{shortcode-3d4974a8aa0d92169c85a3c5006e1d22ba3a1955}

Ah, Harvard English! This is for you! You, who have been the most prominent aspect of my “formative years,” or so they’re called. You, who have allowed me to read and read and read some more, inducing both laughter and tears, both joy and sorrow. You, who have at times betrayed me (shoutout to English 10, circa Fall 2024). You, who make my experience at Harvard so lovely, so full of joy. This is for you.

Those of you who look piteously upon me when I tell you I have to read 200 pages of Bleak House by Charles Dickens by Monday do not understand. Being an English concentrator is genuinely just getting a Harvard degree for reading books that, honestly, we should all be reading anyway. Sometimes, this reading comes at the expense of my sleep, my social life, and my mental health. But who needs all that when they have Charles Dickens to intricately explain the 19th-century bureaucracy for 700 pages? Not me, that’s for sure!

Being an English concentrator also entails learning how to write better. What will this skill be useful for when AI takes over completely in 10 years, who’s to say. As an English major, I need not concern myself with an internship, a job, or a prospective career. I need only concern myself with the 10-page paper on illness in Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. Would I be an English major if I were concerned with any of that other nonsense?

Ah, Harvard English! I have done well by you in the last two years. There is little to truly complain about, when push comes to shove. I get to read, to write, and to experience the great thinking and imagining that has come before my time. Better yet, I get to locate myself in that tradition. How lucky can one Harvard student be!

If you, freshmen and sophomores, are looking for the holistic liberal arts education that is offered by Harvard and are as unconcerned with obtaining a job as I am (I’m super unconcerned. Totally unbothered. Not worried at all. *insert nervous laughter*) concentrate in English!

No, for real. Do it.