<p>Hey there everybody, I'm a junior at a UC school, currently a Modern Literature major...The thing is I've recently taken a liking for world history. However, it's a little late in the game to switch completely, as I've just begun winter quarter, and like I said, I'm a junior...I always figured I'd be a writer, partially influenced by my dad who's a totally self-employed writer himself...But recently, well I've started to question how much I'm actually learning taking literature classes, reading novel after novel after novel, and get the feeling that focusing on world history might be more valuable...However, if I were to switch my major now I'd be taking nothing but history courses from now until graduation, and would possibly have to stay an extra quarter or two, and I'm not sure if that'd be worth it............Being that my degree of interest in both subjects is comparable, I'm just curious if anyone has any thoughts regarding which subject they feel is more/less valuable. </p>
<p>Instead of risking extended quarters and nothing but straight history courses, could you just work into your Modern Literature major more history courses? Perhaps a minor would work out?</p>
<p>^^yeah, as of now I believe I can minor in history, taking 2 literature courses and one history course per quarter until graduation... and in terms of practicality that's probably the best option for me...Just annoyed at myself for taking so long to pick a major...</p>
<p>Hey man, when you're looking at two fields which aren't intrinsically practical ones [like engineering], the "value" of what you study comes from academic satisfaction in many senses. Literature offers a look into something more abstract, i.e. the author's views of certain character traits, a fictional representation of a time, etc. History is a more direct analysis of the past. </p>
<p>Both are great pursuits....FWIW, I would way rather read literature than read history.</p>
<p>Do what you like when you're doing something not intrinsically practical, because academic satisfaction is huge.</p>
<p>^^Totally, I just made the mistake of putting off deciding my major until the last minute, and now I'm at a stage where I really just want to learn as much as possible before I graduate because I feel like I kinda wasted my first two years pretty much..</p>
<p>If you want to change, change. Really, you have the time! I am 37 and still trying to figure out what I want to be when I grow up. I'm back in college, still without a clue on exactly what my life should look like. A few extra quarters? It will make no difference, except in your satisfaction. You never want to rush things and have to say "what if".</p>
<p>i went into the english major thinking i was going to be a writer too. then i quickly learned that to be a good writer, you have to have a lot of diverse knowledge. i never really liked literature classes actually.. i loved my creative writing classes, but i seriously hated all that analyzing.. it drove me nuts... i loved reading too, but i just never liked analyzing... it was too abstract that i didn't really feel like we should analyze it. if i had to do it again, i would rather do history. but you should take lots of other classes in different subjects... why can't you do that?</p>
<p>I was an English major for a few terms but decided to switch to philosophy. I had many reasons:
a) Like you, I didn't feel like I was learning anything. Sure, reading novels is pure joy and very enlightening, but I read novels in my spare time anyway, so I don't see the need to pay tuition for it. And I don't think spending two class sessions on The Wasteland makes one any smarter than if he had read the poem on his own with annotation.</p>
<p>b) Most English majors in my school are those crazy sorority girls who party three times a week. I felt like I was surrounded by anti-intellectual students who want to get through college just by reading novels.</p>
<p>c) Most English majors are the talkative type. I'm too introverted for my own good. I have ideas and comments to make, but I prefer writing them down on discussion boards and on paper. My professors started online discussion boards for students like me, which was great, until I realized that no one else was interested in discussion boards. It was extra work, and every other student was already getting his/her participation score in class discussions. This annoyed me; it deepened my impression that most English majors don't care to explore the materials more deeply and just do the least amount of work required to get a decent grade. I got even more infuriated when I realized that many of them simply prepare a point to say out in class (which usually has nothing to do with the ongoing discussion), say it out in fancy words, and then spend the rest of the class hiding and doing their readings for another class.</p>
<p>d) Philosophy classes teach lucid and eloquent writing. English classes teach unnecessarily florid writing. Whenever I listened to English lectures, or heard other English students speak, or read critical essays on literature, I felt that the discipline was extremely insecure, that it had to use such ornate language to make it seem worthy of its academic title. Sure, philosophy has its share of bad writers too, but at least students aren't taught to be like them.</p>
<p>So yes, take history if you feel that history classes are more worth it.</p>
<p>^totally agree... i would never do anything related to literature again (for grad school etc.) i do have a hard time defending it when people criticize it.</p>
<p>If anything has pompous language, it's history (philosophy is a close second). Don't get me wrong, I'm a huge history nerd, but I can't stand history as it is taught in college. I learned much more about it in my literature classes.</p>
<p>"Whenever I listened to English lectures, or heard other English students speak, or read critical essays on literature, I felt that the discipline was extremely insecure,"</p>
<p>Well I guess I completely understand where this comes from....the critics, ugh, how some of them sound.</p>
<p>But I think there's a good share of unpretentious sounding ones.</p>
<p>and yeah, I think analyzing literature can be so abstract and subjective a lot of the time...I chose literature originally because I thought it was a great medium through which to learn about human life in general over different time periods, not because I wanted to learn about it so much as an art form and it's various innovations/figures...And the whole emphasis on personally deriving certain meanings out of texts can get sooo tedious and after a while, almost baseless and silly in the millions of interpretations possible for every text...I also go to UC Santa Cruz, a political/social atmosphere heavily geared towards social issues like race, gender, and class. Thus, after a while, having to analyze so much through say, a feminist lens, can get kind of annoying..</p>