I %4 4
Wednesday, October 9, 2013 // The Statement E3
A Letter to My Freshman Self: How
you're using your English degree
by Carmen Allen
3 a.m., welcome week.
by Jon Horford
Iwould tell you that all the hours you're spending
researching requirements for Columbia's English doc-
toral program is a waste of time, but as it marks your
first real practice in collecting and evaluating information,
a process that will become all too familiar to you, I'll let
you be.
You won't transition to a Ph.D. immediately after under-
grad but will abandon the idea altogether, entertaining
thoughts of law school and volunteer work before you
finally settle on corporate America. Thirty-seven days
after your cap-and-gown-clad exit from the Big House,
ynJ1 don a blazer and skirt for your first day as a manage-
ment trainee on Long Island. You will work for Slomin's,
the nation's largest privately-owned home security and
residential heating oil company, and your hands-on expo-
sure to the company's operations will include shadowing
alarm mechanics, HVAC technicians, oil drivers and sales
representatives in between table sessions with department
heads and executives.
By May 4, you'll be ready for a world without coursework
and academic politics. A month into the real world, part of
you will be starved for Ann Arbor's intellectual life, but the
other part will be relieved that you're no longer volleying
jargon around a classroom in theoretical discussions about
s ectionality. Instead, you'll be watching it.
- Over the next four years, you will minimize "access to
education" to juveniles in Highland Park detention facili-
ties and will blink when you see its evidence in the oil driv-
ers, and mechanics that speak and interact so differently'
than your classmates and friends.
When you shadow a sales representative, more substan-
tial discussions will replace small talk as you drive from
one sales call to the next. You'll talk religion and theo-
ries of political advocacy and family and work-life bal-
ance, everything the professional workplace deems taboo
because it fears the abrasion with which the parties might
speak. But you'll talk delicately, no longer the freshman
who huffs out sentences to make.her case. You are not so
naive to believe that an employee's worldview won't affect
his work experiences.
How can you manage if you don't know what's going on
in your employees' lives? How can you communicate if you
don't know your audience?
And through these discussions you'll learn that this
audience doesn't listen harder when you throw around
words like 'dichotomy' and 'disseminate.' It takes humility
to release everything you learned, the vocabulary so care-
fully honed, the value of a degree reduced to your ability
to converse with people without one. Within the first two
weeks on the job, when you help Mechanic 292 snake wires
through walls, handing him crimps and screwdrivers and
'L'stepladder, you'll find that field workers won't open up
when they think you're a snobby college grad.
You'll see it in the way they talk about education. One
technician will tell you, "You don't need to be in the office.
You'll make more money as an oil mechanic." Conversations
with department heads about raises and bonuses will show
you the complications of that statement, but English 325
as taught you that perception is everything. Field workers
might shy away from giving you information, afraid that
you'll report them or that you might be their boss someday.
And you might.
So you cultivate relationships to benefit your future self
who in one, five, ten years from now can reflect with satis-
faction on the beginning of your career.
"Do you think people are inherently good or bad?" you
ask Mechanic 292 during a lunch break overlooking the
Atlantic. You talk about crime and anarchy, bouncing
between his thoughts on a recent movie and your analy-
sis of Native Son. He finds your crime and justice minor
fascinating and asks about your classes, turning the
discussion to the topic of autonomy. At the end of your
rotation with him, he'll thank you for the conversations,
and you'll carry the experience to department heads in a
debriefing about employee treatment and company cul-
ture. You note that the field workers value managements'
interest in the day-to-day grind mechanics and drivers
A7
" /
ILLUSTRATION BY MEGAN MULHOLLAND
undergo: this is Marx's ironic but comfortable niche in
the capitalist world.
What you love about English you will find in the real
world. It will begin in classroom discussions that grow
heated as you befriend characters and evaluate their choic-
es. It will continue outside of the classroom, when you will
compare literary theory to managing a student organiza-
tion. And it will culminate in .your senior year, when you
find that your thesis on transactional relationships in Dick-
ens is not terribly dissimilar to the corporate America for
which you are preparing. The value of an English degree is
more than honors on a thesis, more than a B.A. on a resume.
