VOICES FROM THE PAST:

Advice from former English majors and graduate students

From Gilgamesh on, we've always offered advice.

What advice would you give to a new English major?

☙ I would advise them to be open minded and take classes with a wide variety of professors. It is important to first experience multiple venues in the larger survey courses and then study with the professors who specialize in their particular fields of interest and encourage individual thought in upper division classes. Also, as an English major, it is much easier to find a niche in one university for a solid 4 years than to transfer, as professors and students seem to develop close connections throughout this time in literature fields. ❧

☙ I would suggest to a new English major to buy the book Woe is I, which is a grammar book that breaks things down in an understandable way. I am not perfect at grammar, and I know I'm not the only one. Grammar should be taught more thoroughly. I would also suggest to a new English major to make lists and plan for how much they MUST read each day. And do the same with writing. I have found it easy to get through a rough draft a week or two before it is due and take it to my professor, change anything and be done with said paper at least a day (or more) in advance. My friends envy that I can do that. Procrastination is not for everyone. Not everyone can knock out a paper during an all-nighter so I would just suggest planning ahead in order to get work done. The more you practice this skill, the easier it will come and it is very rewarding. ❧

☙ Absorb as much as possible in the lower division courses to better prepare you for the workload and expectations for upper division classes. ❧

☙ Read the material no matter how boring it is. ❧

☙ Prepare for graduate school early. Ask how to expand artifacts. Find a subject you like and go to a professor about. Submit artifacts for publishing or conferences. ❧

☙ I would tell them to learn how to use the library and Galileo as soon as possible. It makes things a lot easier when you know exactly what to do and where to look. ❧

☙ Make sure to talk with your professors! They are extremely helpful in many ways and are amazing people! Also, generally speaking, procrastination is bad and a new English major should really try to get into the habit of not procrastinating. Good time management is key when you are taking mostly upper division courses. ❧

☙ Start ahead of time. Once you know what the course will be about, or what books you will be reading, immediately start reading and doing research. ❧

☙ Plain and Simple: You either read it, or you did not. If you plan on coasting with SparkNotes, save yourself the embarrassment. ❧

☙ It's easy to put off an assigned reading until "later"; it benefits you directly to read as much as you can while improving class discussion. ❧

☙ Don't think there's only one way to approach a text, or that your professor's word is final on a topic. Never be afraid to express your own ideas as long as you can back them up with solid evidence. ❧

☙ Form a good relationship with your professors. Go to their offices, ask them questions, etc. They are more than willing to help, but only if you show that you are willing to put forth the effort. ❧

☙ Seek assistance with revising essays. ❧

☙ If you do not LOVE reading and writing, do not become an English major! ❧

☙ Everyone should actually keep up with the readings, and research skills are invaluable. ❧

☙ Read everything! Do not get lazy and try to get by without reading. Not only does it hurt your grade, you miss out on an awesome reading experience. ❧

☙ Be bold in class! I know from first-hand experience that entering the English major can be an intimidating thing, in large part because it demands a different way of thinking and analyzing work than any other major. However, you will gain so much more knowledge and confidence from your courses if you voice your opinions in class. Yes, you will be wrong or off-point sometimes, but learning to take that risk will teach you the validity of your own voice and give you greater confidence to enter the world after college. ❧

☙ Stay on top of the readings, and take time to enjoy the literature. ❧

☙ KEEP YOUR PAPERS. I cannot stress this enough; if I had known the value of keeping earlier papers so that I could expand upon them, my BA career might have gone smoother. ❧

☙ The best thing a new English major can do for themselves, in my opinion, is go by the library or a trusted professor and ask for help using online research as well as what to look for in books. ❧

☙ Think twice about it. If you are looking to just focus on what you want to focus on, forget it. Because of the class schedules and the courses offered, you may not get the chance to take what you want and will have to endure sitting through classes that you really are not interested in. If you are the kind of person who can develop a love for all kind of literature, I'd say go for it without thinking twice. ❧

☙ I would remind new English majors to check with each new professor on his/her writing policies (i.e. can or cannot use "I"). ❧

Is there a book you discovered as an English major at Georgia Southern that had a particularly significant influence on you?

