English Majorness: The State of Being an English Major, a Lifestyle in and of Itself

This past week has been...so many things. I can't even begin to analyze it. Being the writer that I am, therefore I must commence the analysis. I know, I know, it sounds counterproductive, but it is highly necessary.

This week--and one particularly great English major friend--helped me to be reminded about what I wanted to do with my life. I don't know how I could have forgotten, but this year has been disastrous and confusing on so many levels. I think I slipped into survival mode and started to forget everything I was supposed to remember.

But all of that has changed.

This week I read an F. Scott Fitzgerald novel, and buried myself in the wisdom of my forefathers. I have made myself exceedingly happy yet again, and I feel great hope in what is to come--whatever it is! I feel like a wandering soul that has lost faith in its usual haunts, only to return and discover there is no better place to belong. This week has been tragic and difficult (I was not in tears in the halls of Purdue for the first time in my life this week...) but in spite of the tragedies, I have found myself again. I finally have remembered who I am, and I am so thankful to belong to myself again.

My master's program, while technically looming to an end, is actually first beginning to open up its doors to me. Who will be my director? I don't know... But I am ready to write, and that is all that matters.

Well, actually, there are two other matters at hand now. The first is doctoral school. I am most certainly intent upon going--and upon not going alone! I am so in love with English major lifestyle, and I cannot imagine being anything but a student of the literature of my language. I was talking with a post-graduate friend at work this afternoon and she told me there would certainly come a time when I would be ready to be done, and that may be true. It certainly was true 7 months ago! I think I have been renewed in my desires for my life, though, and I am ready to be ready once again. I want to make up for all the lost time that I have spent being anything in the world but myself. I am intent upon surrounding myself with the people who love me for who I am and let me be that person, indefinitely. Whether it's good enough for them should be a matter of little consequence; this person is ME.

Which leads me to my other matter at hand. Acceptance! I am not naming names or identities of people with these concerns, but I am going to express my concern with the concerns themselves. Why, please tell me why, it becomes necessary for people to say that I am wasting my time "not living real life" by pursuing continued education? Just because I don't work a 9-5 job (and hopefully never will, THANK THE LORD!) does not mean this isn't real life. Once upon a time, an advanced degree in literary studies was the highest form of intellectual accomplishment (besides, like, inventing the universe or whatever Copernicus did) and now it is deemed lesser because it doesn't reap the "money" that the dull jobs do. But I don't want to work those jobs, I want to work this one. I want to be an academic...forever! I've learned that I always will be one whether I am in school studying or not, so why not be in school studying? I can't see this road ending and I don't want it to end; this road makes me feel alive! This road makes the deepest stirrings of my soul stir for a reason, and makes the unique quirks of my identity actually make sense.

So whatever comes next, I'm ready for it, because I can face it with myself inside of me again. I am no longer a strange soul inhabiting a familiar body, though I am undoubtedly changed. I am at least ready to return to my own heart and to walk again in my own path.

Literature makes me alive, and my Fitzgerald-soul communes with Hemingway in my heart.


*First photo, compliments of Michelle Cox*