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sorry if this is inconvenient but rather than asking for your thoughts I’d like to ask for advice as someone who’s seriously considering majoring in literature? how was your experience? what do you consider fundamental? thank you in advance, even if you can’t answer 🥺

hello! i’m so glad you asked- i highly encourage anyone and everyone to major in literature. i find literature gets a bad rap in the media but i strongly believe it is one of the most interesting and important subjects you can take as a major. it teaches you the most important skill you need in the world today: the ability to express yourself well. however, full warning: this is going to be a long response.

i loved every moment of my literature degree. i started off as a double major in history and english, then switched to just doing an english literature degree. (some schools differentiate between english and english literature: english degrees focus on semantics as well as literature, while english literature focuses specifically on literature and its attributes. check the core courses of the programs you’re interested in to see which it is: english literature programs usually start with a writing course and a basic literature 101 course, while an english program may have study focuses more on english linguistics. but some schools don’t differentiate between the two at all!)

i am lucky because i went into my degree with a pretty solid idea of what i liked and by the second half of my degree was able to take courses that allowed me to specialize in the fields i liked (for me that was 19th century and feminist literature and pre-raphaelite studies). it’s okay if you don’t know exactly what you want to specialize in when you start, but i do think its a good idea to have a solid plan as you enter your third year. do you want to go abroad? write a thesis? what area of study could you see yourself focusing on? do you prefer a writing or a literature stream? this isn’t totally something you need to worry about now, but i wish someone had told me this when i was starting out.

more under the cut because there’s a lot:

switching to just doing an english degree was the best academic decision i made. once i finished my electives, i spent three years solid just reading and writing about what i was reading, and i loved every moment of it. obviously, be prepared for a lot of reading- once i was in my upper years, i was reading at least novel a week in each course in addition to academic papers. one interesting thing about literature is that you don’t only study literature like fiction and poetry, but text- i’ve also studied art, film, and television in my literature courses. i had a class with someone who wrote a dual thesis in anthropology and english that focused on a video game storyline.

be prepared for a lot of class discussion and group projects- this was hard for me because i have anxiety, but a good accommodations team (sometimes called disability services) will help alleviate those issues.

taking a good theory course in your first year is vital. mostly these are core courses that are required, and if you’re at a major university your first year of courses will likely be in a huge auditorium with 100+ other students. i spent my first year at a metropolitan university like that and it really wasn’t for me, so i switched to a very small liberal arts school where i was better able to connect with my professors and form good working relationships with them. some people thrive in a big, busy environment with lectures in sweeping: some are better suited to small seminar discussions.

some things nobody warns you about going into it: round-table discussions like you see in the movies rarely, if ever, exist. forget pretty much everything you learned about essay writing in high school. there is a chance you’ll do poorly in your first or second year, but that’s okay: it’s the process of acclimating to a totally new environment and a totally new way of thinking (this might not happen to you, but it did happen to me and everyone else i know who’s graduating this year). your books will cost a lot- more than you think they will, and while i’ve had a fair few professors who didn’t care what editions we used or made everything available online, i’ve also had professors who made us pay $250 for a course kit they designed and could not be accessed anywhere but in that kit.

one warning i would give is that very often, literature becomes what people take because they don’t know what else to do and they think it will be easy- i say this because during my first year, i was the only person in my seminar of 20 students who intended to finish my degree in english and not switch to another program (when i say this, i mean there were people in the seminar who said they hated reading but didn’t know what else to take…….oof). making the most of a literature degree means loving literature. it’s even less about having a real career plan, though literature is a great starting point for professional degrees if that’s something you think you want.

another thing to remember is that for many careers, an advanced degree is vital. this is the case in many fields right now, but it’s particularly serious in literature. however, it is also worth mentioning that in the workplace, people with literature degree are among those who steadily progress upward in their jobs: people who major in tech, for instance, actually progress downward, as their education becomes obsolete with technological advancement. i mention this only because i received a lot of flack about how it wasn’t “a good financial move” when i switched to my literature degree, but this actually isn’t true.

this is a lot of information to take in and i’m sorry for giving you this huge block of text to work through, but i really hope it helps you a little bit. at my last thesis meeting my advisor and i were discussing how important literature degrees are despite the negative connotations they often get in a society dominated by the desire to make money and develop technology. in any case, i wish you the best of luck going forward, and i know you’ll make a great decision whether you choose to major in literature or not- and i really hope you do! much love x

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