I transferred to the University of North Carolina at Wilmington in 2003 with the intention of becoming a physical therapist. After spending my freshman year at the community college, I decided the best path to getting into graduate school to be a physical therapist would be entering my sophomore year as a biology major.

During my first semester at UNCW I took chemistry and biology along with a British Literature course to fulfill my humanities requirements. While I was struggling to keep up with the labs in my chemistry class, the poems of William Wordsworth pushed me to reconsider whether I wanted to be a physical therapist. After about 2 months of struggling in chemistry and biology, I decided to switch my major from biology to literature. I then set my sights on three potential career paths: pastor, writer or English teacher. I dropped biology and despite my best efforts, made a D in chemistry to finish out the fall 2003 semester.

Who says the general education requirements are worthless? This British Literature class required I read Wordsworth and altered my career path. Did I make the right decision? Yes, I did. It would have probably been a mistake for me to be a biology major. In my early 20’s I needed space to study what it meant to live a meaningful life.

Looking back, I want to touch on what I’ve gained from majoring in literature not only as an undergraduate, but also in my adult years. For anyone considering majoring in literature, here is my perspective on what you can gain from studying the classics.

First, to study literature is to strengthen your own command of language and the ability to develop your own voice.

I realized the potential of developing my own voice in British Literature that fall. While reading the Romantic Poets I saw the word “visceral” in a poem. I did not know this word; so upon reading the definition “relating to deep inward feelings rather than to the intellect,” I thought to myself “Wow. I did not know this word existed.” Romantic poets regularly wrote about their emotional reactions to experiences in the English countryside, which strongly moved me since I grew up in rural North Carolina mostly hanging out in the woods behind my parents and grandparents' house. Wordsworth’s poetry accurately described what I had experienced as a child. I wanted the ability to speak as precisely as these guys who lived over 200 years ago.

At 19, my own dialect and vocabulary was a hybrid of what I’d consumed while watching television growing up mixed with my family’s central North Carolina tobacco farming community dialect. My own command of words was also largely influenced by my voraciously reading habits of argumentative sports journalism since the age of about 8 years old. But I slowly discovered my ability to express myself was lacking. Yet while I found a weakness, I also found great potential for change by studying literature from another century. I thought to myself “If I continue to study this, I will be able to accurately say what I am thinking.” I felt a great relief that my own linguistic abilities were not fixed for the rest of my life, but by studying literature from a different era revealed the path of how I could grow my own “voice.”

To be content with our own 21st century American dialect is, in a way, restricting our own ability to express ourselves. Therefore, by studying British literature that semester, I integrated the words, sentence structure, and vernacular into my own “American southern dialect.” This, of course, does not erase my own southern accent and dialect but allows me to gain another angle of the English language.

Yes, reading can help a person sound more intelligent or professional. But that wasn’t my goal. I needed the ability to explain what I was thinking to keep myself sane. We need the logic of language to create order out of the chaos of our internal worlds. This can be clearly expressed from one image that has been floating around the internet for a few years titled “23 Emotions We Feel But Can’t Explain” created by editor John Koenig.

The list of words includes words such as “Opia: the ambiguous intensity of looking someone in the eye, which can feel simultaneously invasive and vulnerable.” Yet, Koenig invented the entire list of words. They are not part of the English language (at least not yet). Koenig’s creation of words expresses the human desire to put to words the strange thoughts and emotions that come to mind. As a literature major over and over again I had the privilege of looking up words in the dictionary and thinking “There’s a word for that feeling? Great.”

Second, being a literature major trains you to be a conversationalist. As we grow older you realize life is complex and the ability to enter into deep conversations as a satisfying skill which allows you to connect with both strangers and friends.

The design of the literature classes I took in college typically required students to read a short-story on a Tuesday (for homework) with the goal of coming into class on Thursday to discuss the story. After reading the short-story on Wednesday night, I would come into class on Thursday ready with notes about the assigned short story. The professor would often lecture for 20 minutes about the story, then spend at least 30-40 minutes of the class for open discussion. The professor often lead the discussion time with leading questions that the class would then respond to. This regularly created a space for those in the class to explore philosophical, cultural, social and religious topics. A deep conversation can only happen if you have time to go deep. We always came to class with the expectation that we were going to have the time to go deep for at least 40 minutes.

Does being a literature major train you to become a better conversationalist? Or do conversationalist typically congregate as literature majors? I think it is a little bit of both. I was required to attend class where I was placed around people who wanted to hash out cultural questions and the meaning of life. If I had to choose one or the other, I would say that the classroom design of creating space for open conversations helped train literature majors to go beyond small talk and make larger observations about life.

Creating time and space to discuss a book doesn’t have to be led by a professor or happen on a university campus. In the summer of 2015, I was part of a book club with 3 other friends in Greensboro, NC. We had been meeting for 3 months in which our conversations continually got deeper as we established trust with one another to disagree and hash out complex life questions. We disagreed with one another regularly about the book. Yet healthy disagreement only happens when we establish trust and have time for healthy debate.

