English majors are a shady bunch. They lurk along the edges of a party, and when you least expect it – boom: an in depth discussion about metaphysical poetry written by clergymen which is all about sex.

Okay, maybe we only do that when we’re alone. But get more than one English major in a room, and invariably someone will bring up a book, which will cause us to talk about things that no one else cares about. We can kill a conversation by bringing up “the Romantics,” or by trying to compare recent works to ancient ones. And even if you try to change the subject, we will always manage to steer it back to literature.

Of course, this will probably make ordinary people want to avoid English majors, but again, shady. We hide in plain sight, and only the most observant of people will find us.

Since I am an English major, I thought I’d share a few key things to look for, if you’re trying to spot one of us in the wild.

  1. We carry more books around with us than necessary. When our backpacks gape open, one will catch site of whatever books are needed for that day’s classes (if we remember them), along with 1-3 books that are for research, for pleasure reading, or that just jumped into the bag because we can’t go a day without it. This can push our book total to between five and seven. It also doesn’t help that we add and remove books throughout the day, depending on who we run into.
  2. We’re constantly pushing books on unsuspecting victims. With more tenacity than a drug dealer, we will not stop until you agree to take it from us. We will then harass you every time you appear in our line of sight, asking how the book is going and whether or not you’re enjoying it. We won’t take no for an answer. And we will want that book back sometime before the next century, because the moment we hand the book over, we suddenly want to read it again.
  3. We mock all publications that aren’t up to our standards, but that won’t keep us from reading them. And we’ll be very vocal about it, to the exclusivity of all else. When we come in contact with a mocked publication, convention says that we must spend enough time mocking it to make it clear to all others around us that we’re right, and that they should see things the way we do.
  4. We have a not only a favorite genre of fiction, but also a favorite time period. For some, it’s the chivalric Romances of the middle ages, others Arthurian legends. There are then the Romantics—which is different from the Romances—who espouse love for the British poets, the Modernists of the early twentieth century, and the Post-Modernists of today. And we will find a book from within our “time period” to make our point, no matter what our point happens to be.
  5. English majors flock together. After all, it’s easier to have a conversation about literature with other people who have the same background of reading that you do. It’s not uncommon for us to be found in groups of two and three. And we’re quick to root out other English majors in a crowd because we’re interested in what other people have to say.

If you know someone who does more than one of the above points, they are or should be an English major, whether or not they know it. Many English majors start out in another field of study when they enter college. I was a Business major, one friend was a History major, and another a Bio major.

We didn’t switch because we thought English was easier. We switched because we couldn’t understand why we were studying something else. Poetry and stories call to us: each book read, each poem contemplated moves us further into the realm of the English Major.

And once we’re there, we don’t know how to be anything else.