☙ I have found that Regency and Victorian literature have become a special interest of mine in the two years I spend at Georgia Southern. I appreciate my British literature teachers for recognizing my talents and interest in this area and I hope to improve my knowledge beyond graduation through reading. As a future student in library science, I feel well-rounded in my knowledge of all types of English literature and appreciate the Irish Studies Department for widening my cultural vision! I extremely enjoy the works of Charles Dickens and Oscar Wilde now. ❧

☙ Many books have influenced me on many different levels. The Age of Innocence would be the first novel that I could not get enough of, and I could not stop thinking of different ideas that I could write about for that book. I could say the same for many other books, like More Pricks than Kicks, The Sun Also Rises, Pride and Prejudice, The Red Tent. There are just so many. ❧

☙ The Road by Cormac McCarthy was one of the many books that i discovered over my course of study that has had an influence upon my life and my career as an English major. ❧

☙ The Picture of Dorian Gray. ❧

☙ The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms ❧

☙ I had to read Cormac McCarthy's The Road. This book had a huge impact on me and I loved every minute of working on my research paper for this novel. ❧

☙ There are many books that come to mind with this question. Choosing just one is really difficult! However, I am going to talk about The Stories of Breece D'J Pancake. My paper and interaction with this collection of short stories, along with the professor who taught it, made me ultimately choose to be an English major. I have become interested in other areas since this time, but I still enjoy reading this book. There a many other significant books that I love! I want to mention Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte, Dracula by Bram Stoker, and The Last September by Elizabeth Bowen. All of them really influenced my academic interests, and I still love reading them! ❧

☙ Texts and Contexts by Stephen Lynn, The Critical Tradition edited by David H. Richter, and A Handbook of Critical Approaches to Literature edited by Guerin, Labor, Morgan, Reesman, and Willingham. All these books helped a lot when I was stuck trying to find an idea to write about in my classes. ❧

☙ Joseph O'Neill's Netherland; Naguib Mahfouz's Midaq Alley ❧

☙ The Sun Also Rises ❧

☙ Their Eyes Were Watching God by Hurston. The idea that you can keep rebuilding your life no matter how often it gets torn down has been really important to me. ❧

☙ I don't feel that just one book influenced my academic development more than others. I can pinpoint moments in several works that stand out as significant. For example, in my Fitzgerald and Hemingway class we read Fitzgerald's Tender is the Night. This book taught me the importance of knowing the author's biography and history and how the story is interrelated. Reading Kipling's Kim taught me to look for subtle images and phrases to grasp the author's deeper meaning. There are many more I could list. To answer this question, I suppose I would say that almost every book that I had to read influenced my academic development in some way. ❧

☙ The poetry of Tennyson and the Victorian Period are both the most significant areas that I studied during my time as an undergraduate. ❧

☙ I really enjoyed The Crossing by Cormac McCarthy. ❧

☙ Camus' The Plague ❧

☙ As a student interested chiefly in 19th-century British literature, Hemingway and McCarthy caught me by surprise with an immediate, deep love for The Sun Also Rises and The Road. As American modernist and contemporary novels, these books seemed to be everything I hated, but in loving them I learned how to connect the Romantic/Victorian literature I love most to the Modernist/Postmodernist literature I love least in order to produce more productive discussion and academic analysis. ❧

☙ I cannot point out any one book specifically, as it was the collection of all the books and professors with which I interacted that shaped my academic experience. ❧

☙ The Canterbury Tales allowed me to realize that I wanted to focus not on Renaissance literature, but Medieval. It basically changed my entire MA/PhD course path. ❧

☙ I am sad to say that it wasn't until my last semester that I discovered Cormac McCarthy. His novel The Crossing had a strong impact on me. ❧

☙ Passing by Nella Larsen and The Road and No Country For Old Men by Cormac McCarthy might be the three most important books I've read at GSU. When the semesters in which these were read ended, I kept all of these books and am sure that I will read them many more times. I still think about each of them every day. ❧

☙ Jane Austen in general was very helpful. I did not like her until I had my second taste of her in college, where I fell in love with her wit and writing style and took advantage of the single author Jane Austen course. Try everything twice: Once to see if you like it; twice just to make sure." ❧

What advice would you give to a new graduate student in English?

☙ The fastest way to burn out is to overwork yourself and not take a break. If your outside life suffers, your work suffers. Relax. ❧

☙ Don't be arrogant. You probably don't know as much as you think you know. Don't call professors by their first names. Be respectful. ❧

☙ The sooner you figure out your thesis topic the better, but really, you have all of your first year to sort through that. If you are able to really get some writing and research done between the summer of your first and second year, you will be a step ahead in the game. ❧

☙ If you teach during your second year, try to find other graduate students (or even professors) who are doing a similar syllabus/schedule. It will make your life much easier and provide you with the necessary resources and support. Don't try to show off and go it alone and decide you know exactly what to teach and how to teach it. Again, you probably don't. ❧

