I have no problem admitting that I’m kind of a nerd. So you can judge me all you want when I tell you that in college, I graduated with almost double the required number of 200-level English credits. I like to joke that I double-majored in English and English. Har har har.

I really enjoyed my major in college, which is why I couldn’t not sign up for classes like “Literature Goes to Hell,” a survey of literature prominently featuring the devil; or “Representations of Italians in American Cinema,” a class in which we watched movies like The Godfather, Reservoir Dogs, and Goodfellas, and then analyzed the crap out of them.

Almost every semester, there was some funky English class that I just had to take. So, when I was finally finished with the classes I actually needed, I figured that moving on to grad school would mean I could take even more unique classes, while expanding my resume.

Two years later, I earned a Masters degree, having taken four literature classes. FOUR. And only two of those classes I actually liked. What the hell did I do in grad school? I took “The Art of the Bibliography,” that’s what. And two critical theory classes, and two classes on teaching and pedagogy. If I had any intentions of being a teacher, that would be great. But when I went into grad school, I was under the impression that English is a versatile field– English majors can succeed in almost any field, from journalism to marketing to politics, with our skills–but I soon found myself feeling pigeon holed. Read More »