Everyone Should Be an English Major: Camp NaNoWriMo Day 20

Camp NaNoWriMo Day 20!

Sometimes you just need to give yourself some tough writer love. It’s one of the things I learned while getting my English degree in college.

Strangely enough, whenever I told someone I was majoring in English, their most likely initial response would be something along the lines of “Oh, so you want to be a teacher?” Their second guess would usually be “author.”

Don’t get me wrong, teachers and authors hold very impactful positions, and I’ve wanted to be both (and still do). But an English degree is a path to much more than a choice between only two careers.

Here’s my experience of what you can gain from an English degree:

• Logic and reasoning – You’ll be able to develop complex arguments you can use in business proposals or presentations.
• Compiling and organizing data – you’ll become an expert at researching and finding answers. Even though you’ll never know everything, you’ll know how to find out.
• Communication – it’s one of the most valuable abilities there is – using language to positively impact people. That’s so necessary anywhere.
• Acceptance and understanding of different viewpoints – you are exposed to so many ideas and people that are different than you. Leaders need this. People need this.
• Creative thinking – a great chef does more than follow a recipe. English classes taught me how to use my experiences and outlooks to think outside of the box. We need to be challenged to be innovative, so that we can grow as a world.

I’m going to have days where the words don’t come and my manuscript feels like work. But these are also days when I can think back and remember why I chose to study English in the first place.

Today’s haiku:

This is how it goes
You open a blank Word doc
And fill it with words