I hate this sort of attitude...

[conuly]

Quick, distract me! I must not get sucked in! I MUST NOT GET SU- oh crap. *screams*

You failed me. *snifflesnifflesniffle*

Incidentally, I blame metaquotes for providing the link.

Comments

[cumaeansibyl.livejournal.com]

I'll be graduating with an English/creative writing major, so here's my perspective:

Writing classes are useful because they give you the opportunity to engage in regular critique and discussion of your work with people who are serious about writing (and therefore won't make fun of you for wanting to write), and you also get the feedback of a teacher who's been writing for decades, often professionally. These are good and useful things.

However, much of what you learn from such classes can be learned from reading anything and everything you can get your hands on and by practicing as much as possible. I do believe in the existence of natural talent, and if you don't have that all the practice in the world won't really help you. But if you do have talent, then the practice and the reading and the more practice will develop your talent to its fullest extent.

Of course, after I graduate with this creative writing major, I'll be heading straight into history, so... yeah. I think studying English is really only useful if you plan to teach English at some level, but then the same can be said of history or many of the other liberal arts. I'd also be careful to distinguish between English writing and English literature as majors; the two have very different goals.

[conuly]

But do you think that by not studying something inherantly useful you are somehow a bad bad person?

[cumaeansibyl.livejournal.com]

Not really. Should I?

I already know how to do "inherently useful" things anyway -- cooking, carpentry -- so I'm not worried.

[leora.livejournal.com]

That was my opinion too, until I had one really good English teacher who actually taught me clear, applicable things I could apply to my writing to improve it. It helped me a great deal.