By Rosie You
“Wow, this is my first time meeting an English major on campus.”
If I had a nickel for every time I heard that I would have two nickels. Which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird it happened twice.
Okay, maybe not.
I knew Stony Brook University was a STEM-focused school when I applied. I also knew I was not meant for the STEM field when I applied—a revelation I came to early in high school. However, all my friends were coming here, and that was all the reason I needed. (Yeah, I know.) My reasoning for selecting the English major was even more simple: I liked reading and writing, and I hated science.
In other words, I made the decision to become an English major through the process of elimination. Unsurprisingly, this did not work in my favor.
It started with the disappointing realization that reading and writing as an English major is quite different from reading and writing as a pastime. Professors assigned 150+ pages to read per week which became overwhelming. Moreover, the only writing came in analytical essays or research papers, plus weekly blog responses and discussion posts.
Within a month, Sparknotes became my best friend. I skimmed just enough of the assigned pages to squeak out a passable weekly response. Some days, I didn’t even read at all. When the professor uploaded instructions for an upcoming essay, I downloaded the file and left it unopened until a couple of days before the due date. The time between the day I started working on my essays and the day they were due continuously grew shorter until there came an instance when I started a paper on a book I hadn’t read six hours before I handed it in. I received an A.
Now, it wasn’t the first A I had received. However, the fact that I could receive one despite the little time I had put into it convinced me that this was The Way.
By sophomore year, I had mastered how to receive A’s in courses while doing the bare minimum. I perfectly calculated when I had to try and when I could kick back. More often than not, I daydreamed in class, only tuning in at moments I deemed necessary.
Not much changed in junior year. I still found a way to avoid reading as much as possible. Unfortunately, my classes required me to find outside sources to incorporate into my essays, so I did spend more time on my papers. However, I continued my practice of spending no more than one day on actually writing each of them.
I kept up this habit until this year, senior year. It started a week before the semester actually began when it really hit me that it was my last year in school before I graduate. I had spent the entire summer applying to jobs and never heard back. I brushed it off then, but now I was slowly beginning to grow anxious about life after graduation. I wasn’t ready to go from “Student” to “Unemployed.” However, ultimately this anxiety is what pushed me to actually try in my classes this year.
I had two English classes scheduled this semester, both 300-level courses. After three years, I knew my strengths and weaknesses. I printed the assigned readings because I knew I couldn’t concentrate when reading off a screen. When the time came to write essays, I started with outlines so I knew the direction I wanted to take. For weeks, I had multiple tabs open on my browser. Upon finishing my first drafts, I took the time to revise and edit them just before submitting them mere minutes before the deadline.
Ultimately, I received A’s. One may assume that I felt wronged in some way since I received the same grade I would normally get when trying far less. It would be a lie to say the thought had not crossed my mind, but I never paid it much attention. Maybe it was because I had heard my classmates talking about their B’s or C’s. Or maybe it was because I felt recognized for the time and effort I put into the papers, and nothing could ruin that for me. Either way, I was satisfied.
So, I was quite surprised when I heard my classmates complain about their low grades. I was even more surprised when my professors discussed the matter in class. One announced that she would be offering everyone the opportunity to rewrite their essays for a higher grade. She was, in her words, disappointed by the quality of work submitted by an upper-division course, hence the unprecedented second chance. Meanwhile, one of my other professors dedicated fifteen minutes to a presentation on the dos and don’ts of writing essays.
Other students paid close attention and asked questions for clarification. I listened to everyone speak with the leisure of someone who didn’t have to worry about such matters (although I took pictures of the presentation slides). Instead, I was reminded of something my previous professors had said.
In almost every 300-level class I took, they always spoke of how they expected well-thought-out essays. Whenever they said this, I never paid much attention to it. If anything, I was confused because I didn’t understand why they expected more just because the class number began with a 3 instead of a 2. Then, I realized that you wouldn’t expect the same level of writing from a tenth-grader and a seventh-grader. Perhaps my professors were on to something . . .
That night, I found the first essay I wrote for my first English class. It was three pages long and I received a B. I didn’t have to look at the attached comments to figure out why.
The paper wasn’t terrible, but it wasn’t great either. I clearly did not have a good grasp on MLA citation, and I wrote my topic sentences in the middle of the paragraphs. Moreover, the topic sentences were weak, and I often failed to connect everything back to the main idea. Overall, it was a paper at a level I would never dare to submit today.
I quickly moved on to sophomore year. My professor applauded my essay’s “logical organization and [my] clear writing style” so, clearly, I had improved in that aspect. Unfortunately, that seemed to be all the praise he could give as he pointed out that my thesis did not propose a clear argument and my habit of making claims without providing textual evidence. Still, he pointed out that when I did introduce textual evidence, I did so effectively, so I received a B+.
By junior year, I could definitely see a difference. No longer did I receive comments on a lack of cohesion between paragraphs or failure to properly analyze a passage. Perhaps it was because I had written the paper only seven months prior, but it was quite easy to distinguish this essay as the most recent of the three. I received an A-, but this time the corrections were for minor errors.
To follow the pattern, I re-read my paper from this year. The difference between this one and the one from junior year was more minuscule, but the overarching change that took place over the course of three years was undeniable.
The English major is often looked down on, not just at SBU or other STEM-focused schools, but also in society and the workforce. Even English majors themselves, myself included, joke about how they’ll be jobless or broke or working at a restaurant for the rest of their lives. Due to these low expectations, I never thought my degree would lead to growth. As an English major in a STEM-focused school, even the idea that I could grow in my field seemed unfathomable. Yet, my papers prove otherwise, in more ways than one. Not only did my writing itself improve, but I also learned more about the type of writer I am (planner) and how I can achieve my best writing (extremely detailed outlines).
I spent three years looking down on the English major, three years expecting to learn nothing and not even trying. I never cared for the field of English, only seeing it as a means of a degree. Now that I’m in my last year, that’s beginning to change. One might argue that it’s a shame that I realized this so late, and I don’t completely disagree. But, I still have one semester left and a few more papers to go, and I’m looking forward to seeing what else I have left to learn.
RhetComp 