question for literature students

[Hal]

I have a question for literature students who plan on graduate study.

At what point do you decide what you are going to specialize in? And once you do decide, how important is it also to study the texts that are outside of your desired specialization?

Right now I'm a 3rd year English Major and for graduate study I want to specialize in American literature. So far as an undergrad I have been taking courses in everything from Medieval Literature to Renaissance to Victorian to Romantic. Also seminars in Shakespeare and in Classics. But now that I've decided my focus for graduate study do I mainly focus on American literature and pull back from everything else? Or continue to study the Canon but focus primarily on American literature?

I guess my question is, once someone decides to specialize, how important is it to be an expert in other types of literature? Is the PhD in American literature also an expert on the Russians? Or the French? How much do you need to know outside of your specialization?

[maxphisher]

I tentatively chose a focus period after my undergraduate degree. I went into my MA planning to focus on Victorian British lit, but within the first semester of my first year, I had extended that to late Victorian through the Modernist period, with a focus on Irish lit, primarily Joyce. Now, a year into my PhD, I've maintained my focus on turn of the century and Modernist British and Irish lit, and I have integrated several theory seminars.

As far as taking other classes outside of my focus area, I did so during my MA, but I have not been branching out too much during my PhD work. Hope this helps.

[Hal]

I tentatively chose a focus period after my undergraduate degree. I went into my MA planning to focus on Victorian British lit, but within the first semester of my first year, I had extended that to late Victorian through the Modernist period, with a focus on Irish lit, primarily Joyce. Now, a year into my PhD, I've maintained my focus on turn of the century and Modernist British and Irish lit, and I have integrated several theory seminars.

As far as taking other classes outside of my focus area, I did so during my MA, but I have not been branching out too much during my PhD work. Hope this helps.

Thanks for responding.

Yeah, for undergrad study I am studying many different periods and movements. I'm somewhat settled when it comes to focusing on American literature but that could change. I wonder though, for those who are going on to academic careers if the study of literature remains broad even while there is a definite focus point. I think its important to know the canon but how much time can someone specializing in American literature spend on Shakespeare? I love Shakespeare but one or two courses don't even scratch the surface.

Take for instance a Doctor of Medicine. Some Doctors have a general knowledge of medicine. And some specialize. If I go to my Dr and I complain of bone weakness he may send me to a Rheumatologist. The reason he does this is because he does not know a lot about diseases of the bone. Could the same be said for the Phd in English Literature? If a student comes to you with a question about Restoration literature do you feel that you should be able to answer his questions or would you send him or her to someone who specializes in Restoration literature?

[maxphisher]

If you are looking at pursuing a PhD, I would recommend developing a definite focus, but you should also be "experimenting" with other areas as well. Remember that, with the way the academic job market is right now, finding a position as the "19th Century American Lit." professor is highly unlikely. You will be teaching survey courses and composition courses as you work towards tenure or developing status in the department. The wider your range of knowledge is, the easier it will be to adapt to the classes you will HAVE to teach before getting to the point where you teach what you WANT to teach.

But don't worry. Figure out who your adviser is going to be and begin discussing your plans with him or her. You will figure out what route to take.

[kelby_lake]

I believe the trend in academia now is interdisciplinary studies, so the more you know about other areas the better.

[AuntShecky]

If you are planning to use a degree in literature as a foundation for a career, please try to learn a lesson from the sorry history of yours fooly. Don't make another move until you read this very recent article from Time Magazine. (http://business.time.com/2013/10/02/foroohar-forget-unemployment-time-to-worry-about-mal-employment/)

[Hal]

If you are planning to use a degree in literature as a foundation for a career, please try to learn a lesson from the sorry history of yours fooly. Don't make another move until you read this very recent article from Time Magazine. (http://business.time.com/2013/10/02/foroohar-forget-unemployment-time-to-worry-about-mal-employment/)

so don't become an English teacher?

[AuntShecky]

so don't become an English teacher?

You have to look at future hiring trends in both secondary schools and colleges.

It's possible to land a job into a high school program,if you can cut the line of all the other liberal arts majors ahead of you. As the Time article says, there is going to be preference for science and math teachers. Look at the classified ads, though, and you will see that many secondary teaching positions aren't primarily full-time. They might have a decimal number next to the listing, such as "5.0" or "3.0." That means part-time.