It's preparing you for a career in management because it's
teaching you how relationships work.
Contrary to popular belief, contrary to your own
thoughts at this point, a liberal arts degree will not pre-
pare you solely for a lifetime in academia but for success
in the real world as well. You'll notice it in your colleagues'
comments on how well you articulate and in your abil-
ity to facilitate communication between the president and
department heads. You'll see it in the ease with which you
can identify the larger picture. You'll identify it in the ways
your language classes are contributing to your thoughts on
improving cross-company communication.
This is how you will come to see it: You can't have an
oil delivery without a sale. And you can't have a sale with-
out marketing. And you can't have effective marketing if
you don't understand how aesthetics appeal to people. And
you can't understand the effect of aesthetics if you don't
know how people work. And when the vice president says,
"We're proud to view customers as people, not account
numbers," you know that the liberal arts taught him that.
Because the customer is first a purchaser, who .is first a
homeowner, who is first a part of humanity - and it is his
human desires you are satisfying when you talk about good
customer service, an attempt to make the face of a company
a human-to-human interaction. How do you have a relation-
ship with a service?.
You'll discover that defamiliarization makes a good mar-
keting technique. When discussing Photoshop effects with
one of the programmers, you'll know this is what literary
theorist Shklovsky said, in more words, perhaps, about
what makes the stone stony, now applied to the visual. The
programmer wants to zoom and crop, showing only a sec-
tion of the product equipment you'll showcase online. You
understand this as nothing less than metonymy - a part
of an object representing the whole - a concept you will
explore in depth during "Literature of the Holocaust" but
wouldn't have expected to find here.
In a discussion with the president of the company about
a banner photo on the new website, you defend your choice
of a couple snuggled against each other, dessert in hand,
a wintry window behind them. You'll claim, "We're not
selling a product, we're selling an experience. Home heat-
ing means intimacy." You'll situate yourself as the liaison
between the marketing team's vision and the program-
mers' fixation on coding the mobile site. Throw in a cyni-
cal image management guru and you'll realize you walked
into a character-driven plot that will define your corporate
experience. So you navigate the personality minefield to
talk about language in a website copy discussion. What is
home security, anyway?
The longer you are in corporate America, the more
you will realize how dependent it is on the liberal arts.
Your business classes will teach you what a transaction
is. Your friends' engineering classes will teach them how
to make it more efficient. But the humanities will tell
you why it happens.
As for you, you'll question everything in debriefing ses-
sions with department heads and executives. Your col-
leagues laugh at your inquisition and might let a snarky
comment slide when you press deeper into an answer, all
stemming from your acute observations in the field.
But when the vice president of sales and marketing
approaches you and says, "I hear you're doing a good job,"
you'll smile.
You have four years of participation points to thank for that.
Carmen is an LSA alum.
Drowsy and sober leaned back in a
chair in the middle of the night,
watching three couples engage
in the college version of a mating ritual.
One couple is sitting on the couch to my
left, talking about nothing in order to put
a respectable amount of time in between
meeting and making the "beast with two
backs." Another couple is up by the coun-
ter, which doubles as a
bar for the night. The .- _-", __ ,."
male is courting his i,
female friend with the '
I-bet-you-can't-drink- 2". *'"i #:: .
more-than-I-can game, 4r "434,.gei"'J4
*which ultimately is ' ". : 'i*
supposed to make her r* *
more likely to shed her *"
clothes. The girl that
makes up one half of
the final couple is the .e 4i"
type that takes it upon
herself to not seem like ,
other girls, which leads "4j
her to think that talking ;
about sports will make "
guys want to sleep with
her. I had seen myself
in some form of each'
situation before, andJ
observing those three
couples made me ques-
tion, for the thousandth ,
time that week, why we'
act the way we do.
