I found it interesting that the creation of academic disciplines has long been critiqued as “limited and confining” (Moran, Introduction to Interdisciplinarity). From a young age, I was drilled on the importance, and necessity, of specialization—a specialized job. Perhaps anxieties about the specialization of knowledge do not extend to the specialization of jobs, as they are seen as necessary for our culture and capitalist society to function to its maximum potential. Everyone has a niche.
I found it interesting because I wondered about the privilege underlying the centuries-old debate about and critique of disciplines. Perhaps this is another idea in and of itself. Maybe this is not true, but I can’t help but think it is a privilege. It was not something my parents could think about, anyway.
Up until last winter break, I was a pharmacy student. Before I started college, I had worried about the vocational emphasis, the rigidity of classes assembled in “bundles” or “blocks.”
“Think of it as grad school. That’s basically what it is,” someone said.
My friend, currently in her fourth year, likes this parceled-out method for creating schedules, this set, premeditated path. And it works for jobs in the STEM field that depend on specific knowledge and procedure. It just did not work for me. After taking required courses as part of the liberal arts education, I worried about taking strictly rational science classes and labs and never being able to take other classes I was interested in. I craved classes that grappled with the meaning of life in different ways. I took English that year despite not having to, and against my better judgment, as that would mean less study time for other subjects, because I could not stand not doing so. Of course, as an idealist, I cannot take all the classes I want to take, including but not limited to history, sociology, anthropology, political science, and even the hard sciences that I ran from, but at least I now have the option.
It’s no wonder the non-specialized nature of English—“it is generally accessible to those outside the discipline” and “does not make a strong connection between education and training for future careers”—freaked out my parents (Moran, 21).
And this “anxiety”—for lack of a better word, or to borrow the lessons of repetition from class—does not only afflict adults or parents. One of my friends says this often: I want to do this or this, but I also want money…I might go to law school. Of course, money is not her primary reason for potentially pursuing law, but it is no doubt a part of the conversation at large. And this is why I was relieved when Professor McCoy addressed early on in the semester the anxiety among English majors. I thought it the perfect introduction (personally) to the English major.
As Moran says, English is by nature interdisciplinary, and that is part of the appeal to me. It is not why I chose English, and I don’t know if English is to me what philosophy was to Aristotle, but it is how I grapple with life’s questions.