The other thing you have to consider is the salary. No good teacher goes into that profession for the money--that's true! But you have to consider that you have to make a living, while simultaneously paying off student loans. Even though it'[s not unheard of for a teacher in a well-off district to be earning upwards of $100,000 yearly, but this is only after he or she has attained tenure, a reward for seniority of several decades.

As far as aiming for a spot for Academia, unless you have a Ph.D., fuhgeddaboutit. Take it from me, today's Master's degree is yesterday's bachelor's degree. Again, there is an interminable number of other folks with doctorates far ahead of you in line. English departments are shrinking and rarely if ever hiring new faculty members. It's the rare college that has an opening, again part-time. The most you can hope for is to become an "adjunct professor," if you can actually find a campus in need of one. Consider yourself lucky if you can land a job as an "instructor," just a short rung up from a humble teaching assistant, with comparable salaries.

You could look for openings in remedial reading and writing courses, although those positions may very well require training or accreditation in techniques and educational theory.

I read somewhere that as a result of "dumbing down" or more likely, a result of supply and demand, some colleges aren't even requiring English composition as a pre-requisite for graduation. This would mean that a decreased enrollment in literature classes.

Seeing the bleak employment future for liberal arts grads, fewer and fewer freshmen are choosing English as their majors. They may have reached this conclusion on their own, or their parents stuck with the tuition bills are encouraging them to choose a career, such as accounting or hospital administration,with a higher R.O.I. (return on their investment.) With the supply of English majors thus shrinking, there will be a highly diminished demand for college professors of English. It's like a star inexorably in red dwarf status, burning down and out before eventually exploding, leaving behind a bottomless black hole.

Be an English teacher, by all means. Just be aware of what you might be up against. I only wish I could see this coming decades ago.

An alternative is to choose a career in which writing skills are a plus.

But fuhgeddabout newspapers.

[Vota]

Hal,

If I were to specialize in one area of literature I would still read the canon if only because there are so many great works you would miss out on otherwise. I would simply prioritize my reading of American literature, probably on a 2 or 3-to-1 ratio with other non-American works, and go in-depth with the American literature to the extent of really analyzing the works I read vs. reading the canon more for general enjoyment and knowledge.

That's probably how I would go about it.

[Hal]

You have to look at future hiring trends in both secondary schools and colleges.

It's possible to land a job into a high school program,if you can cut the line of all the other liberal arts majors ahead of you. As the Time article says, there is going to be preference for science and math teachers. Look at the classified ads, though, and you will see that many secondary teaching positions aren't primarily full-time. They might have a decimal number next to the listing, such as "5.0" or "3.0." That means part-time.

The other thing you have to consider is the salary. No good teacher goes into that profession for the money--that's true! But you have to consider that you have to make a living, while simultaneously paying off student loans. Even though it'[s not unheard of for a teacher in a well-off district to be earning upwards of $100,000 yearly, but this is only after he or she has attained tenure, a reward for seniority of several decades.

As far as aiming for a spot for Academia, unless you have a Ph.D., fuhgeddaboutit. Take it from me, today's Master's degree is yesterday's bachelor's degree. Again, there is an interminable number of other folks with doctorates far ahead of you in line. English departments are shrinking and rarely if ever hiring new faculty members. It's the rare college that has an opening, again part-time. The most you can hope for is to become an "adjunct professor," if you can actually find a campus in need of one. Consider yourself lucky if you can land a job as an "instructor," just a short rung up from a humble teaching assistant, with comparable salaries.

You could look for openings in remedial reading and writing courses, although those positions may very well require training or accreditation in techniques and educational theory.

I read somewhere that as a result of "dumbing down" or more likely, a result of supply and demand, some colleges aren't even requiring English composition as a pre-requisite for graduation. This would mean that a decreased enrollment in literature classes.

Seeing the bleak employment future for liberal arts grads, fewer and fewer freshmen are choosing English as their majors. They may have reached this conclusion on their own, or their parents stuck with the tuition bills are encouraging them to choose a career, such as accounting or hospital administration,with a higher R.O.I. (return on their investment.) With the supply of English majors thus shrinking, there will be a highly diminished demand for college professors of English. It's like a star inexorably in red dwarf status, burning down and out before eventually exploding, leaving behind a bottomless black hole.

Be an English teacher, by all means. Just be aware of what you might be up against. I only wish I could see this coming decades ago.

An alternative is to choose a career in which writing skills are a plus.

But fuhgeddabout newspapers.

okay..why the thread hijack? Your experience in finding employment in the education field may be a disappointing one. But that's not what this thread is about.

