My Milton Class

So school has started a new semester at UNLV. And I am starting to really worry about my major and if this is really what I want to be doing since it is getting close to crunch time. I only have one year of school left and its getting really late to change my mind. I am really starting to worry if it is right for me to be an English Major especially after my first day of my Milton class. The following is what I wrote in class on my first day as my professor droned on. My rationalization for writing this is I had to find some way to stay AWAKE during class. It was so hard AWAKE took dominance of ATTENTIVE. Sometimes that is just the way it goes.

My Milton Class 1/20/11

My Milton professor is the stereotypical boring professor. He is an aged, gray-haired, quiet, monotone, intelligent, talk-over-your-head, thinks he is funny, New York, lecturer. He talks, that's all there is, his soft, no inflection, voice for an hour and forty five minutes. There are no power points or visual aids to his lessons. You take notes on what he is saying and hope you heard him right the first time because that info will never be repeated until it randomly pops up on a test or paper. It will be a fight every class to pay attention to his soft-spoken ambient noises.
He does love his work and the subject matter, though. Milton is his literary god. But Milton is hard enough with his blank verse and anti-heroes and is only made worse by his inability to make things interesting.
I look around my classroom and I am scared. The shock of the English Major image hits me and I can not believe I am connected to this major. When I think English Major I think of a group of high intelligent, independent, individuals, ready to write about the woes of the world, to right the injustices, and personify the wrong doings. I see a group of united people, pens in hand, who will always be poor, but will always be liked, popular, and social. English Majors can go anywhere, talk to anyone, be and do everything. People and writers like Tolkien, Lewis, and Chaucer. That is what English Majors used to be and should be again. But the image has been hacked and mutated into a different thing.
Yes English Majors still write, but it is more to complain and whine. It is shallow, not well thought out, and self-focused. They are not well-dressed, social to anybody, or seemingly intelligent. They are grungy, clique-ish folk. I look around my class and see a boy with a bright purple triangled mohawk, other boys with scraggly unbrushed hair, dirty beanies abound through the classroom, girls with heavy eye make-up, and painted black nails on both genders. There are three large ladies who dot the class. One must be in her upper 40's, the other two have to be 50+. then there are those who walked into the class and head went straight to desk and they fell asleep. English Majors are not attentive knowledge seekers anymore. They have become the rejects, the outcasts, the anarchists.
They do not conform or talk to others who do not share their beliefs. They want to stand out but not for their brains, but for their looks. They have become a 'stick-it-to-the-man' type of group. The writings are dark, whiny, twists on mew dooms. And depression seems to be the only mood.
Come back scholar! Come those who want to learn and not because it might mean money later! Bring back the voices of the world and take away the wailings of the wild! Come back English Majors!

Yup so that's it. My thoughts during my first class of a new semester. Heaven help us all!