It's time to go back to classes and everyone is slowly but surely settling into their autumn routines. I'm no different; I've bought all my school supplies and finalized all my schedules. I'm getting a feel for my new professors and course load. And I'm getting back into the habit of answering the same question I've been answering since last year:

"You hate reading? But you're an English major!"

Wild, but true. I'm an English major who hates reading.

Now let me explain.

I love to read, honestly. I love dressing up and sitting in naturally-lit and overpriced coffee shops with a good book. I love wearing nothing but boxers and burrowing in a couch with a good book. I love carrying a massive book around in my backpack even though I know I'll have no time to read it that day. I love finding myself in a park or library or quiet space and painfully realizing I've forgotten to pack it. I love reading leisurely. Casually. Vocationally.

I don't love reading professionally. I don't want to grow up and read books for a living. I don't like reading books through the lenses of someone else's frame of mind. I don't like approaching books with a preconceived interpretation. I don't like reading books knowing there is a "correct" way to analyze them.

I do love analyzing texts. I love literary theory. I love contextualizing books and poetry and literature. But I've recently come to terms with the fact that I just can't imagine doing it as anything other than a hobby.

And I've run into plenty of fellow English majors who share this (unpopular?) opinion! Plenty of us don't like reading under pressure, and that's perfectly fine. Is that the only way to achieve an English degree? Absolutely not.

English majors can actually have aspirations beyond teaching at a high school, believe it or not. I'm not entirely sure why that is people's first assumption about my career goals when I tell them what I'm studying, but it's not the default career path for all of us. Friends of mine in the English department are pursuing activist jobs and dramaturgy and authorship with their degrees and understand me when I say I'm not interested in analyzing Macbeth for the rest of my life.

I'm working towards my English major with a concentration in Linguistics and Rhetoric.

I'm far more fascinated by the language we use to communicate with each other and express our ideas than I am with so-called literary "classics." I want to learn about how language shifts and changes across the borders of culture, gender, sexuality, race, and class. I want to learn about how human speech patterns differ depending on an infinite number of factors. I want to learn about the history of our linguistic and rhetorical shifts. I want to learn about the cultural, societal, and historical impacts of single words in our dictionaries. There is so much I want to study and research and explore. And I can read when I get some free time.

There is no right way to major in any field. There are no assumptions to be made about any career path. We are all simply seeking out knowledge in the fields which interest us and hopefully finding ways to make livings off of them.