Facts and Fairy Tales

Ugh, this weekend wasn't The Worst, but it was grating in many ways. Battering at my confidence, continuing uncertainty about What I'm Doing, and continued sleep-deprivation, it's not as if it was even close to anything resembling The Best. Mostly it involved struggles with my major, which is unrewarding work and just downright disheartening a lot of the time.

If there's ever been a major with students both more smug about itself while being supremely self-conscious and defensive than English, I have not come across it. There may be, I don't know, but I do know that for all the praise that's bestowed upon people that are able to articulate themselves well, the skill of writing it down is apparently not as admired. So English majors' attitudes aren't entirely unprecedented. Unless you're planning on being a teacher (itself not a terribly admired profession) or I guess, going into law school (at least it's well-paying), then people are at a loss as to how you're going to survive.

To be fair to many people I've met in my college career, I haven't felt attacked or scorned upon for being in English. But I and some other English majors have been looked down upon I feel, even by fellow devotees of the humanities, which is incredibly irritating. I do not like when me or my fellow English majors are looked upon as children who haven't outgrown a preoccupation with fairy tales, like people who don't know how to work with facts because we're not practical enough to create conclusions based on evidence, rather than writing poetry or whatever. Like fiction and stories in general aren't utterly necessary, for English and non-English majors alike.

As if wisdom was never gained from fairy tales.