The lofty vs. the practical

Early last year, I was discussing majors with other sophomores in an icebreaker. Two people said they were majoring in politics, another was in engineering, and the last was in the Wilson School. They talked about professors, certain courses to take and internships. Once my turn came up, I nonchalantly answered that I am in the comparative literature department and tried to make a joke about being the only humanities major. “Yes, that’s true,” the prospective Woody Woo major haughtily said. “You’ll be discovering the meaning of life while we’ll be getting paychecks.” Afterward, I nervously chuckled, winced and then excused myself from the group. Since the beginning of this year as a junior, a close family member of mine likes to call my major “basket weaving” and asks how the courses that I’m taking are going to help me get a job after graduation. Even though I am guilty of having my “head in the clouds” many times, still, I can’t help but wonder how I can balance having my head in the clouds while keeping my feet firmly planted on the ground.

Truthfully, all I want to be for the rest of my life is a storyteller. That’s it. I’m not a comparative literature major and pre-med, pre-law and probably not even pre-graduate school. I just get fascinated whenever I discover nuanced differences between translated works and the original or when I learn about the existential crises that fictional characters endure throughout lengthy novels. These are the things that make me the happiest. But as a junior, I frequently worry that I should spend more time learning about Pascal than Pushkin. I haven’t taken a single politics or economics course, and the only reason I’ve taken any math or science is due to the general education requirements. Coming to Princeton, I swore to myself that I would never enroll in a course that I didn’t have to take; I would only enroll in classes that interested me. But now that I’m an upperclassman, worrying about internships and independent research, I caught myself skimming over the course registrar list, struggling to find a politics or economics course to take.

“What would an employer think if he or she saw my junior fall courses?” I thought, as I looked over my foreign language, religion and junior seminar classes. How is that practical? There’s no doubt that I love what I do, but there is doubt that whomever I come in contact with — whether it’s an employer, a new friend or a family friend — will commend the path that I choose, regardless of whether it’s a traditional route.

And I cannot wholeheartedly blame the University for influencing students to rank more “practical” paths, such as pre-med and pre-law, as having more worth than majors in humanities because this is a societal problem. To be an artist is synonymous with being broke. Many will try, but few will make it. An artist’s income is usually not consistent. At least if I were to go into i-banking, I could guarantee that I’d get a paycheck and not live off of commission. I cannot blame that family member either, because no one wants to see a loved one struggle. But who says that I will struggle? Why does this stereotype still persist?

I guess I’m still a bit disillusioned with this whole notion of being “practical.” As a child, I was supposed to believe in my dreams and work hard to get them. As a teenager, I felt as though I was being taught to believe in my dreams and work hard to get them but to have a back-up plan. Now, as an upperclassman in college, I feel like I’m being taught to work hard, believe in practical dreams and then believe in the impossible during my spare time. Frankly, there are moments when I feel like I’ll go far and other moments I’m scared that I’m going to end up back home or working in a cubicle at a company that I hate, but at least I can keep the lights on and food on the table. There are so many moments when I wonder: What the heck am I doing with my life?

What am I doing? Well, I’m doing what I believe I’m supposed to be doing — pursuing my passion relentlessly. Yes, the road is not defined and may be even be a little unclear, but great discoveries usually reveal themselves along paths that have never been trodden. And maybe that Woody Woo major was right: Maybe I will be discovering the meaning of life — my life, in particular. That’s all I can say for right now.

Morgan Jerkins is a comparative literature major from Williamstown, N. J. She can be reached at mjerkins@princeton.edu.