I remember one meeting we read the American short story “Life in the Iron Mills” by Rebecca Harding Davis. I believe it to be the most under-rated American short story which explores how people during the industrial revolution were mistreated and overworked. The discussion went well, we got off topic and started to discuss the class differences in America in the 21st century. Then in the middle of the discussion my friend Zebby vehemently said to the group “You know what I want? I want this. I want this kind of conversation.”

I can’t really express how passionate and serious she was when she said this. She looked angry but it was a vulnerable thing to say. She didn’t want a higher salary, a better position at work or even a vacation. She just wanted a good conversation, sincere human connection. Zebby had shared with me multiple times in early 2015 that she’d been frustrated with finding good friendships in Greensboro after she graduated from UNCG with her masters. But I think the gathering of multiple conversationalists, those people who are not afraid to disagree with one another and not afraid of going deep allowed created a bond of trust that created a group of friends.

Again, you don’t need to major in literature to practice what I’ve described above. You can just gather a few friends together in a book club. However, to major or minor in literature can help teach us the basic habits and customs of literature classes that create good conversations.

My third reason is for overachievers. Majoring in literature helped me understand I could not re-create myself into a know-it all philosopher, but instead begin to understand what an incredible and mysterious experience it is to be a human being. When I first became a literature major I formed a vision of my future self as becoming a very wise, educated individual. I imagined that after 3-4 years of diligent reading as many classics as possible, I would thoroughly understand life’s deepest questions. Now that I had declared myself a literature major, it would only be a matter of time before people saw me as a smart person who had insightful answers about society, God, the world and nature.

That sounds a bit vain and overly ambitious, doesn’t it? Well, it was the truth. I did desire to be seen as an intelligent person. I think I have struggled with the desire to be seen as smart. I do not think this is an entirely bad thing. The good news for me is that I had started my journey as learning that the habit of reading could help grow my knowledge. I desperately wanted to make sense of the world. At the same time, I had also become a Christian, which gave me a framework for learning. I not only gained the knowledge of becoming a Christian, but I also would push forward and understand how literature’s answers to life’s biggest questions compared and contrasted with my faith. These were good and noble goals.

Yet there was a twisted motive in all this. I wanted to be seen as a smart person. Whether it was philosophical knowledge, literary knowledge or theological knowledge, I wanted to be known as a person who understood the world better than those around me. I went forward with a diligent plan reading Tolstoy, Whitman and Melville to understand life’s most complex questions. I worked hard in college to read the classics. I also read a lot of theological texts on the side, arguments about the truths of Christianity. I assumed that by working my absolute hardest during my 3 years in literary studies there would be less mystery about myself and the future.

Studying literature for 3-4 years as an undergrad did give me a lot of insight into myself, the world and the meaning of life. But I also became aware of my own smallness in attempting to read and know everything there was to know in literature. By my senior year I felt I had done my absolute best in reading as much as I could but still I had only seen the tip of the iceberg, majoring in literature had taught me how to think, but I was not the deep philosopher who I had hoped I would be. The point of being a literature major is to learn how to think, get a framework for how to answer questions on your own and learn how to articulate what you are thinking about..

G.K. Chesterton explained this as comparing a poet to a logician. He says it is best to approach the world like a poet rather than a logician. Chesterton says poetry leaves room for mystery, while reason alone attempts to know it all:

“The general fact is simple. Poetry is sane because it floats easily in an infinite sea; reason seeks to cross the infinite sea, and so make it finite. The result is mental exhaustion, like the physical exhaustion of Mr. Holbein. To accept everything is an exercise, to understand everything a strain. The poet only desires exaltation and expansion, a world to stretch himself in. The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits.”

By studying literature, I eventually gave up trying to be the logician who attempts to "get the heavens in his head"instead approach life like the poet. But by finishing my undergrad degree in literature, it uncovered my vain desire to be seen as a smart person. This freed me to abandon my idea of becoming an immovable intellectual giant who would gain respect and admiration. This is not a struggle that all people who want to study literature struggle with. It is a kind of perfectionist mindset that is fueled by something, I’m not sure what it was.

In the end, I gained an understanding about my own strange desire to have the appearance of having all the answers and simultaneously made sense of the world around me. When you graduate from undergrad at 22 years old, you spend the rest of your 20’s unpacking those writers that your teacher introduces you to. Then you spend your 30’s trying to live out what you read in your 20’s. The process of reading, re-reading and then trying to execute a good life that you read about. Reading great books is a life-long task not something accomplished in 3-4 years.

I'm glad I made the choice to switch my major to literature early in my college experience. I graduated on time and I absolutely loved my professors and fellow lit-majors. It was definitely the right choice for me back when I was only 20 years old.

What about you? Do you want to make sense of the world around you? Do you feel you need to find words to develop your own voice? Do you want to develop the skill of being a conversationalist?