[JBI]

You pick generally at the beginning of your masters degree. Generally stronger applications are said to be the more rounded students during their undergraduate degrees, those who have experience with diverse genres and time periods.

[AuntShecky]

okay..why the thread hijack? Your experience in finding employment in the education field may be a disappointing one. But that's not what this thread is about.

Since yours fooly is the type of person who can't stand having anyone harboring "hard feelings" against her, please allow me to 'splain: Obviously, that reply was not intended to hijack your original question but rather a perhaps misguided attempt to "help"-- by recounting present-day realities which, alas, have only worsened since the Jurassic Era in which yours fooly was a graduate student. I now realize that you are already well aware of the bleak employment picture for
literature majors.

But trying to redeem myself, please let me offer one suggestions as to possible specialization. Try to look for areas that aren't overly popular. For instance, there are probably many grad students pursuing Shakespeare, 17th century poetry, American and Modern Britishh literature and relatively fewer studying less-popular areas such as medieval literature and
18th century British literature, including Dryden, Pope, and Restoration drama.

Are we friends again?

[Hal]

Since yours fooly is the type of person who can't stand having anyone harboring "hard feelings" against her, please allow me to 'splain: Obviously, that reply was not intended to hijack your original question but rather a perhaps misguided attempt to "help"-- by recounting present-day realities which, alas, have only worsened since the Jurassic Era in which yours fooly was a graduate student. I now realize that you are already well aware of the bleak employment picture for
literature majors.

But trying to redeem myself, please let me offer one suggestions as to possible specialization. Try to look for areas that aren't overly popular. For instance, there are probably many grad students pursuing Shakespeare, 17th century poetry, American and Modern Britishh literature and relatively fewer studying less-popular areas such as medieval literature and
18th century British literature, including Dryden, Pope, and Restoration drama.

Are we friends again?

If I wanted a career where I'd make a lot of money I'd go into business. But then I would be miserable. I'd rather make 25k a year and be doing something I love than make 70k a year does something that makes me dread waking up in the morning. Money isn't important to me.

You use the word bleak but I could easily switch that with the word competitive. I have news for you, every field is competitive.

[Calidore]

If I wanted a career where I'd make a lot of money I'd go into business. But then I would be miserable. I'd rather make 25k a year and be doing something I love than make 70k a year does something that makes me dread waking up in the morning. Money isn't important to me.

You use the word bleak but I could easily switch that with the word competitive. I have news for you, every field is competitive.

The assumption there is that you'll be doing what you love in the first place. If nobody's hiring for what you do, would you rather be making decent money in a business job you don't like or making minimum wage plus in a fast-food job you don't like? Also, there are many jobs out there besides generic "business" that pay well.

Nobody's telling you that you shouldn't pursue what you love, just giving you a reality check and encouraging you to have a second plan in case you're one of the majority who doesn't win the English major job lottery right away.

[JBI]

Let him make bad decisions and read 4 years of novels to land up with a job in retail.

At any rate, one Should never just major in English. One should at least acquire a foreign language or two. That's generally a requirement for being competitive nowadays anyway.

Then again, most English majors are novel readers which means they are the bottom tier of readers anyway. Anybody can read a novel, and the form does not translate well in the practical sense that "period" studies may. Then again, the educational demand on studying medieval manuscripts is unquestionably higher.

[mande2013]

Let him make bad decisions and read 4 years of novels to land up with a job in retail.

At any rate, one Should never just major in English. One should at least acquire a foreign language or two. That's generally a requirement for being competitive nowadays anyway.

Then again, most English majors are novel readers which means they are the bottom tier of readers anyway. Anybody can read a novel, and the form does not translate well in the practical sense that "period" studies may. Then again, the educational demand on studying medieval manuscripts is unquestionably higher.

As for 'novel readers' being the bottom tier of readers, might that depend on what kind of novels they're reading? Is someone who reads Faulkner, Proust, and Milton part of the bottom tier?

[JBI]

As for 'novel readers' being the bottom tier of readers, might that depend on what kind of novels they're reading? Is someone who reads Faulkner, Proust, and Milton part of the bottom tier?

Milton did not write novels. Proust is French lit. A different field, and Faulknerian studies will never land anybody a job. Faulkner as great as he is, is still bottom tier in that poetry is a much stronger field, and drama even more so.

