How It Happened That I Became An English Major In The First Decade Of The Twenty-First Century
Sydney Boyd

Before I could type, I dictated a novel (or what seemed like one to my five-year-old self) to my father. The protagonist was Qwazilla—primarily because I had just learned that after a ‘q’ there is always a ‘u’, and I wanted to prove the law wrong. Unlike Lee Siegel, who openly flaunted his obsessions fueled by novels’ notions, I flattened out my passions to fit into high school. I even attempted to be a jock on the varsity basketball team warming the bench. But in the same way that Siegel was affected by what he read, I was taken with ideas foreign to me. Words have always fascinated me, stringing ideas and pulling imaginations, but being an English major is not what I foresaw myself doing until I neared the end of my freshman year.

If a person picked a major specifically to deny themselves job security, it was me. Music appealed to me in its true artistic form. I was devoted to my music. No, I didn’t worry that I would be hugging a curb with my calves, my violin under my chin and my case kicked by strangers, just trying to pay the rent. I would be satisfied, because I had picked a profession I was passionate about—not like those business majors who sold their souls. I had an English minor—I wasn’t required to have one as a performance degree is so large, but I chose to do it anyway, simply because I thought I loved to read.

Jeremy Hsu writes about the appeal of a good story and its effect on people. The psychological and social values of a story well told are engrained in our society. This is probably what actually pulled me to English. Being a literature major was like being a history major, but it was a small niche that had a profound effect on people. Storytelling: it had the power to capture people and sway them into revolutions. I did not have a firm grasp on what it meant to truly study a work with sources and research until my first class in Romantic literature. From there, I found music slipping past my need to scour the criticisms on Mary Wollstonecraft and Edgar Allen Poe. After I switched to a double major in music and English, I sailed through the next two years of college happily. As I neared the summer before my senior year, I realized I had chosen my areas of study without any real consideration for the possibility of employment following my matriculation—I had chosen what I enjoyed based on the idea of savoring life with the best possible occupation surrounding me.

I had always said I would be a college professor, teaching music or English, but I had to reevaluate that idea with the realization that it could easily be a hard route to take. Jobs for either area in higher education are scarce, and become increasingly scarcer as the economy tanks. Graduate school loomed—the actual program excited me; the application process seemed ominous. I dabbled in journalism, working as a copy editor and then managing editor, but newspaper writing held a dry, lifeless quality that uninspired me. At this point, my inner Lee Siegel emerged, and I was flamboyantly and openly affected by books. The natural choice for me was to spread my appreciation to wide-eyed freshmen, much like I had once been. With half of a personal statement written and two GRE study guides parading on my desk, I am determined to continue to pursue my goals of college professor-dom.