#jesus haven't used that tag in a while sndkfdsk

[canonicallyanxious]

Previous anon! I think you mentioned a literature degree in a post a while back. (But the tags you left on the ask certainly showed evidence of it haha). I was curious and wanted you to talk about it but wasnt sure if i should straight up say "pls talk about your degree i am very interested and curious"

lollll i mean as a lit major i feel like i’m morally obligated to drag myself for it bc like i deserve it but yeah i’m down to talk about my degree!! uhhh idk if you have anything specific in mind, feel free to ask me whatever you want to know bc it turns out when asked to talk about my degree i don’t even know where to start rip also if you’re looking for someone who can advise you on what you can do with a lit major i am the wrong person to go to sdkjfnsdkjsnfd what i do for work now has basically nothing to do with what i studied but i’m honestly good with that bc it was always something i studied more because i wanted to than because i wanted to turn it into an actual career

Trying to remember what lit classes i liked the best... off the top of my head: contemporary women novelists, modern english lit, black literature in europe, post-colonial lit [by far my favorite lit class ever, that reading list fuckin slapped]; there was also a class that i don’t remember what it was called anymore but i loved it bc we read a lot of more nontraditional writing that also focused a lot on intergenerational trauma [so like Maus and the Photographer which are graphic novels were on the reading list, and we also read a poem called Zong! and experimental plays and things like that]

hmmm not knowing what specifically you wanna know about i guess i’ll just give some general thoughts about being a lit major [and tossing a cut here bc i got rambly... i’m sorry... you asked a lit major about being a lit major this is what happens i guess]

as one might expect it involves a fuckton of reading and writing literary analysis which might be a con for some but definitely not for me. but like i am the kind of asshole who actually likes reading three books in a week and writing a 7 page close reading comparing the roles of Persuasion’s Ann Elliot and the Bride of Lamermoor’s Lucy so, you know, i certainly don’t expect what works for me to be a one-size-fits-all kind of thing lol

One thing I really liked with the classes i took was the opportunity to push back against the typical canon of the Dead White Man that i feel like was really prevalent in public school. tbf there was still quite a bit of that in some of my classes [James Joyce meet me in the fucking pit] but if you’re strategic with the classes you sign up for you really get the chance to get exposed to a lot of unique and diverse perspectives, i feel like the foundation i got in those classes helped me form a baseline for where to start in finding more literature like that

Although as mentioned i did still have a lot of issues with that in my department. like idk if that was just my school or being in undergrad or whatever but i feel like a lot of lit majors I knew had a very prescriptive view of what “counts” as literature, we got into so many discussions about what qualifies as ~art~ [which if you know me i think is such bullshit like who are we to judge what is more artistic than something else particularly when for so much of history what has been deemed ~proper literature~ was written by white men but anyway we don’t have to get into it right now lol] and while i got the sense that the culture was slowly changing while i was part of it i do still feel like there’s a lot about the lit academia world that still kinda has to catch up, like it can be a field rife with elitism and narrow-mindedness depending on where you are in it. but of course that’s just my own take on it! ymmv and all that

i feel like this major taught me way more about how to read than about how to write, like at my school at least especially in a lot of the upper level classes there was basically no guidance for how to write your papers you’re kind of already expected to know how to write good literary criticism? also tbh i didn’t always love writing papers, in fact sometimes it fucking sucked having to write long analyses about topics i didn’t give a shit about and sometimes you have to do a FUCKTON of writing about shit you don’t care about [especially during finals week rip college Sarah you will not be missed]. but i think the analysis skills i developed while studying lit are genuinely really valuable even if i don’t really do anything directly related to my field of study career wise, like they help me be more thoughtful about pretty much everything i read and watch from the news to fiction and also be more thoughtful about my choices in my own creative writing all of which i really appreciate esp since it’s stuff i’m interested in just in general so I definitely don’t regret this choice of study!

sidenote but big rip to anyone who goes into this major and likes reading for fun in their downtime sdfknsnf i had way too much reading always to do any of my own reading outside of class [anthro is a very reading/writing heavy major too BIG rip to college Sarah] and when i did have breaks i was like fuck no i’m not thinking about words until i ABSOLUTELY HAVE TO [by going back to class] [god i’m so glad i’m not in school anymore]

Lord that got rambly skjfnskdjfnsd idek if any of that is anything you’d be interested in but yeah feel free to ask me more specific questions if you feel like it! then maybe i won’t go off on a million tangents [disclaimer: i probably still will]