Natalia
Joined: Oct 9, 2006
Posts: 5
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Gender & Age: Female & 26
Country: Canada
Province/State: Ontario
City: Toronto
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The Trouble with Academia: B.A. is B.S.
June 18, 2008 - 10:24 AM
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I made the horrible decision to major in English Literature at the University of Toronto. What started as mild dissatisfaction eventually built up to this: now I’m just raving and upset. Graduation is just around the corner, and as I sit here preparing for my last exam I happen to glance over the morning news: I look down on my exam notes and up at the news again, and almost feel criminal about having wasted close to $30, 000 to learn about the difference between tragedy and comedy; the difference between pentameter and hexameter. All along what I most wanted to get out of my university education is an answer to why the world is the way it is, and a guideline to how to make it better. I should not have chosen literature, of all things, to invest all my time and money in. That I admit is my fault; but to my defense at 18 I had no idea what I was getting myself into and the university offered no guidance in this direction. Imagine, sitting through three hours listening to the professor lecture about whether Hamlet was truly mad, or just pretending, or why some character started off a kind person, but by the end a novel became an intolerable bitch. It’s always hard for me to stay for the whole lecture because by the second hour I get so angry listening to what to me sounds like silly gossip I have to leave. I understand that this is art, it’s not politics – we’re dealing with literature, not international aid but why can’t academics approach the material they cover in school from a more substantial angle? Why do we have to lock ourselves up in an ivory tower just because the subject often leans towards the abstract? I think it should be mandatory to relate the issues found in literature to the world which produced it, or else the world that will ultimately read it. Also, universities should offer their students more guidance when choosing a major, BEFORE they invest their time and money. I hate the fact that I’ve come all this way to have my head full of abstract knowledge but my hands completely empty. Hamlet’s madness isn’t going to help me understand poverty, find a job, nor help end hunger. What good was it then?
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