They say confession is good for the soul; well, here's one of mine.

I am a failed English major.

I have a degree in English. Correction, I have multiple degrees in English. Two of them to be exact--a B.A. and an M.A.

(I almost have a third degree; it's not in English, so it's not really relevant to this discussion...well, maybe. It's in Rhetoric and Professional and Technical Communication. But it's granted through an English Department. So, when people ask and I get blank stares when I tell them what I'm ABD in, it's generally just easier to say---you guessed it--English.)

If you ask what my job is, I'll say I teach English. Why? Because when I say I teach Composition, 90% of the people I tell that to respond by saying, "Oh you teach English." So, it's just easier to say I teach English and be done with it.

And an English teacher with multiple degrees in English should know a great deal about literature, right? After all, that's what the subject and study of English is about--to most people anyway.

So..here's the ugly truth:

• I failed my first three assignments in my American Literature class in college.
  (Luckily the class was taught on a portfolio basis, and I pulled an A out of the class in the end by revising the hell out of all of my work.)
  
  
• I have never read Dante's Divine Comedy, ever.
  
  
• I have never read Mark Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, ever.
  
  
• I don't quote from or wax poetic over Shakespeare, Robert Frost, Earnest Hemingway, Malory, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Robert Browning, or Byron.
  
  
• I wouldn't recognize iambic pentameter if it slapped me in the face.
  
  
• I don't have all the rules for English grammar memorized.
  
  
• Nor do I have all the rules for how to correctly do bibliographic citations in MLA or APA format memorized.
  
  
• I will judiciously end sentences with a preposition and feel good about it.
  
  
• I love fragments because thought is often fragmented. And who the hell said a thought had to be complete to be valuable or valid?
  
  
• I could not tell you the title of one single poem that H.D. wrote.
  
  
• I haven't read T.S. Eliot, Earnest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, or William Faulkner since my sophomore year in college--many years ago.
  
  
• Some days, I break every rule regarding capitalization there is when I post or comment on my blog or when I email friends because I simply don't care whether the first word of every sentence is a capital letter or not.
  
  
• I don't give a rat's ass about Shakepeare's sexual preference(s).

So, by most standards, as an English major, I suck; well, at least I make a pretty bad example for what people expect out of an English major. But, the funny thing is, that's okay with me.

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