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

            If I think about it, I never had a choice but to be an English major. I’ve actually never considered anything else. Perhaps I considered different careers (surely!), but always careers that would take my English degree. The sciences were not for me, nor the math.  I’m dreadful at art or creating anything without words (although I do bake a mean batch of chocolate chip cookies) and I believe Business to be only something Republicans major in.

            I was born to love to read. And listen. Jeremy Hsu wrote that people today spend most of their conversations telling stories and gossiping. This is certainly true of my family. My maternal grandparents, together, raised six storytellers. My grandfather, a farmer, could stand with you at the back window of the farm house and tell long, slow stories about him and his tractors, or him and the wheat fields. There were always lessons in his stories, maybe not strong moral lessons like ‘love thy neighbor,’ but I learned to never keep the keys in the tractors at night if there were drifters in town and to never challenge my Auntie Beth to any kind of race.

            My grandmother was a different breed entirely. While my grandfather was naturally quiet and articulate, my grandmother couldn’t keep her mouth shut and the only words coming out were about Sally Jenkin’s weight loss or Martha Bartel’s stolen pie recipe or about which grandchild was doing better than the rest. But between the two of them, my grandparents created imaginative, outrageous storytellers who never lacked for juicy detail or stories to tell. They’re also all very long winded.

            So I was born to listen, and to wish my aunts and uncles would write down their stories, so I could take them home with me when my visits to them ended.  This is probably where my love for the publishing world comes from. Hoping that people with stories to tell will someday have the ability to share them with the rest of us.

            Also of interest to me from Jeremy Hsu’s essay “The Secrets of Storytelling: Why We Love a Good Yarn” was when he wrote about the study that found that “students who had more exposure to fiction tended to perform better on social ability and empathy tests” (Hsu). I take this to mean that lovers of stories usually have decent social skills. But I also interpret this to mean something about the way readers relate to the characters in their books. My feelings for fictitious characters have always been somewhat inappropriate and overemotional. I usually fall in love with the male leads of any book published by British female authors (that obviously includes Mr. Darcy). The first book that made me cry was “So Far From the Bamboo Grove” when I was in 4th grade. Since then, and most definitely since puberty, I’ve been one of those who gets swept away by Hallmark commercials… and Harry Potter. Even the mention of any event in one of J.K Rowling’s seven books and my tear ducts swell. Such emotion only befits an English major, in my opinion.

            But Lee Siegel warns against getting too wrapped up in your reads, as he demonstrates in “Unsafe at Any Read.” Perhaps he didn’t mean to, but I sure wouldn’t want to rant constantly about Dostoyevsky, turn down a dance because of Plato or screw up a date because of Hegel and Sombart.

            The only true struggle I had concerning being an English major was whether I should specialize in writing or literature. I won Young Authors awards as a child and have been told I have a special writing technique that makes my stories life-like, entertaining and satisfying. I’ve also been told my wit is too dry to understand. Perhaps it was my lack of patience for writing that set me on the literature track. One does not know frustration until the words simply do not flow.

            So, I read, and I read well. College has developed in me a fine eye for what I like and do not like from authors. Hopefully this ability will suit me for a life in publishing. And if not, to at least help me find a husband who can pay for my Barnes and Noble purchases.

 

Works Cited

 

Hsu, Jeremy. "The Secrets of Storytelling: Why We Love a Good Yarn" Scientific

            American, September 18, 2008.

 

Siegel, Lee. "Unsafe at Any Read" New York Times, October 19, 2008.