☙ 1) If you are a traditional student and start in the fall semester, take your first Christmas break completely off. Rest--you will need it to start the whirlwind that will be the next three semesters of graduate school. 2) Take a summer class. I did and I am so happy that I am finishing my final semester with one seminar class and thesis hours. 3) You will most likely change your thesis topic a couple times before you decide on the perfect one. Don't sweat it. Don't let professors pressure you about it. You'll know when it is right; just make sure it is right no later than the beginning of your third semester! 4) Don't call professors by their first names. It's not cool. We're not their peers; we are their students. Be respectful of their seniority. ❧

☙ Be respectful. You are working with professors who are smarter than you. Call them "Dr. Last Name" and not by their first names; respect their opinions, don't treat them like pals. Show some respect to the people who have been in graduate school for a full year longer than you. Realize that their experience and opinions are valuable; don't just assume that because you have been accepted that you are on equal footing with them. ❧

☙ Decide what is important early on. If you are here to party or be part of the "graduate scene," save some money and go home now. To succeed you will have to work hard and sacrifice most of your free time. You cannot write your papers the night before they are due.

☙ Be inclusive. Don't leave just one person out of the clique. All the people in your year are going through the same things, and working together as a whole, cohesive unit is the best way to get through it. ❧

☙ Start on your thesis now. Start researching, start meeting the graduate professors, start narrowing down your topic - and do it all immediately. You should be seriously researching by the second semester, and starting the writing before the third semester." ❧

☙ Take the initiative to get to know your professors and look for opportunities to learn from them beyond the classroom. ❧

☙ Start your thesis now; at least start narrowing down your topics of interest now. Make friends with your professors early. Take outlines and drafts of seminar articles to those professor friends sooner rather than later. ❧

☙ Get to know the professors! Don't "major" in a single one, but try to really branch out! Also, as you get closer to your thesis, pay attention to dates and deadlines! ❧

☙ Build relationships with your professors and with other graduate students. Do NOT wait until the end of the semester to begin writing term papers! And write a thesis. Writing my thesis has been the most challenging, stressful, and wonderfully rewarding experience of my life to date. I've learned so much about scholarship, writing, and (obviously) my subject from writing my thesis. But one more piece of advice on writing the thesis: it must be on a topic that genuinely interests you. Do it well. Take time. Produce something that you can be proud of. ❧

☙ Find a professor who cares about you and your interests and stick with them for the duration. ❧

☙ Have a plan. Stay on task. Write, write, and write some more. ❧

 

Is there a book you discovered in graduate school at Georgia Southern that had a particularly significant influence on you?

☙ Ernest Hemingway's Death in the Afternoon. ❧

☙ The entire year of poetry I took. McTeague. ❧

☙ The Norton Anthology of Literary Criticism. Also, Norton critical editions. I never realized how much they enhance your study of a text until they were used in graduate school. ❧

☙ Ulysses, Dubliners, The Norton Anthology of Criticism ❧

☙ Discovering the works of Jasper Griffin, particularly his The Mirror of Myth, had a considerable impact on me. Other notable discoveries include D. W. Robertson's A Preface to Chaucer, and Mason's To Homer through Pope. I couldn't imagine being without these texts now. ❧

☙ Every person in the program should have to read Joyce's Ulysses - it is good for the learning, and better for humbling. ❧

☙ While I don't believe there's a single book that stands out, I will say that I've become a bit of a Norton Critical junkie. ❧

☙ Ha! I discovered a little ballad by Matthew Gregory Lewis called "Oberon's Henchman." I immediately fell in love with it and researched almost every intricate detail for a year of my life. Now my thesis is hard-bound, sitting on my shelf, and I still love the poem. ❧

☙ The work I did here was unlike anything I'd experienced in the field of English before. In a class on the Romantics, I did a critical edition of a long-forgotten ballad (which I found through Google Books) that was instrumental in the completion of my thesis. This type of work enchanted me. I felt, for the first time, like a scholar, not just a student. When it came time to write my thesis, I knew I wanted to take it in this direction. I wanted to do some real digging through primary material. And I did. I'm still in awe over the magnitude of what I was able to produce for my thesis. Extensive notes and glosses, reading apparatus, a critical introduction, appendices to supplement the reading. My research was constantly inciting as I explored every detail. I'm not sure I would feel the same way about my work if it had been a traditional thesis. ❧

☙ Ulysses and Paradise Lost. Both are challenging works. Successfully reading them and writing about them under the supervision of learned faculty members was essential to building my confidence as a graduate student and in my academic development. Teach the tough stuff and keep the potboilers and fluff out of the classroom and in the bathroom where it belongs. I'll join a book group if I want to do light reading and discuss how a novel made me feel. ❧

☙ Realism, Naturalism, and Existentialism were all new ideas to me that were shared through some of the books that I came in contact with. ❧