10 Mar 2025
I didn't think that I would be an English major. When I was younger and I pictured myself going to school, I had always imagined that I would be studying something like Computer Science or Engineering. It's funny to think now that those majors were certainly not for me. English wasn't my first choice after all. When I was applying to UMass, I can remember selecting Computer Science as my first choice major, but my secondary choice? What was I going to choose? I certainly didn't feel confident with a lot of the options. However, one major stood out to me as a great secondary choice. English! I mean, I did speak English after all, so I felt that was a pretty good reason to choose it as my secondary major.
Well, as it turns out, we don't always get our first choices in life. What was I going to do? An English degree? I only knew one English major and that was my stepmother, and she wasn't even a teacher, she worked as a manager in technology. Maybe I could transfer? After I looked up the transfer requirements, I paled. Not only would I have to take math classes, I would have to get a B+ or higher in Calculus just to qualify for the application process to transfer. My chances cackled. If I even got the B+, there was still a chance they could reject me. I had never even taken calculus and math was definitely not my strong suit. In addition to this, I was actually over a year behind in math courses alone. This meant one thing, and one thing only. Like it or not, it seemed I was destined to become an English major.
However, the English major experience was actually much more friendly and enjoyable than I had imagined. I was not spiteful, in fact, I was grateful and began to embrace the major as an opportunity to learn as much about English as I wanted. I mean, it turned out that this was probably the best path forward for me anyways. Computer Science just wasn't for me, I didn't enjoy math and I wasn't very good at coding either. As an English major I could take virtually any English class I wanted on a wide variety of subjects and had none of those looming and dreadful math requirements in sight.
I began my English curriculum with College Writing 112 in the second semester of my freshman year. I would go to class, pay attention, and then go home and consider how I wanted to write the prompt. We didn't have to follow the prompt exactly, as it was just a recommendation from our professor, but I used these prompts as a way to explore topics that I wouldn't normally write about. I had never taken any course dedicated solely to writing, so I felt I had a lot of freedom. Every week, I would look forward to any projects from this class, as they didn't feel like homework at all. I would get a prompt, consider how to write it, and explore with great freedom the fact that I could practically respond in any way I wanted. It was thrilling. Thinking back, I believe this class helped me examine and consider my patterns. How I wrote, what I liked to write, what I enjoyed to read, and why I leaned towards these things. Although the class was only a very small part of my English major, I believe it helped me become the student I am today.
At this point in my English curriculum, I still had many classes left to take, but I was finding my place. What was once an uncomfortable idea, had now become the primary reason I woke up and went to classes. I was going to get this degree and enjoy the process by any means necessary. But then I had English 268, American Literature and Culture Before 1865. There wasn't a whole lot wrong with this course. The reading list was rich and I had a fair time completing the required books. However, one book stood out to me as a clear favorite, and that was Bartleby, The Scrivener. It was sort of ironic honestly, I felt my classroom experience paralleled Bartleby's. We both trudged through our exhausted days. He had his poorly lit office, and I had my drag of a discussion class. The professor didn't ask any questions, instead he read from the book and spoke his opinion for the whole of the class. Discussion classes then became monologue classes more accurately. I began to struggle convincing myself to attend, however unlike my companion Bartleby, although I would often consider skipping, I simply would prefer not to.
After completing my general education courses, thanks to the rather small requirements of my English degree, I found I actually had a lot of space to take any classes I wanted. It turns out that most classes in the English department would count towards me completing my degree anyways. So, out of the wide variety of available options, I chose to sign up for Beowulf this semester. In the past, I've taken courses dedicated wholly to the exploration of a single poem, Chaucer's Canterbury Tales for example, but until this point, I have had no experience with Old English. Was I going to like it? I knew that Middle English was particularly challenging for me at first, as I had to work from the ground up to get used to reading and understanding what was going on. Would this be the case for Old English?
Well, this semester began, and although I was initially nervous, I became pleasantly surprised. I found that the case with Old English was pretty similar to Middle English, but somehow more entertaining altogether. I have loved the experience of reading Beowulf, analyzing the translation, and then comparing it to the original text, flipping through the Anglo-Saxon dictionary to find translations for words and slowly piecing together meanings of my own. The experience has been more fun than I could have ever imagined. Every day I have class, I lug around this giant Bosworth-Toller dictionary I checked out from the library in my backpack, coupled together with the original text in one book and the modern translation in another. It's really a piece of work, but I feel like it's caused me to reflect on my English degree as a whole.
A few semesters ago, if you had asked me to do any sort of reading as required by my classes, I could have scoffed. What would these books give me that others I wanted to read instead couldn't? But today, I find myself going back and completing any books that I didn't have the energy to finish back then and the experience has been incredibly rewarding. I'm especially proud of myself for finding love in a degree that I didn't initially expect. I feel that this experience has taught me first, not to judge and to be open to trying new things. You'll never really know the cards you're dealt until you try and play them. I look forward to finishing my English degree and I am confident I will look back happily on the experience as a whole.