I don't need a degree in English to write.

Like most college students, I changed my major in my junior year of college.  I entered KU as a junior with the intention of majoring in English.  Since I had taken the bulk of my prereq’s at Butler, I was allowed to enroll in classes within my major that first semester.  Classes like “Great American Authors.”  “Authors of Africa.”  “Major British Authors Before 1800.”

It seemed like a reader’s paradise.  I would get to read books, books, and more books.  What I didn’t count on was being completely bored by the required reading.

I can’t tell you the number of times I fell asleep while slogging through “Paradise Lost.”  Or giving up entirely on Sir Gawain.  The African authors were interesting, but English was not generally their first (or even second) language and so the prose was dense and confusing.  The American authors, slightly more interesting, were still of an older generation and equally difficult to tackle.

The other thing I discovered about myself during these classes was my intolerance of and impatience with esoteric and philosophic discussion.  “On page 45, what is the symbolism of the egg salad sandwich the character eats?” the professor would ask.  “What is the author telling us through this sandwich?”

Other students would provide profound answers.  “The broken egg in the egg salad represents how the character feels torn up inside,” one would state.  Me?  I thought maybe the character was just hungry.  And egg salad had sounded good to the author as he was writing the book.  My literal mind had problems finding symbolism in everything within the book, as the professors wanted us to see.  Why couldn’t an egg salad sandwich just be an egg salad sandwich?  Why did it have to stand for something else?

So I got smart.  I decided that an English major wasn’t really that practical anyway.  If I wanted to be a writer, all I had to do was write; I didn’t need an English degree to do that.  And an English degree would do about one thing for me: get me a job as a teacher.  Since I had absolutely zero plans of getting my teaching degree alongside my English degree, this was not going to be useful.

I stumbled upon the “Organizational Communications” major that KU offered quite by accident, looking through the course catalog to see which classes I would enroll in during the second semester of my junior year.  This major offered classes entitled “Interpersonal Communications”  and “Communications for Business.”  Stuff I have always been interested in.  Best of all, I wouldn’t have to eat a semester of courses; I could switch to Organizational Comms and still graduate mostly on time.

Great decision.  The classes were much more interesting and much more up my alley.  My Communications for Business class showed us the practical side of communications, from press releases and marketing items to writing resumes and cover letters.  Interpersonal Communications focused on the ways we communicate as individuals, shoving speech and psychology and a variety of other disciplines into one course.  Since I’m fascinated by people and how they interact, I was fascinated in that class.

One of my most memorable courses in the major, though, was called “Loving Relationships.”  I know, I know, it sounds pud, and it definitely was.  Two days a week were lectures about different communication styles in our relationships.  One day a week, we gathered in small groups and discussed papers we had written over the various assigned topics.  We discussed communication with the people in our lives.  That small group was where I met my first two (outed) gay people.  Where I broke out of the lily white, middle class bubble that I had lived in growing up and discovered that not everyone came from the same stable, normal, midwestern upbringing that I did.  That not everyone grew up with two parents, or even one parent.  That class did more for me in the process of growing up than any other class could do.

My degree prepared me for the career path I took as a marketer and communications specialist.  It also made me wonder if I would have made a good psychologist, as I was fascinated by the way people interacted and now (mostly) understand why people communicate in their peculiar fashions.  Maybe someday I’ll consider going down that road.