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Majors in the humanities aren't for everyone, and if you're this dissatisfied with it, then you're right, it was a poor choice.
Literature study isn't career training, though it does come in handy in a variety of professions. Literature study is about learning new ways of thinking about how stories are told, created, and interpreted. This is important because it is through stories that we pass on our culture from one generation to another.
You're right. I'll have a lot less practical effect on the world as an English professor than eithe my wife, who is an ER nurse, or my sister, currently a pre-med major. They'll save lives and heal bodies and minds. What I do seems so small in comparison.
But I realized some time back that it isn't a race, I don't have to look at myself not saving lives and think that that means I'm a failure. If I send some students out into the world with a few new ideas and new skills they didn't have before that enhances their lives, their ability to empahize with others, their ability to connect to a story on a personal level or pass on a story to a child or a friend, then I've done a little bit to make their lives a little bit better than they otherwise would have, and make the world, at least the part of it my students inhabit a little bit better place. It may be such a small contribution that it's like a drop in the ocean compared to the world, compared to what someone like Charles Drew (scientist) or Harry Benjamin (doctor) or Lynn Conway (computer engineer) did, but it may make a small piece of a small corner of the world a little bit better than it was, and I think that matters.
Gilda
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