Senior columnist looks to future with foot in past

As college career comes to close, English major shares wisdom, nostalgia with fellow students, majors

The way I see this week’s column ending up is like this — five or 10 years from now, some disillusioned young scholar of literature in the midst of a tortuous dark night will be wandering around campus or sifting through a curbside pile of garbage with a well-worn sneaker when he or she will come across this column. We won’t waste too much time pondering how a single sheet of newspaper, let alone an entire issue of The Breeze, could survive five or 10 years on its own — that’s not how these stories work.

Instead, let us imagine this sheet of paper you’re now reading, ripped in some places and streaked in others with the yellow grease of history. Our troubled young scholar picks up this column with the delicate fingers of an archaeologist and begins to read. The topic of the column — some words of wisdom for English majors.

As graduation becomes a no longer indefinable event but an impending reality, I find myself poring over what the past four years as an English major have done for me. Keep in mind I’m a School of Media Arts and Design major as well, but that hardly fits in with the theme of this column — maybe in my next life I’ll pen a column called “All Things Modular.”

Four years may sound like a substantial amount of time, but it goes by fast when one’s having fun, and there has been no greater pleasure than spending my college years reading and studying engrossing literature. Whatever the Philistines may say about the practicality of our major, at least we’ve spent our time here doing what we do best: reading and writing.

When it comes to the study subjects of the more mathematical and scientific majors whose subject matter would seem to eclipse those of English majors, don’t be disheartened by their “English-majors-equals-English-teachers” arguments. Shrug off the enormous entry-level salaries and the frequent job offers and internships that come their way. They seem to be happy where they are — don’t let them make you feel unhappy where you are.

But, the merits of an education in English language and literature — or in another language, for that matter — aren’t the kind you find in corporate jobs or corporate salaries. Our rewards primarily are the internal kind, the feeling of satisfaction of having devoted four years to something we loved instead of caving in to outside pressures. Our passion for literature is just as fierce as the passion for computers that hover like a thick fog around The Building Across the Interstate.

There will be times when you’ll question your motives, instances when you’ll kick/punch/claw/torture yourself for making the wrong decision. Don’t worry — for those who are devoted and dedicated, such feelings usually are the symptoms of having gone with a gut decision. Trust me, those feelings will pass.

If it weren’t for people like us, I think literature would have fizzled out a long time ago, resigned to that Dante-esque limbo along with Mariah Carey’s musical career and those weapons of mass destruction. The art of writing and interpreting literature leads to a dissemination of ideas and impressions that creates a grand network of scholars who, in turn, instill in others the same desire to read, write and study. We are missionaries, defenders and gardeners.

And whether you’re a student of today or a purpose-starved scholar of tomorrow, we all can take comfort in that.