Last week, my friend told me he encountered an "astounding a**." He was returning a textbook at a UPS station, and the man assisting him asked him what major he was, to which my friend responded that he wasn't sure yet.

"Well, let me give you some advice," Mr. UPS Man said. "Whatever you do, don't become an English major. I mean, why would you major in a language you already speak and know?"

My friend relayed this experience to me with righteous rage and frustration — probably half of that was for my benefit, since he's pre-med and not really anything close to an English major.

But I actually wasn't even upset by the story. I mean, recently, a school administrator actually said, on the record, with extraordinary nonchalance that Rice's incoming humanities majors this year had lower test scores than STEM majors.

It's something I'm almost numb to at this point. It's so easy to feel the projected stereotypes — English majors aren't good at math, English majors have it so easy in school, English majors want to publish a novel and become the next J.K. Rowling. It's always a surprise if someone says, in response to my "confessing" that I'm an English major, "That's really cool! I could never do that."

How many times have people I barely even knew asked me what I was going to do with an English major? How many times have people asked me why I wanted to be an English major? How many times have people asked me if I'm also pre-med or pre-law, as if that'll somehow justify "what" I am? (I mean, why? Why can't I just be an English major?)

At this point, I have, for lack of a better expression, run out of f*cks to give.

It's not just others' perception, though. The prejudice has become such that I've begun to believe it myself. I'm not going to lie — I've had more than my fair share of moments of inferiority. When I hear about someone, especially a girl, who's majoring in computer science or math or bioengineering, I feel awe and a strong pinch of jealousy. I always ask myself, "why couldn't I do that?"

But even if I've become (more often than not) too despondent to argue in favor of the merits of English majors across the nation, don't follow my footsteps. Make the oppressors feel bad for shaming what we love. What right do they have to criticize the choice we've made? Maybe we know something they don't — something hidden in the (literal) hundreds of books we have to read in school, the analyses we do, the millions of words we've written.

Language built this world. Who cares if we all already know it? In the Bible, when the people grew too arrogant and tried to build a tower that would reach the heavens, all God did was take away their ability to communicate; he rendered their language incomprehensible. And they fell apart, just like that.

English teaches us about people and how to understand them. It teaches us about experiences we have yet to encounter. It teaches us about the many facets of the world about which we would otherwise have had no idea.

So before you assume English majors had no other choice and that they are literally incapable of everything else, ask yourself if you're able to analyze the hell out of a seven-word sentence the way we can, or turn a single moment into a 16-page short story, or even begin to comprehend the world in all its layers and people and confusions.

And before you take to criticism, ask yourself if you love your major as much as English majors love theirs. Very few people can boast that they truly know their passions these days. In the millennial world, in which instant gratification (not to mention instant money-making) is all the rage and ladder-climbing is considered an absolute necessity, many have lost sight of what they genuinely love. If there's one thing I know about English majors it's that we all love what we're studying.

English majors aren't the lackadaisical, last-resort people some might assume them to be. We didn't swivel around looking for anything butthis and find that we had no choice but to sigh, settle for English. We love it. We love what we do. And so what if being purely an English major sometimes means, without a pre-____ track, having to "wait and see"? There's nothing wrong with that. People naturally jump from job to job in their 20s anyway — sometimes even later than that.

I'm so tired of having to defend my life choice to people. I'm tired of having to cite people like Mitt Romney, Clarence Thomas, Sting (ha), Diane Sawyer, Mario Cuomo, Steven Spielberg, etc. Do I really have to justify my major based on celebrities' successes?

Just trust that it's very nearly the same for English majors as it is for other subject majors. If we work hard, we'll get somewhere. Simple as that. Even if it's not as concrete as "I'm going to be a pediatric oncologist" or "I'm going to be a software engineer," doesn't mean it's not just as valid. We'll figure it out. There's nothing wrong with giving it a little time.

(I guess I wasn't quite ready to give up fighting back, huh.)