I was going to make some snarky comment regarding my Shakespeare teacher incorrectly using commas (I know, like I'm one to talk!) then I did a little research and found out that the way I was taught was the British rule for commas, and he's using the American rule for commas. I love grammar. Could I major in grammar?
Everything I do lately can be twisted back to this question:
can I major in it?
I'm twenty, almost twenty-one. I should know what I'm going to major in. This scenic route I'm taking has become incrediably scenic. In fact, it's become one of those journies where you are driving the scenic route and you get lost and even though it's still pretty, the fact is, you're still lost. What a fucking metaphor.
It's not that I'm lost... I'm just held up. I think I'm about six or seven classes away from finishing my general ed, which means I can move on and get on with this whole school thing. I can't wait to move on!
In the past six years I've gone through broadcast journalism, journalism, special education, English, creative writing and then back to English. Then I saw what a good essay should be like for college... my teachers have been easy on me. I can write a research paper no problem, but disecting a book... I hate reading for school enough as it is. I don't need help by having to disect the freaking thing like a bio lab frog. Creative Writing sounds nice and lovely but people I respect in the field have stressed that majoring in Creative Writing isn't a good idea because it's just too focused. You need something to write about. It makes sense to me, and I'm about to pull out my hair in my current writing class. I hate having to do things that I don't want to do. I hate writing about symbology or theme or tone. I could minor in it, that would be good fun. But majoring in it is not the answer.
I want to be a literary agent. A literary agent is the person that recieves queries and decides whether they are going to accept them and pitch them to publishing companies. It's either that or an editor, for an editor I can major in some sort of writing. But for being a lit agent... I can pretty much major in anything. Obviously, it should be helpful to what I'm going into (YA Lit, hopefully) but, really, anything. And it just makes it so much harder because English isn't the only answer. If it was cut and dry I could do that and just put up with it, find an easy program and get on with it.
But it's not cut and dry. I'm looking into schools. I want to stay in central California, Montery-San Francisco, by the coast. That's about all I have thought out so far.
Well, if you're into language, there's always linguistics.
ReplyDeleteHowever, as a ling major, I can say with a fair amount of confidence that it would not be what you expect. Linguistics is not what most people think it is. It's the study of language rather than a study of languages, if that makes sense. More a cognitive science than anything. Regardless though it's a cognitive science which does deal a lot with how individual languages behave, and if you're into fiddly things like grammar then you might enjoy it. Maybe. On the other hand, if you're into just English grammar, well... probably not your thing.
It's hard to balance the whole career planning thing with studying what you want, I find. I've gone to one extreme - chosen two somewhat disparate majors that I love but that are rather unlikely to ever land me a job unless I end up being incredibly good in either field. I can't say I necessarily recommend this. I honestly have no idea what I'm going to do after school, which is rather stressful. On the other hand, studying something purely to make a career out of it is nearly guaranteed to kill any enthusiasm you might have had for the subject, which is depressing in its own right. So... yes. It's a tough choice, but not one that can't be reversed if you start something and you decide you hate it.
(Man... this was kind of a useless comment, sorry. It's Caitlin, by the way. :P I'd have commented on facebook but it ended up being a tad long so here be I instead.)