Author: Elizabeth Henty

Chatting with some friends today at Letch over some amazing cold stone ice-cream wasn’t so amazing.

There was three of us, me being an education major with an English minor. The other being a business major minoring in education. And lastly but not least (..but I placed her last because she was the most rude) has a bio major and I can’t quite remember what she had said she was minoring in. But anyway. We chatted and chatted, and then we started to talk about school. How the midterms went, how our grades were, and what it was we were doing in our individual classes.

The bio major had A LOT to say regarding her major, and unfortunately mine. She non stop talked about how hard and challenging it was now, but would always end the sentence with “but at least I’ll have a job out of here, and i’ll be making bank”. “Bank”. I mean really? This is when I silently laughed to myself. Who would say they were making bank? Not an english minor! Although I do make plenty and plenty of other mistakes, I don’t think that would be one of them.

As I discussed this english class, and talked about how we recently gave comments on each others papers, she also had a lot to say. First, she said it was unnecessary, and also embarrassing. And two, she made it very clear that us students shouldn’t be correcting the paper, the teacher should be. Basically saying we don’t know what we are talking about but the teacher does, but in a much nicer way. And I thought to myself, “NOOOOOO!”. Sharing my essay with my fellow classmates was, yes, a scary thought at first. But knowing that I did it anyway, and gained so much from it was such a proud moment for me to talk about with her. I explained to her that with my group that I had worked with, not only helped me see what I did wrong, but the teacher gained a lot from it too(at least I thought). It was such a good experience for all of us, that I would recommend it to any major out there, regardless if it’s a paper or not. It could be reaching for help in any subject! I talked and explained, and she basically shut up.

Now I do not mean to bad mouth her, and I actually let her proof read this because I wouldn’t want her to think that I was. And she laughed and agreed it was ok to post. Although I love this girl to death, I am going to sit back and enjoy my ice-cream next time while she does all the talking.

Lately, I’ve been thinking long and hard about my concentration in English. This class was pretty challenging in the beginning regarding the three books all at once. I was a bit worried that I wasn’t cut out for all this reading. I thought to myself many times in the past week if this was the right minor for me..

Continue reading “I’m not alone”

Before becoming a Suny Geneseo transfer, I attended a community college in Auburn, New York, where I had discovered my interest in becoming an English minor. My first thoughts were.. YUCK! The reading is unlimited, the language is too difficult, and jobs.. do they exist?

Excuse me while I enjoy not writing in stiff essay form while blogging. To my understanding, blogging is a much easier way to get a more sufficient idea on a  person and how they converse. Verses stiff essay form, they all look the same to me. So pardon me as I let loose for a little bit, within reason. Back to where I left off..

I had a wonderful teacher who had opened my eyes to the unseeable to many, which was how far you can go with an English Major/minor. The typical major where you are opt to make “more money”  would probably be engineering, or business. But none of those had interest me.. the money or the work. For the last 10 years, I’ve had a keen interest in children. Working with them, playing, teaching, even learning from them. With that being said, I was led to an Education program (which I’m sure you all had guessed). But it was time for me to  pick my minor.

Math? God no

Science? Yikes!

History? ZzZZzzZZZz

English? Hmmm…

After brainstorming a bit, I picked up a few english classes and there it began. This teacher had shown me amazing works of literature. Just beautiful. The words, meanings, stories behind them. It all amazed me. But also scared me. I have an extremely difficult time understanding things the first time around. So although it may take 2-3 reads to clearly understand it’s meaning(it took me almost 6-8 times to understand the first few pages of Interdisciplinarity), it’s understood. I read poems, I read novels, I read chapter books (being an education major). I read everything! And where to begin to describe it all?! I read about pencils, paper, leaves, history, celebrities, black people, white people, tall, short, romance, mathematics.. I mean EVERYTHING! Which is where the whole interdisciplinary concept comes on.

I know almost everyone in this class can bring up at least one time they’ve heard the English major/minor being abused. Can someone tell me why? Why a majority of our people feel the need to talk down to it? WHY? My mind gets lost towards that infuriating question because english is almost everything! It’s more interdisciplinary than any subject I can think of off the top of my head. Which says a lot because there’s always thoughts brewing up there. I think the main issue is that people connect an English major with being relatively easy, because most of us can say we know the language. But there’s a lot more to it that I think people don’t take interest in.

Without rambling on, I’d like to know what all the fuss is about with English majors. Why is it? Is it that people simply don’t understand the language, or is the other way around? Meaning they think they know too much, where the major would be a waste of their time?Why is that I want to know. Why? Why why why?