Hey anon, I was a literature student at a top-ranking liberal arts university. I feel like this ask was almost written by the me of 5 years ago! Sorry if I write a lot!
I would like to tell you something. In the first year, I felt hopelessly out of my depth amongst my classmates. I had been The Writer and Literary Kid at my Catholic School, but in college, I was just one among many. They read Arundhati Roy, Wollstonecraft, Dostoevsky, Sartre and Kafka, I barely knew these people before starting university. They liked all the classics, war literature, postcolonial literature, they rattled off Eagleton and Fanon and Spivak like they were household names, they knew fully how to cite in MLA and APA formats, they had already published term papers! I was a nobody, who at most had published fan fiction and my favourite author was Ruskin Bond who was looked down as a "commercial bestselling author" by my peers, who read Marquez and Bulgakov.
I liked to ask questions in class and got ridiculed for it. I remember asking 7 times to the professor to clarify some concepts of structuralism, like signifier and signified. I could not understand, and because I could not, I got laughed at by the class. But you know what our professor said? "She is curious and active in class. She actually cares about learning and doesn't hesitate to show that she is unaware of something and needs clarification. And that is the mindset you actually need, not only to succeed as an academic, but also as a future educator."
Still, I felt like I had nothing new to offer unlike my more intellectual peers etc. But I drew from the knowledge I had and I did not hesitate to research. I asked the nicer classmates for book recommendations, and they gave me good ones without sneering. I asked my professors. I searched on JSTOR, on libraries and went down rabbit holes. The most important thing is to love what you study and by fucking hell, I love literature. I love books and authors and subtext and metaphors and historical contexts. I love analysing things and writing essays.
The turning point came when the results of our first year was out. I had ranked first! The professors got to know me, and were asking my classmates to read my papers and see how it's done. That did NOT make me popular among some people lol, they still found ways to undermine me and say, "Oh, so professors like this type of simple, unrefined writing, got it. I guess I was being too complex, lol." (Actual comment. I swear. Actual comment I received from a former friend). I remember for a mixed arts course in my final year we had to write a paper on translations, retellings, adaptations etc. I wrote on Fitoor (2016) from Bollywood and The Handmaiden (2017), my favourite films forever. And boy, was I clowned in class??? But guess who got the highest marks??? Guess who got a special comment of praise from the professor???
I have spent 5 years in my university, initially self-hating, feeling inadequate, being ridiculed by several peers, being made to feel less intellectual, boring and immature. I now have a gold medal, a book deal (with the same press that published Ruskin Bond, Agha Shahid Ali, Kamala Das etc and other authors from our own syllabus!) publications in US based literary magazines and have been interviewed by different magazines.
So here are my tips to you:
Do NOT measure your worth by your peers. Especially not by their intellectual capacity.
Diversify your reading and do not be limited to any one topic or area! Whether fiction or non fiction!
Make friends with nice and non judgemental people. Be wary of supposed good academics who look down on anybody with "inadequate" knowledge and make no secret of it.
If you find a different, related or unrelated topic that is interesting while researching for an essay, make a note of it in a journal or diary, return to it later! you don't know how many interesting rabbit holes you might find!
Do NOT try to impress without fully comprehending the material you read and prepare. You don't know the number of intellectuals I met who had half-assed knowledge but carried themselves like confident white men because they could say "lacuna" or "subaltern" in their speech.
Remember: your dream should not become a chore to impress others. Start a blog, keep a book account, join a history club, stick to good friends and prioritize learning properly and forming a solid foundation NOT being a walking Shashi Tharoor-esque encyclopedia. Life is NOT the secret history by donna tartt. Do not take inspiration from it lol.
Do not let capitalism convince you HAVE to be more unique than everybody else! A lot of people being good does not cancel one person's goodness. Do what you do best, love it, nurture it and do it well. You can only give it your best shot and remain unaffected by pretentiousness and pseudo intellectualism. The rest is fate.
All the best, you will do great!
gracieabrams
germansingergirl
ellievsbear
kianamaiart
origamiaround