A reader of Jane Austen could be anybody. I bet there are many old housewives who have a greater knowledge of 19th century novels than the most learned professors. There is this idea that somehow novel reading is high brow reading, which it isn't. Reading novels, with the exception of a few isolated examples, is not difficult. It requires very little specialist training and is already a popular form. It's the old idea of how can someone take somebody who writes books discussing imaginary characters seriously.

The whole idea of an English specialist was decadent and rooted in nationalist propaganda from the beginning. Perhaps when the field was established during the age of empire, it required people to reveal the unique British forms. Or in the Chinese occidentalist perspective, to discover "western forms" of literature. This ironically is in contrast to the idea that the tradition of literature in England is rooted in Roman, Greek, and Hebraic thought, as well as Northern European traditions (despite the success of suppressing such traditions). The novel reader tends to be totally lacking all this traditional education. The novel reader also lacks a requirement in modern languages. They are divorced from the world in a sense, limited to what basically has always been a female hobby (novel reading). Discussing imaginary characters and ideas of books, whose authors had the ability to mass produce and write too much, giving the person who reads these works their only challenge of having to get through them all.

When I say they are the bottom tier this is not my opinion. Students of modern novels have always been the majority and have always been the least employed or employable English ph.ds. It's not that they have nothing to offer, it's that nobody really needs another one around. Give the people a specialist of Chaucer then there is that spot in a university system that can accommodate such learning. Novel scholars are a dime a dozen, no offense, but the market is overly saturated and they have no practical function. St least the medievalist plays an historical role in the archival and historical process. The person discussing modern novels seems to actually do nothing except write books nobody will ever want to read.

[maxphisher]

I think that assuming that novels are the bottom tier of reading seems to a mindset that we got rid of somewhere close to the late nineteenth century. Bringing canon arguments into the equation really doesn't even seem necessary. I've read everything from Dryden to Spenser, from Joyce to Woolfe, from Marlowe to Shakespeare to Walcott, and from Harry Potter to Stephen King to Dostoyevsky to Junot Diaz. What really seems important is what we do with what we read. Critical thinking is the path along which modern literary academia is struggling, and it appears to be a legitimate path. Figuring out how to read objectively and critically is one thing that people seem to have trouble doing, and as a result, figuring out how to make personal use of what we read becomes difficult. In a sense, literature has always been a search for identity, and this appears to be the most positive and promising route to pursue.

[mona amon]

A reader of Jane Austen could be anybody. I bet there are many old housewives who have a greater knowledge of 19th century novels than the most learned professors. There is this idea that somehow novel reading is high brow reading, which it isn't.

As a 50-year-old housewife who reads Jane Austen and loves 19th century novels, I feel I have to comment. :D

You're making the mistake of judging a work of art by its audience, or rather its accessibility - if only the learned scholars can figure it out, it's great, if teenagers and old biddies are reading it, it's bottom tier. That's nonsense, but it's worth mentioning that a lot of female readers read Pride and Prejudice, Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights for the very same reason that they read Twilight - for the romance, but in that case you probably won't find them reading Dickens or Henry James, or even Mansfield Park and Villette.

[mande2013]

I think what JBI is essentially saying, and I do agree somewhat, is that reading Faulkner or Austen doesn't neccessarily make you special or confer upon you certain accolades. Besides, Austen isn't the best example probably, since she's hardly seen as being beyond reproach. Learned scholars aren't necessary to make sense of Pride and Prejudice. I think this all goes back to the democratization of education and the spread of literacy in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

[JBI]

As a 50-year-old housewife who reads Jane Austen and loves 19th century novels, I feel I have to comment. :D

You're making the mistake of judging a work of art by its audience, or rather its accessibility - if only the learned scholars can figure it out, it's great, if teenagers and old biddies are reading it, it's bottom tier. That's nonsense, but it's worth mentioning that a lot of female readers read Pride and Prejudice, Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights for the very same reason that they read Twilight - for the romance, but in that case you probably won't find them reading Dickens or Henry James, or even Mansfield Park and Villette.

Their accessibility is the point. Why hire people to read and teach works that anybody can read and teach, and by extension everyone is already reading anyway? The answer is simply it's a waste of money and time to hire so many, given their productivity. My 19th century novels teacher didn't even mark papers. She had us make a speech. Think of what actual education one can get out of that short of recycling the popular dogma, be it Marxism post colonialism or whatever, of a particular institution and time period. I would wager there has been every theoretical movement's reading of the majority of core canonical novels, be it psychoanalysis, deconstruction, new historicism or whatever. My point is simply this is creation rather than "study". It does not contribute beyond its own journalistic fashion, and its debate is mere nonsense.

