Why Do Students Choose an English Major?

An essay from the 7 July 2006 Chronicle of Higher Education, shares the answers an English professor got when he asked his undergraduate students why they were English majors. No one said he or she wanted to make a lot of money or change the world; here's what they did say:

• Formative experiences with reading as a child: being read to by beloved parents and siblings, discovering the world of books and solitude at a young age.
• Feelings of alienation from one's peers in adolescence, turning to books as a form of escapism and as a search for a sympathetic connection to other people in other places and times.
• A love for books themselves, and libraries, as sites of memory and comfort.
• A "geeky" attraction to intricate alternate worlds such as those created by Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and George Lucas.
• Contact with inspirational teachers who recognized and affirmed one's special gifts in reading and writing, often combined with negative experiences in other subjects like math and chemistry.
• A transference of spiritual longings -- perhaps cultivated in a strict religious upbringing -- toward more secular literary forms that inspired "transcendence."
• A fascination with history or science that is not grounded in a desire for rigorous data collection or strict interpretive methodologies.
• A desire for freedom and independence from authority figures; a love for the free play of ideas. English includes everything, and all approaches are welcome, they believe.
• A recognition of mortality combined with a desire to live fully, to have multiple lives through the mediation of literary works.
• A desire to express oneself through language and, in so doing, to make a bid for immortality.
• A love for the beauty of words and ideas, often expressed in a desire to read out loud and perform the text.
• An attraction to the cultural aura of being a creative artist, sometimes linked to aristocratic and bohemian notions of the good life.
• A desire for wisdom, an understanding of the big picture rather than the details that obsess specialists.

The essayist goes on to lament the students' loss of their romantic, idealistic motivations if they should choose to pursue English in graduate school, saying, "You have to spend so many years conforming [to the politics of English graduate school] that, by the time freedom presents itself, you don't know why you became an English major in the first place."

You can read the entire essay at "Goodbye, Mr. Keating."