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The opinions expressed in this article are the writer’s own and do not reflect the views of Her Campus.
This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at Holy Cross chapter.

Do I even like my major? I ask myself this question every single day. I decided to be an English major at the beginning of this semester, and sometimes, I’m not sure if it was the right choice. To be completely honest, I didn’t choose the English major because I LOVE English or because I excel at it. I really only chose it because it is the subject I hate the least. I’m HORRIBLE at math and science, I find history incredibly boring, and I have no real interest in political science. None of the other majors are really my thing, so here I am with English. I’ve always somewhat enjoyed my English classes and have done pretty well in them, but there’s a lot about taking English classes that I don’t like. For example, I hate poetry. I hate reading it and writing about it. Most of the poems we read in English class are a million years old and make little to no sense. I also don’t like how, in pretty much every English class, you only read books from hundreds of years ago. Most of these books are dreadfully boring and/or impossible to understand. 

Okay, enough complaining.

Let’s get into the reasons I like majoring in English and why I ultimately wanted to do it.

While I most likely will not have to write an essay on an ancient book or poem in my future career, the skills that I have developed from writing those essays will be very valuable to me in whatever my line of work will be. To be able to effectively analyze a text, and create an argument/analysis is a tool that I will be glad to have in the future. I also enjoy writing, so majoring in English is helping me get better at it, even if I am writing about books and poetry that I am not a fan of. Even though I literally just complained about the books we read in English class, every once in a while, you will be assigned a really good book that just makes the class so much more enjoyable. Majoring in English is a great way to sharpen your communication tools, and can provide useful skills for many different career paths. Even though I do complain about it, I am overall very happy with my major, and I can’t wait to see all the ways it will help me in the future.

Kate McCarthy

Holy Cross '27

Kate is an English major from Worcester MA who enjoys spending time with friends and family!