Now, a medieval manuscript expert has to work out of core texts and use many historically used methods to read. They will be also the ones to transcribe, edit and sort the cultural legacy of their respective field. Though a country does not need a million of them, having a few won't hurt as they have a practical place and job in society. I cannot say the same of many other fields. One always must evaluate these things based on contribution.

It is necessary or desirable to an extent to have a couple of people studying these works in any department in any university. However, the amount is not necessarily supposed to pass the amount of let's say, renaissance specialists. If one respective institution likewise has an archive of a specific time period, it would perhaps encourage more toward that specific field.

The business of universities is just that, business. Novel reading is not a real education any more than poetry is. People like to throw around that they learn specific skills like analytic reading from doing this kind of work, but it seems that they could better learn that studying, let's say rhetoric, rather than novels. The degree must convince the purchaser of why to put money into the institution. In the US that is the bankrupt student loan taking student who will be paying this debt off for years to come. In Canada and many other places, this is the taxpayer, who wants to see some sort of return on his/her investment.

When I fund a medical school, I get a Doctor. When I fend an English department, I get a novel reader. You see where I am going with this.

Nobody ever said you needed to study literature in order to enjoy reading it, or to read it in general. There are specialty skills required to read many documents, usually linguistic skills, such as studying medieval languages or foreign languages or physical attributes of texts (manuscript history). These are skills that must be taught. Yet novels, especially Enflush novels, don't seem to require this sort of education. They in fact seem to only require a functional high school literacy, and perhaps a precocious mind from there.

Poetry in English required about 50 hours of instruction to read most of the English canon, especially the post-romantic works. After inquiring of my Poetry teacher what to read after her course in terms of education, she merely rePlied to just read more poets I enjoy, the basic skills are already grasped now it is about experience.

Some of the best posters on these boards are not educated in literature. This really has no dampening on the quality of their posts, much of the time. One can join the community of lifelong readers without an English degree, and the best English readers in general were readers before pursuing a degree anyway.

So yes, novel reading is bottom tier, not the works. I do not like novels but will not dismiss the form outright, however that does not mean I cannot be somewhat dismissive of the educational industry that makes novel readers believe they will get paid to do what many average people can and do do usually. The only specialty they seem to have is in the dogmatic critical perspective that they are writing in, which for the most part is nonsense to begin with. I should not pay to have someone to debate issues of colonialism in Jane Austen.

[mande2013]

But the average American doesn't read Faulkner or even Jane Austen for that matter. You seem to be conflating the reading of John Grisham or J.K. Rowling with that of Faulkner, as if it's all the same. The latter can be a challenge to read for the average person, novelist or not.

But this is a form of cognitive dissonance quite common among connoisseurs of any artistic or intellectual field. They forget the average joe doesn't even read or engage with even the most high profile figures within a given medium's pantheon on a substantive level (i.e. Mozart, Cezanne, Kafka, Vermeer, or even Yasujiro Ozu). It becomes a bubble of sorts.


Otherwise, I agree with you JBI. It's basically the first sentence of your last post I have a problem with.

[JBI]

The not do common common reader does. Those who read casually often do. Oprah even has stamped their works. It's not an exaggeration to call these works common and "average reader" books. Mozart does not sell like Justin bieber, but that does not mean he is not immensely popular. "pop" and popular are different, yet someone writing the book of why Mozart is an Orientalist in the Said sense because of his operas is missing the point.

I used the same logic once to backhand my professor for calling Merry Shelley progressive for stereotyping a poor Christian Turk in Frsnkenstein. I merely pointed out that she is calling Turks misogynists and primitive compared to their progressive counterparts. The argument derailed from there, as the professor, with all her rhetoric couldn't handle her same argument being reversed. In my honest opinion, both opinions are worthless, they don't add much. Better to just footnote the episode in the book as "Shelley on Turkish women" and get over it. There is nothing there to warrant a career

[mande2013]

JBI:

I'm assuming you work in academia, or if not that, this will turn into some diatribe on how novels are for the middle class and how the most successful people read non fiction books instead. If so, fine, but can't we just agree that Faulkner and Kafka aren't equal to Clancy, Grisham or even McEwan for that matter?

