If only you'd been an English teacher...

I am, even after four years of it, astounded by how many people say that my major was a waste of my education.  I am a proud English major, bibliophile, and appreciator of literature.  I read the words of the great people who have gone before us, and I figure out what they were trying to leave us with. 

More importantly, to me at least, I study literature to be close with my loved ones. 
 We are all bibliophiles--at my family reunions, books get passed around more than cole slaw and cheek kisses.  I read Jane Austen and think of my little cousin Jessie--she's going to be the next great witty woman writer. I read Frances Hodgson Burnett and think of my Mother, and Water for Elephants makes me think of my Grandmother, who recommended it. I read Stephen King and think of my brother. I read Hemingway and think of the better times with my father.  I read Anne Rice and think of Kari, my dear friend who passed away, and of watching Queen of the Damned at our hilarious sleepovers in her living room, while her yippy little dog barked incessantly. I read Harry Potter and I think of all the crazy times I spent nerding out with my high school friends, and of "Cafe con Libros", which only David would ever understand.  Patrick Rothfuss brings my boyfriend and my girls back home closer to my heart.  Terry Pratchett makes me think of my dear and wonderful Evetts. And, as ashamed as I am to admit it, Stephenie Meyer makes me think of my wonderful brish girls <3

All of that put together is hardly a justification for a four year degree...

But someone needs to be out there who understands literature.  Someone needs to teach it.  Someone needs to keep interpreting words and making sure people know how to use them.  Lawyers need to understand the special language of the law.  Doctors need to write down what they learn in their research and practice.  Chemists need to understand language in order to eventually speak the language of chemicals (and know the difference between H2O and H2SO4).  Language and literature are important.  And everyone needs to learn them.  The ones who teach doctors, lawyers, chemists, biologists, engineers, journalists, artists, mechanics, police officers and janitors how to understand their language, were English majors.

And there are going to be lots of people who want to study English, but decide that they don't want to teach.  So when I tell you I'm an English major, dear lord, do not say, "Oh, so you're planning to teach then?"  English is not Latin.  It is not a dead language.  In point of fact, when you ask me if I'm going to be an English teacher, you are USING English.  There is a benefit to being exceptionally capable with your own language, regardless of what you plan to do with it.  So, no, I don't plan to be a teacher.  Sure, I did at one point.  But everyone goes through a phase where they simply cannot imagine leaving the world of academics behind (perhaps when they realize that, in most careers, you don't get the summer off). 

But even if you can't understand why a person would want to study English and then not become an English teacher, surely you can understand someone having a love of the way atoms combine to make a molecule, or the way organelles work together for the function of a cell.  You can understand someone loving the way a circuit board tells a machine what to do, or the beautiful lines of the architecture of the State House.  You can understand the way someone would love being a doctor, a lawyer, a chemist or a mechanic.  You can understand why someone would love to fly planes or paint or sing or play the piano.  When you were a child, you played with a chemistry set or a model airplane and your parents saw what you were going to become.

Why can't you understand that I love to write words? I love the way they combine to make sentences, and the way they work together to make a story or a poem.  I love the way they can tell you what to do, I love the beautiful lines of Robert Frost poems.  I love being a bibliophile, a wordsmith, a bookworm and a writer.  I love to write words that soar and color my stories, I love to write words that sing.  When I was a little girl, I diagrammed sentences.  No, really, I did.  I wrote stories and made little books with string bindings for my mother.  I drew the illustrations myself, and I stenciled each word in carefully because, to me, I was making something that mattered.  And because my mother is an amazing woman (and something of a bookworm), she saw the same thing YOUR mothers did when you were playing with your chemistry sets.

So shut the hell up.