Over the years I’ve come to realize that Thanksgiving teaches you a lot about family, but even more about yourself. So, sitting around the table during Thanksgiving dinner this past week, I came to a startling but not exactly surprising conclusion.
I am the middle child in my family, with an older brother and a younger sister. My brother is a college junior at Washington University in St. Louis, I’m a sophomore here at Kenyon, and my sister is a high school senior anxiously awaiting the acceptance to her dream school. My uncle and my cousin—a sophomore at Duke—were joining us for the holiday, throwing another college-aged individual into the mix.
Naturally, college dominated a lot of the dinner talk. The conclusion I arrived at came when we started going into courses and majors. My cousin began at Duke, undecided between premed and computer science. She’s since chosen the latter. My brother is a double major in business and architecture. As they list off their econ lectures and science labs, my parents and uncle chimed in with complimentary classes they took when they were in college. My uncle was an engineer and my parents were in economics and accounting. I realized that I was the only individual at the table that wasn’t pursing some kind of science degree, and moreover I was the only one not pursing an “applicable” major.
We’ve all heard it. English majors get a bad rep. When someone tells you they’re majoring in English, frequently words like “unemployment” and “starving artist” come up. When people think about the future of English majors, they don’t see much beyond “teacher” and “writer.”
To put it simply, hearing things like this is incredibly frustrating.
Luckily for me, however, my family isn’t like that. Not once have any of them questioned my desire to major in English. I’ve never felt anything but support and encouragement from them when it comes to my academic track. It is still at times isolating to be the only one in the family on said track, but my family makes it manageable.
But when my sister brings up that her AP Physics teacher looks down on anybody who claims that they will major in a subject like English, I get angry. There is no more value in majoring in biomolecular engineering than there is in Russian poetry. Higher education is for pursuing what you love and hoping that you can make a life for yourself from it. You can get plenty of jobs with an English major. They might not pay as well as an engineer, but that doesn’t matter. Nobody can devalue or belittle your education but yourself.
So for those students out there like me—the lone English or history or studio art major in your family—don’t let anybody make you feel inferior for studying what you love. Stand by your academic choices and don’t waste your energy or time on trying to convince others why your major has value. It does.
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