Ten minutes after I submitted my plan of study, I wondered if I’d made a huge mistake; I experienced “buyer’s remorse”. Declaring one’s concentration is a big decision, and I found myself thinking deeply about who I am today, whom I used to be, what I’m passionate about, and what I like to learn. For the past fifteen years or so, we weren’t given many choices about what we wanted to study; we simply had to take the required courses to graduate high school. This ability to choose any course I found interesting was overwhelming and liberating at the beginning of college, and then anxiety producing this fall as I realized the classes I chose would dictate the rest of my undergraduate career.
When I stepped foot on campus this past August, I knew there was a decision I’d have to make, and though I had spent the past five years narrowing down my interests, I was still confused about where my intellectual passions lay. For most of my life, one of the only things I have been completely sure of is my love for English literature, but this week I decided that I didn’t want to concentrate in English. I spent my childhood surrounded by books. My father was a literature professor and he read to my every single night until I was seven, and decided it was time for me to read on my own. In elementary school, my peers taunted me and called me “reader girl” because I always had my nose in a book. Books were my escape from reality.
When my father was diagnosed with cancer when I was 14, our time together was limited. In the year that he was sick, we tried to perfect my writing. He wanted to leave me with everything he knew. His last request of me was to read him “The Wasteland” by T.S. Eliot. I sat in the hospital room, reading aloud “The Wasteland” for the first time. He was very weak and could barely talk but he still tried to explain what the poem meant. At his funeral, I read “Little Gidding” by T.S. Eliot. Literature had the power to connect us even after he wasn’t there to guide me. I could always look at one of his books and find his writing in the margins and learn about his interpretations of texts.
For the rest of high school, I continued to be passionate about reading literature, writing English essays, doing literary research, and writing fiction. I was editor-in-chief of my newspaper and I wrote my college essay about wanting to study English literature at the college-level. When I arrived at Harvard, I came to a disheartening conclusion: I no longer loved studying literature. I loved reading literature and discussing it, but neither of those things mattered in my English classes. What mattered were my essays, and suddenly I no longer enjoyed writing them. I missed small discussions and I didn’t enjoy lectures. Though books still greatly excite me, researching literature does not seduce me. This week, as I thought about what I wanted out of my college education, I realized that I didn’t want to concentrate in English.
I want to concentrate in a field that excites me, and inspires me to pursue research independently. I want to walk into class everyday eager to discuss the reading from the night before. I want to stay up late into the night to write the best Art History paper I can, the same way I used to stay up to write the best English papers I could. I want to enjoy my undergraduate degree as much as I possibly can.
We all have these intimate connections to what we’re passionate about. We all have moments of doubt. These moments are terrifying because they challenge our identities. They challenge who we believe ourselves to be. For me, deciding to declare my concentration as History of Art and Architecture meant giving up on a dream. Here’s the thing about dreams: they change. In a different time or at a different school, English might have been perfect for me. Nevertheless, deciding not to focus my studies primarily on English meant giving up on a special connection I felt that I had to my father. I thought that if I followed the same path he had, I would be able to keep a part of him alive and close to me. Unfortunately, he’s not here with me, and no matter how much I read or study literature, I can’t bring him back to life.
This week I came to terms with the fact that I’m not the same person I was in high school or when my father was alive. Realizing he will never know who I am today, what I’m interested in studying, what I’m reading, and my dreams is both upsetting and liberating. Deciding my concentration is a decision that is entirely my own; I cannot let my decision be defined by what I expect other people want from me. I know that my father would be proud of me, whatever field I chose to study.
As I turned in my plan of study, a part of me wanted to take the paper back, rip it up, and declare English. But if there’s anything college has taught me, it’s to trust my gut. I intend to fall in love with art history, and continue to devour as many books as I can. Declaring a concentration does not hinder you from pursuing all your interests, it simply forces you to focus in on what you’re most passionate about pursuing intellectually. Concentrate in a field that challenges you, makes you think about the world in a different way, and inspires you to be a better person. And remember, if you experience buyer’s remorse, trust your gut a little; worst case scenario, you can change your concentration. Come Spring, I might be an English concentrator; until then, I’ll just be continuing on this crazy journey and taking each day as it comes.