I wrote my first book when I was three years old. I couldn’t read or write yet, but I had ideas. When I told his father about it, his father wrote the words and drew a picture. Despite being scorned on the New York Times bestseller list, Eli and Scooter still sits on my desk, reminding me how far back my love of writing goes.
Looking back at my early writing career, it’s no surprise that I majored in English. But the road to accepting that her passion was not in her highly regarded STEM field was a difficult one.
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My classmates and I took a placement test in fifth grade, which determined which math classes we would take from sixth grade until graduation. This test was a serious one and all of us her 10-year-olds knew it. Fewer than half of us will be placed on an accelerated trajectory, setting us up for later success, while the rest will be relegated to a year behind some of our colleagues.
I’m not here to harp on the negative effects of labeling students based on test scores, but rather to talk about the effects of this pressure that I’ve experienced. In 5th grade, I basically skipped math entirely and tested the required units in order to tackle more theoretically appropriate material. But instead of learning advanced algebra, we played Sudoku and stuff like his 5th graders. I wasn’t too worried about the placement test.
To my parents’ and myself’s satisfaction, I was set on an accelerated trajectory, which wasn’t all that surprising. I have always placed great importance on tests and have always been able to follow instructions well and achieve excellent grades. There was just one problem. The thing is, I hated math.
Oh, yes. Big dilemma. What do people do when they hate what they’re good at? The logical answer is to stop doing anything you hate, but I wasn’t yet an adult with a fully developed prefrontal cortex. As a child, I received heaps of praise for my work, but I succumbed to the siren call of academic recognition. So, when asked, I always answered that my favorite subject was mathematics.
As I received more and more evaluations from teachers about my aptitude in mathematics and science, I began to abandon my passion for literature and stories. Perhaps this is because excellence in STEM subjects is easily quantified, whereas the evaluation system for writing is more nuanced. Or maybe there was just more emphasis on math at my school. Rationale aside, I found it incredibly difficult to differentiate between something I was passionate about and something my teacher told me I had a talent for. In the grand scheme of fifth graders’ social and personal growth, the forced fusion of ability and passion was inevitable. What I was good at became what I thought I was passionate about.
By high school, I began to understand my academic interests. I was a musician and loved reading and writing, but I still hated math. However, when asked what he wanted to do in college, he answered that he wanted to become an engineer. The career I dreamed of at the time had nothing that I liked and a lot of things I didn’t like, like numbers, problem solving, and logic puzzles. I was sensing very clear signals that the education system was sending me. It was that STEM was the future and the path to financial security. The coming digital age needed scientists and mathematicians to build a new technological revolution on the horizon. Meanwhile, art was in decline. Pursuing a career in them was a mistake, a waste, and a curse to the inevitability of artistry that starved artists.
Fortunately, I got a C+ in my honors calculus class during my sophomore year of high school, dashing my hopes for engineering. Actually, I shouldn’t have struggled in class. The teacher was famous for being friendly and the content was much simpler than the classes I had taken in the past. But either my subconscious mind couldn’t bear to keep telling me lies about my fake love for math, or my motivation simply reached breaking point, I didn’t even try to do well. Most of the time, I came to class without finishing my homework. This is not a recipe for success, and it showed in the barely passing grades I received. At the time, I saw it as a life-altering catastrophe, but looking back, it was a wake-up call. If I were religious, I would probably say it was rooted in some kind of divinity. I could no longer gaslight myself into liking what I hated.
My parents watched the whole process. They raised a three-year-old who wanted to write a book. They raised a six-year-old son who told everyone that he had just read the first chapter of the book himself. They also saw an 11-year-old boy abandon his love of writing, thinking he was simply good at something else. They saw a kid who lied when he said he liked math. So instead of being angry at me for not doing well in class, they simply used the opportunity to remind me of my true passion, the one I had left behind. They sat me down and made sure I understood that my C+ doesn’t define me, but they also understood that I’ve always had a love for writing and literature. I have confirmed that it is. After they finished talking, I went back upstairs and immediately rummaged through my desk drawer and found an old, beat-up copy of Eli and Scooter. Finally, I remembered.
My love for art began to return. I found that my English classes were more fun and my writing skills were rekindled. I started writing again in my free time, writing poems, essays, and short stories (none of which were very good, but I digress). By the time I applied to college and started considering majors, I was already pursuing an English degree. But I was still reeling. There are people all over the internet throwing warning signs at prospective humanities majors: poor job prospects, regret, and feelings of helplessness. More and more, the idea that the sole purpose of a college major is to help students succeed in their careers began to slowly permeate my mind. Perhaps they were right. Maybe he thought STEM was the future and the arts and humanities were falling out of favor.
“What are you going to major in?” my relatives would ask.
“Probably English,” I say. They narrowed their eyes and looked at me sideways.
“So what are you going to do? Do you want to be a teacher?”
This reaction was in stark contrast to the intrigue and excitement they showed my younger brother, who was majoring in computer science just a year earlier. I left these conversations feeling scorned and disappointed, worried that I was wasting my brain by going into the humanities. I was worried that I would need to go into a STEM field to make a real impact and do something that people admired me for.
Two years after completing my English degree, I am grateful to my younger self for staying true to my passion and finding the courage to pursue it. The current reality of higher education is that it focuses more on career preparation than on forming well-rounded individuals. So it makes sense that the majors that are seeing the most growth are those with more solid financial prospects and career-oriented approaches, such as academic studies, computer science, engineering, and business. And as these fields grow, disciplines such as philosophy, English, and history decline.
College majors can be “popular” and lead to oversaturation of the job market, but the trend is pretty clear. You can be a computer scientist or a neurologist, but you can’t be an English person. Pursuing a career with a clear future is an easy and right decision for many people, offering the promise of financial and job security in an unstable world. The stress of not knowing what the future holds is alleviated by a structured path to earning a degree, and the fear of wasting time and money by earning a degree and simply not putting it to use is reduced by the stress of not knowing what the future holds. It is moderated by the stability of employment opportunities. However, while the risks are low in the short term, you may be at risk of falling into a career path that you are not passionate about and have no escape from.
Not all STEM fields are career-friendly, and not all humanities fields require students to fail. In fact, success (financially speaking) is only loosely correlated with one’s major in college. Still, I presented her STEM/humanities dualism as a mutually exclusive combination where the problems of one are the strengths of the other. That’s not the case. All areas of higher education require risk-taking, but the humanities seem to be considered riskier than his STEM fields, leaving many students looking for the touted safe haven. Even though they are not, they are kept away from “dangerous” degrees. .
We know that pursuing an English degree also comes with risks. I don’t have a single career that I can set my sights on. You have to believe that your skills will transfer to the path you choose. But when my friends and family in the STEM sector ask me, “What can I do with an English degree?” I always say, “Absolutely anything.” Because your career doesn’t have to be defined by your college major. It’s risky and less stable. But I am by no means doomed to fail.
I will take the risk. I resist the pull of a “career-friendly” degree. I laugh at the look of admiration my engineering friends get when they mention their major, but I just nod politely. Ignore the well-meaning but mean-spirited “What are you going to do with your English major?” question. comment. Because I know what I am.
I was a kid following his passion. I’m a humanities kid living in his STEM-loving culture.
Statement columnist Eli Trese can be reached at [email protected]..