I chose English because I thought it was an easy subject. To be absolutely honest, I used to be surprised that what we did in English classes at school counted as work. It mostly seemed like fun to me.
I did quite well in English at secondary school, so I chose it as one of my A Levels – the easiest one. There was no contest when I was deciding on my degree subject. My grandparents wanted me to read Law, but that sounded ever so hard to me. Too many things to learn! I applied to read English and I was given a place to do just that.
Of course, once you get to university, English is not all plain sailing. At Cambridge, we had to go right through English Literature, starting before Chaucer. We had to read a lot of history and philosophy. There were countless novels, poems and plays. We read most of Shakespeare. I wrote dissertations on Virginia Woolf, TS Eliot and Milton. I studied American Literature as an option. It was three years of reading, reading, reading and then a lot of thinking and writing.
By the time I left university, I was still thinking that English was the easy subject and that my degree somehow was not worth as much as a degree in Law, say, or History. I didn’t think I could do any other subject.
When I went back to university, much later, to study Law, I wondered whether I would be able to do it. To my surprise, I managed rather well. I can’t argue with my results. Then, I began to think that Law might be a much more useful subject than English. After all, you do learn a lot of facts and new ways of thinking.
It was only when I went back to university yet again (a pattern is beginning to emerge here!) that I realised the value of an English degree. I had to learn about research before starting my project, and it suddenly dawned on me. The real value of studying English is that it teaches you how to think! During those years of reading countless texts, writing all sorts of essays and taking all those exams, I had been exercising my brain, making it stronger, more flexible and more imaginative.
Now, as an English tutor, I tell all my students that English helps you to become really good at thinking. Of course it is helpful to have good GCSEs, but it is really helpful to be an independent, critical, imaginative thinker.
