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Academic Advising
Tammy Atha: "I Wanted to Read Old Victorian and British Literature"
Text Transcript
(In this video senior Tammy Atha, a double major in English [Literature; Creative Writing], talks about how she came to Miami and found her majors.)
"I started at Miami in Fall 2009, and when I came here I was undecided. I didn't know what I wanted to do; I really didn't have any clue or inkling, so I decided to sign up for Miami Plan classes to get them out of the way.
"When I was taking classes I knew that there were things I was interested in, and things I wasn't. I had an art history class; that was interesting; chemistry, not so much — so I knew I wasn't going to be a chemistry major. For me, coming to Miami was an experience in learning what was going to interest me and what I wanted to do, for really, the rest of my life.
"Although I didn't attend the Majors Fair myself, I wish I had because I didn't really know exactly what I wanted to do, so I had that kind of lost moment where you're taking these classes, you're not sure what it is you're going to do and everybody's asking you, 'what's your major, what's your major, what's your major?' 'I don't have one.'
"And it's kind of embarrassing but it's better in the long run to just go out into Miami and take your Miami Plan classes and take the classes that don't interest you, then you'll know for sure you don't want to do it. You'll take classes that surprise you and classes that you thought you'd never be interested in. I took an anthropology class — Intro to Anthropology 155 — and I thought there's no way I'm going to like this; this is going to be terrible. And then I ended up really liking it and I was this close to being an anthropology major.
"Then I ended up in British literature — British Lit 132 — and I just loved it and I knew that's what I wanted to do; I wanted to read old Victorian and British literature, which was kind of a weird moment to realize that. You've just got to get out there and explore, and find what's best for you, and I think the Majors Fair is great because you have this opportunity to talk to people and find what you're interested and find different venues and avenues to take because the experience is exactly what you make of it.
"I think a lot of times when I say I'm an English major, people have this preconceived notion that I'm not really going to have a job when I get out of here, and 'what are you going to do with that major in English?' To that I always say, 'I can't think of a situation where being an excellent reader and an excellent writer and communicator is a bad thing,' so that's why I'm an English major."
[January 2013]