[JBI]

I'm assuming you didn't read my post. It's not really about novels but about being paid to read them. There's nothing wrong with novels, though I dislike that for many posters here it is the only genre they read while claiming to be "well read" whatever that means

[mande2013]

Okay, fair enough. It does seem though the vast majority of the books I buy are "literary" with some philosophy thrown in, whether that's a sin or not I don't know. Part of the issue is I don't really know how to buy non-fiction books, such as history books for instance, if that makes sense. Yes, I know where they can found, at a bookstore. But with a lot of non-fiction I don't know what's bourgeois claptrap, such as Ron Chernow, David McCullough, Niall Ferguson, or Joseph J. Ellis, and what isn't, so I want to make sure what I'm buying is something I really want to have in my collection before forking over 30+ Euro. There's also the element of time wasted if I read it in a library. Granted, with cinema books, as I'm also a cinephile, I can distinguish the claptrap from the stuff that's actually worth owning/buying. Now with respect to historians, are guys like AJP Taylor, Alistair Horn, Tony Judt, Simone Schama, or Robert Paxton worth reading? I'm not sure, and I'm not criticizing them. I just don't know either way. I just know that history within the realm of academia is filled with academics who are somewhat permissive and don't really do a good job of distinguishing between the two aforementioned categories of historical works.

[Hal]

Let him make bad decisions and read 4 years of novels to land up with a job in retail.

At any rate, one Should never just major in English. One should at least acquire a foreign language or two. That's generally a requirement for being competitive nowadays anyway.

Then again, most English majors are novel readers which means they are the bottom tier of readers anyway. Anybody can read a novel, and the form does not translate well in the practical sense that "period" studies may. Then again, the educational demand on studying medieval manuscripts is unquestionably higher.

I would say that 70% of the reading in my literature classes has been poetry.

I already speak two languages fluently.

Somehow having a goal of becoming an English teacher or (gasp) an English professor is deemed a bad decision by some.

what's up with you nosy nellies? My original question did not invite your opinions on my career path.

[mona amon]

Their accessibility is the point. Why hire people to read and teach works that anybody can read and teach, and by extension everyone is already reading anyway? The answer is simply it's a waste of money and time to hire so many, given their productivity. My 19th century novels teacher didn't even mark papers. She had us make a speech. Think of what actual education one can get out of that short of recycling the popular dogma, be it Marxism post colonialism or whatever, of a particular institution and time period. I would wager there has been every theoretical movement's reading of the majority of core canonical novels, be it psychoanalysis, deconstruction, new historicism or whatever. My point is simply this is creation rather than "study". It does not contribute beyond its own journalistic fashion, and its debate is mere nonsense.

Now, a medieval manuscript expert has to work out of core texts and use many historically used methods to read. They will be also the ones to transcribe, edit and sort the cultural legacy of their respective field. Though a country does not need a million of them, having a few won't hurt as they have a practical place and job in society. I cannot say the same of many other fields. One always must evaluate these things based on contribution.

It is necessary or desirable to an extent to have a couple of people studying these works in any department in any university. However, the amount is not necessarily supposed to pass the amount of let's say, renaissance specialists. If one respective institution likewise has an archive of a specific time period, it would perhaps encourage more toward that specific field.

The business of universities is just that, business. Novel reading is not a real education any more than poetry is. People like to throw around that they learn specific skills like analytic reading from doing this kind of work, but it seems that they could better learn that studying, let's say rhetoric, rather than novels. The degree must convince the purchaser of why to put money into the institution. In the US that is the bankrupt student loan taking student who will be paying this debt off for years to come. In Canada and many other places, this is the taxpayer, who wants to see some sort of return on his/her investment.

When I fund a medical school, I get a Doctor. When I fend an English department, I get a novel reader. You see where I am going with this.

Yes, now I do. Thanks for the reply. I thought you were saying novels are stupid because anyone can read them, or something like that.

[JBI]

I would say that 70% of the reading in my literature classes has been poetry.

I already speak two languages fluently.

Somehow having a goal of becoming an English teacher or (gasp) an English professor is deemed a bad decision by some.

what's up with you nosy nellies? My original question did not invite your opinions on my career path.

You are far better prepared than most of the bunch who can neither properly grasp poetry nor speak a second language. I have nothing against people trying to fulfill their dreams. You all forget I am formerly an English major

[OrphanPip]

MA programs seem to prefer breadth of coverage these days, though you are expected to begin showing some form of specialization through your thesis.

[Eiseabhal]

In a Carver story (which one matters not as anyone can find it) a character asks, "Are you crazy? Have you just flipped or something?" It fits into this thread.