English

Literature has enabled mankind to remember a lot of different things. We look back through the past and view history through the eyes of people that wrote down the stories. The fictional ones, the real ones, the ones that commented on society and the growing norms, it doesn't matter. For hundreds of years we based the intelligence and growth of a civilization off of their literature, what they decided was important enough to be written down. The bible has survived 2000 years of civilization change, people change, ideology change, but still it remains, still it is a marker of something that is important to millions of people. Literature is what we used to think was the most important mark of an intellectual, the writer is who came to define history.

And yet, look at the English Major now.

I find it fascinating that what was once the most studied, the most important, and the most intellectual of all the subjects is now looked down upon. When I tell people that I'm an English Major, a lot of them smile little smiles of "oh, I see. You're just here to get married." Or, "Where are you going to go with that? Home with the children?" It frustrates me that so many people think I'm only learning about English because it's "easy" and I'm just going to college so I can say I have a degree but then never use it. It's so strange, because the history of English, the history of literature, is so rich and full of ideas. Ideas drive mankind, it's what leads us and pushes us to progress. Even now, when people look back at this time we'll see all of the technology advances, we'll see all of the change that has occurred, but how will we study it? How will we look at it? Through the literature that is being produced. Through what is being written down now!

I'm writing this for a variety of reasons. One of them is because I was having a little bit of an identity crisis for the past few months. I haven't updated this blog in so long because part of me had given up on the idea of ever becoming a writer, or ever doing something that would really effect the world. But, I recently came to the realization that giving up on any dream is foolish. Even if I don't do anything else, I can still be a writer, and I can still get my words out there.

A few weeks ago, I was trying to decide whether or not I wanted to remain an English major or change that major to something else. I was contemplating English Teaching, even though that had never been something particularly appealing to me. I was hoping that by teaching English perhaps I could feel like I was doing something useful with my major, actually developing a skill that I'd be able to market. But something continually held me back. Every time I felt like I had made the decision, that I wanted to be a teacher, I would start to voice that desire and immediately begin to doubt myself. It was an uncomfortable teeter-totter ride. I began to get exceedingly frustrated, and started talking to close friends about it. One of them told me I was looking at it the wrong way, and that I needed to stop thinking, “What can I market?” and start thinking, “What do I want to do?”

I took his advice to heart, sitting down with myself and really trying to think about what I wanted to do. What brought me joy, what was something I would love to do for the rest of my life? The answer came quietly, barely a whisper above all the other raging, arguing voices in my head. It was the voice I'd shut down as impossible, as being too irresponsible to actually pursue. It sounded astonishingly like a junior high/high school version of myself. It whispered, “I just want to write. . . I want to tell stories.”

I was shocked. I just sat there for a moment, dumbfounded. How could I have forgotten? How could I have let myself degrade so far that I had actually allowed my main goal since I was 12 years old fall into disrepair? I hadn't written a story in months, my ideas were fleeting and never seemed to last more than a paragraph at best. I hadn't invested any time into creativity, because I was “just too busy.” I'd failed myself.

But I'm not going to let that happen anymore. This story blog has been neglected for months, almost an entire year since the last post. I don't want that to happen again. I have to make time for storytelling.

So, the English major has been frowned upon by a lot of modern society, thinking that it is frivolous, foolish, and that it can't take you anywhere. But history tells us that it is the literature, the writers, that decide the future of the world. So let's see what we can do, shall we? Let's see what kind of history I, personally, can create.