I understand that 7
I don't really under-
stand. It's easy to act
like making it to a cer-A
tain age, attaining cer-
tain degrees or getting .,jj
a highly thought of0
career will grant you csohk wd
access to the knowledge
that will allow you to be content with your-
self. Searching for an epiphany in a dimly
lit Rick's that will let you take your mind off
of whatever it is you were raised to think
your mind should be focued on. A few more
shots of shitty tasting liquid should help
but if you really want to test your tolerance
for certain situations, throw your sober
self at the nearest bar around 1:30 a.m. and
observe what a sense of "community" has
become. Not that I don't partake in said
activities on a weekly basis, but somewhere
between a group of 10 good friends texting
silently in a living room pregame and con-
versations starting only after your breath
becomes flammable, I have to draw the line.
How many times has your pride stopped
you from doing what you want because you.
didn't want to feel weak or stupid? You had,
to maintain this image of yourself that you
thought other people would be willing to
accept because ultimately, what's worse.in
life than being alone and feeling like you
don't belong? You could have every trea-
sure the world can offer but if you could
only use those treasures for yourself, what
worth would they truly have? The bottom
line is that everyone wants to be loved in
some way. This might sound lazy, but let's
be attained if you have your thoughts and
beliefs at a certain frequency. I'm not here
to tell you what is best or what you should
do; do what feels right to you and under-
stand that not knowing and not being sure
is the way it is and will be for everyone. Our
journeys are different so don't base yours
off of comparisons to others. Begin to enjoy
everything that happens to you. Will old
your decisions. The act of not doubting is
strength. Believe in yourself and you will
accomplish anything. And when you have
become the person you had dreamed of
becoming, remember this: no matter how
many "great" things you accomplish in your
life, you are no better than a person who has
done what society would consider "noth-
ing."
R R
ILLUSTR ATION BY MEGAN MULHOLL AND
age consume your imagination before you
realize that you should have acted upon the
thoughts and feelings that we toss to the
shadows for fear that we may not be capable
or that others might not accept us?
Realize -that, although we may seem
separate, all of us are merely one. There
is no individual, just one whole connected
through spirit and a universal conscious-
ness. And please don't allow ego and pride
to get in the way of your bonds with oth-
ers. Is there anything sadder than words
left unsaid? Thoughts that you were dying
to share with someone but didn't because
you were stopped by being self-conscious.
Let go of the idea of embarrassment and
do what feels right to you. Care for others
because they are a part of you, but don't
allow fear of what they might think stop
you. Time is an illusion; so don't let it affect
People are people.
Explore the world and
I'm sure you'll find that
whether you are in the
largest cities or the most
remote villages untouched
by "civilization," everyone
likes to laugh, eat and fuck.
They get jealous and they
feel happy. They want to
be accepted. and they want
to feel loved. They know
things but they also know
nothing. They are different
but they aren't different.
Go anywhere and talk to
anyone for long enough and
you'll realize that on some
level, everyone can under-
stand everyone else. Give it
time and you'll start to see
yourself in every person
you meet, that's because -
whether you know it or not
- you are every person you
meet.
To think that I
A hollow tree
Could fill myself
With others lives
Would be to say
My destiny
Is bound to those
Who dwell inside
To say that I
A drop of rain
Could foster life
In living beings
Would be to say
A single bead
Can do things
Greater than the seas
To know that I
A grain of sand
Floating in space
Cannot be seen
Would be to say
I understand
Alone
I can't do anything
Jon is an LSA senior.
get comfortable with the idea of being kind
to everyone - become accepting of our situ-
ations and sympathetic to those who don't
know any better, ourselves included. We
need to base the decisions we make on how
thoughts of such things resonate with our
spirits and not off of the judgment of people
who in most cases don't give a fuck anyway.
Let's come to an understanding that
we are all connected, and despite what
we are taught, we don't have to see every-
one as competition or a threat to what we
consider success; as if a degree and a job
that a majority of people see as important
is what truly makes someone "valuable"
as a human being. Less competition and
more compassion; less judgment and more
understanding. Maybe we should sacrifice
the popularity contest in order to gain inner
peace, or possibly discover that both can