking the wonder and beauty of story and hiding it in an ivory tower where you don't have to engage with anyone, save those young minds too terrified to show you that maybe Jane Austen wasn't the end of literature. Then again, I may not know. I had very limited access to my professors. They were too busy reading Bronte to comment).