English majors

This probably explains my feelings about my college degree better than I could ever hope to:

Mr. Clemente said, "Put your heads down on your desks and listen to the rain." I didn't know then that I wanted to be a writer, but I knew this was magic and I wanted more and more of it. English majors in college show up in my writing workshops years later, after trying a career in another field, because a dream was born in them back in school when they read Dostoyevsky, Thomas Mann and Virginia Woolf, and they can't get it out of their heads. So after a few years as computer programmers, they see it doesn't give them that hard rain in the afternoon outside the window. They know there is something else and that it's in their own brain. I honor English majors. It's a dumb thing to major in. It leads nowhere. It's good to be dumb, it allows us to love for no reason. That's the best kind of love."

Natalie Goldberg, Wild Mind