the seven symptoms of an english major

In honor of my starting to read Ulysses by James Joyce today and my taking up the Wandering Rocks challenge [http://wanderingrox.wordpress.com/about/] , I’ve decided to share with you the Seven Symptoms of an English Major, as written by my good friend Danielle Whaley for Florida Southern College’s chapter of Sigma Tau Delta back when we were undergrads.  If you borrow this list, please give her the credit. 

It was orginally printed on a tee-shirt, which I have since reworked into a lovely library bag. 🙂    English Majors Unite!

cheers to our profs. thanks!

Seven Symptoms of an English Major

7. While watching a film, you notice symbolism, and your friends make fun of you.

6. You come to enjoy being sickly in the hopes that you’ll catch consumption and become a poetic genius like Keats.

5. You can spot grammar errors in advertisements at the movies and make fun of people you do not know.

4. You become so brilliant at essay tests that multiple-choice tests seem somehow demeaning.

3. You wrote stories or read other books in middle school while your teacher explained useless things… like Math.

2. When you hear someone describe their majors as “hellish,” you can ask them what circle.  (And, after a while, you can begin to place people in THEIR appropriate circles…)

1. You can say things like, “this panegyric poem is written in trochaic hexameter octaves, with irregular truncated iambic lines,” and actually know what that means.

 

Do you know an eighth symptom of an English Major?  Leave me a comment.