A Return To Story Time

Last night I went out for drinks with Flinkie (because it was Tuesday, which demands cocktails and nachos, dur) and after a couple of martinis, we decided that clearly, what the evening demanded was …

…ice cream sundaes.*

It’s so OBVIOUS.

So off we went to the Dairy Delite, and while in line, I spotted one of my favourite former students EVER, the lovely and fabulous Miss Sarah.

I got in trouble in Miss Sarah’s class once (or you know, twice), because I used to tell them stories (I know, in English class, imagine it. A STORY. THE HORROR) when apparently I should have been using those minutes of seat time in more productive ways. Telling stories about why you should IMMEDIATELY get your hands on a banned book, or why it’s important to take risks did not valuable curriculum make, apparently.

I was not a good teacher.

Anyway. Sarah had some other English teachers who WERE good, and who inspired her to major in English, but she did not become a teacher. She shrugged last night and said, “What do you do with an English degree?”

“Well,” I said, “I write a blog?”

She laughed.

But as I ate my ice cream, I thought about it.

So for the lovely Miss Sarah – A story:

No one majors in English because they think it will bring them wealth. In terms of practicality, it’s down there with philosophy and sociology. You major in those things because you love them. I majored in English because I wanted to teach, it’s true, but I also majored in it because I love the language – the writing and the reading and the speaking. I love reading. I love to take ideas apart and put them back together; it makes me happy to craft a sentence that reads well – it makes me happier yet to look at a sentence someone else crafted and then figure out what makes it work.

That’s why you major in English or anything else – because you love it. And it turns out that a life spent chasing after the things you love is a life really well spent. So some of them don’t work out perfectly – so what? So you DON’T become a teacher with your English degree. (Or you do and then, you know, move on to something else). You still have it. You still worked hard and achieved something, in a subject you love, which is not to be dismissed or taken at all lightly.

Because the truth – the thing they don’t tell you in college, the thing they should tell you, and the thing I should have told you in high school – is that there are very few straight roads in life. They’re mostly quite bendy – it’s all steep hills and sharp turns and blind drives – so you navigate carefully, but you also enjoy the process. The straight roads are boring and go by without distinction, anyway. It’s the ones you have to be clever to travel that are more interesting, anyway.

You’re a clever one. You’ll figure it out. We all do, eventually. Where we end up, with whatever degree we earned? It’s where we’re supposed to end up.

Just remember to run down the roads that lead to the things, the people, the places, that you love.

And also remember that being able to read and write like an English major-ing champ when you get there won’t hurt a bit.

*Which is why I pretty much own stock in Lactaid now.