My Journey To Becoming An English Major At UCI
As a third-year English major, my undergraduate experience at UCI has been full of learning and living through mistakes and successes. However, the journey to my becoming an English major is probably one of the most evident instances of trial and error in my time in college.
Over the course of two years, I’ve changed my major two times (three times if you count briefly switching to undeclared in order to switch into a major in the humanities). I started off as a Pharmaceutical Sciences major in my first quarter at UCI, convinced that I was going to become a pharmacist later in life. Halfway through the quarter, as I found myself surrounded by chemistry notes and biology diagrams that made no sense to me, I decided that I was going to switch my major.
To what, I had no clue. I went through the general catalogue multiple times per day, trying to imagine myself as having different kinds of majors. I tried to envision possible careers, ultimately deciding that I should become a lawyer. I was immediately swayed by the seemingly luxurious lifestyles that lawyers on social media had and how studying law didn’t require any sort of science to do. So, after enrolling in Humanities Core in the winter of my first year, I changed my major to philosophy.
Philosophy was an interesting subject and I honestly never had an interest in it before, but after countless deep dives on the internet, I gathered that philosophy was the right choice for someone who wanted to go into law. Philosophy prepares you for the logical questions on the LSAT. To get better acquainted with the subject, I took three largely different courses that I felt would immerse me into the world of philosophy: Introduction to Law and Society, Critical Reasoning, and History of Modern Philosophy.
Out of the three, my favorite was definitely the History of Modern Philosophy class. With its focus on essay writing and exploring the history of different philosophers that I’d never heard of before, I felt incredibly connected to how humanities-centric the class was. It was the first time I realized that what I was truly interested in was writing, no matter if it was literature, historical accounts, or creative prose. While I enjoyed philosophical writings, I knew that the realm of philosophy didn’t interest me and that it wasn’t the right pathway for me. I then registered for three different English courses to see if English was the right major for me.
Even though I had loved reading and writing from a young age and was obsessed with English literature since high school, I didn’t want to jump into a new major without truly experiencing the classes first. The classes I took were on Shakespeare, Contemporary African American Literature, and Craft of Fiction: Fairy Tales. Each class offered me a look into the wide scope of English language and literature that I previously wasn’t accustomed to. I gained new interests in reading contemporary literature through a critical lens and cultural reimaginings of both fairy tales and Shakespearean plays because of them.
At the end of the winter quarter of my second year, I changed my major to English. Although I’ve only been an English major for about a quarter and a half, I feel that I made the right choice. In order to address some of my other interests, I take classes outside of my major that appeal to me, which has led me to declare minors in Global Middle East studies and creative writing. First hand, I can say that my favorite thing about the School of Humanities here at UCI is that many of the classes offered fall under multiple disciplines (such as literature, history, and ethnic studies), which helps widen students’ perspectives and allows them to figure out other academic topics they’re interested in. There are, of course, moments when I take an interesting class outside of English and fantasize myself majoring in that instead, but I ultimately always feel the most at home when reading Jane Austen novels or writing a paper on centuries-old poetry.
Whether you stick with one major throughout your entire undergraduate career or change your major countless times, UCI will always have a plethora of classes and majors to help you figure out what interests you academically and set you up for success after graduation.
