I am not a writer. I am not an artist. And I am most certainly not a creative. In the ungodly hours of the morning, these were the things I whispered to myself when I was certain no one else could hear the scribble of my pencil on paper — desperately attempting to get my hands to work faster than the thoughts enveloping my brain. Poetry, short stories and creative nonfiction about the things I’ve experienced poured from the soft graphite onto the blue, spiral-bound notebook I kept next to my bed for the entirety of my high school years.
I have always loved to read and write. I’m told by my mother that I picked up my first book at 2. From then on, I never put another one down. My favorite academic activities were the 100-book challenges my school put on to get their students to read more, and by the time I graduated high school, I developed a close, first-name-basis relationship with the librarian — checking out so many books that I was beginning to run out of options. But my love for both reading and writing had manifested itself as more of a hobby than a potential career path.
Growing up, I primarily lived with my mother, an unmarried teacher who spent most of her time scraping by on the electrical bill and rent. The narrative that a position in the medical field would offer financial stability was enticing when all I ever wanted to do was to be able to provide for myself and my family. To be a humanities major is an immense privilege, that, to me, seemed reserved only for those whose families could afford to put them through a four-year degree and then cushion themselves in the case they became a “starving artist.” On top of that, I felt that in order to be a writer, you had to be exceptional; you couldn’t just do it. I had a story to tell, and a strong desire to tell others too, but I just felt, well, average.
Despite whatever doubt resided in my mind of my creative capabilities, I joined the publication class run by my longtime mentor and English teacher in my sophomore year of high school. I had every intention of simply taking photographs for the yearbook (I was going through a photography phase that I was sure would lead somewhere), but upon orientation in August, it was clear that I was bound to take a different path. The class had just taken on our school’s print newspaper, The Laker Anchor. My teacher, after some convincing, got me on the editorial team to take the newspaper from exclusively printed to fully online, and after a few months, I’d assumed the role of editor in chief. I was so deeply passionate about telling others’ stories and triumphs that I was ready to dive head first into the leadership tasks that this position would entail. While it was simply a small-town, student-led newspaper that covered club events and new teachers, The Laker Anchor became my metaphorical baby. I used my personal social media to push story releases and spent countless hours working on my own stories and editing everyone else’s.
Writing and editing news pieces and opinion editorials was a sort of outlet for me. I took primarily STEM-centered classes throughout high school, like AP Calculus and AP Psychology, with the fully intending to be pre-med in college; I even applied to the University of Michigan as a neuroscience major, but there was always a thought in the back of my head that I was wasting my time as a STEM student. When I got to college, though, the thought became unbearable. I pushed myself in the name of financial stability and a readily available, straightforward path to take to get to where I wanted to be, but I found myself attempting to escape the reality of chemistry and the looming threat of the MCAT by writing and reading at a higher rate than ever before. Writing and reading had always come more naturally to me than integrals or biological processes, but I asked myself if a career in English would be as lucrative as the one I would have as, say, a neuroscientist or pediatrician. I had no idea. I had a four-year plan and a list of medical schools to apply to upon graduation, but not a clue on what to do with a Bachelor of Arts.
I was miserable taking biology, chemistry and psychology. I found myself dreading lectures about the process of DNA replication, and I certainly didn’t care about methyl groups. The classes were more work than I’d anticipated, and I was running myself into the ground doing something I hated.
I joined The Michigan Daily as a Statement columnist in the second semester of my freshman year, and it felt like I could breathe again. But I still considered my love for journalism and writing just a hobby. It wasn’t until I met U-M alum Eli Rallo — who was, coincidentally, the author of my favorite book and one of my biggest inspirations — that I had a “come to Jesus” moment about the path I was taking. It wasn’t until I sat in the Michigan League one Friday night, listening to Rallo answer a question about how she came to the University of Michigan in pursuit of theatre but ended up being a journalist, that I realized I was making a big, fat, gigantic mistake. If Rallo could take a gamble on herself and switch career paths and end up as successful as she was, perhaps I could too. I thought back to the time I spent at The Laker Anchor and realized writing was never just a hobby, and I didn’t care if I wasn’t an amazing writer; I just wanted to write.
I walked out of the League with tears in my eyes and asked my friends, “Should I just say fuck it and major in English, guys?” They responded with an eager and slightly annoyed “Yes, Anna.” I had been talking about the possibility of switching majors for months now, so this wasn’t anything new to them. And it wasn’t that I thought I wouldn’t have support from my friends and family in the choice to major in English, it was that I wasn’t sure I was good enough for it — that I wasn’t a creative or a writer.
Throughout my adolescence, I thought that because I wasn’t cranking out books, poems and generally writing at all hours of the day, and I wasn’t necessarily the “tortured poet” the media makes writers out to be, that I couldn’t and shouldn’t pursue a career in English. The truth was, I had simply never entertained the possibility that the humanities led to perfectly fine and stable careers.
Liberal arts majors do just fine upon entrance to the workforce. “Liberal arts and humanities majors are more likely to enter careers where midcareer salaries are the highest,” Jim Chow wrote for Forbes. “While (liberal arts majors) do not create immediate pathways to high-paying first jobs, ‘they have long-run value in a wide variety of careers.’ ”
I declared an English major on Feb. 20, 2024 and bought myself a coffee from Starbucks to celebrate. I told my story to the English adviser I met with, and he was so through the roof that I left the meeting smiling and with an awesome new LSA English T-shirt. I’m not quite sure, in all honesty, where this will take me, or if I will eventually fit the “starving artist” profile, but I am thrilled to find out. I will live in a dingy, rat-infested New York City apartment if it means I am granted the ability to do what I love. I recognize that not every English lover has the privilege to pursue the humanities, but I can only hope that I live to see the day when writers and poets no longer push their love for the arts to the side in the namesake of financial stability. I am often still doubtful of myself and whatever god-given talent I may possess that urges me to write, but I know that I will continue to learn and grow into the writer I want to be; I’m slowly yet surely realizing that it’s okay to have no idea what success looks like as a writer or as a journalist. I often thought that success would look like an acceptance to medical school or landing a job at a high-profile hospital, but things changed. In the few short weeks that I have been an official English major, I find myself riddled with anticipatory excitement about the idea of not knowing what comes next.
I still keep the blue, spiral-bound notebook from my high school newspaper days in my college dorm. I still fill it with prose, poetry or whatever writings my mind seeks to put onto paper. I love the excitement and nervous butterflies I get when I pitch my story ideas at The Daily, and I am beyond enthusiastic to geek out over medieval literature and contemporary authors. Life is too short, and 9-to-5s are far too long to spend doing something you don’t absolutely adore, and frankly, I’m sick of telling myself that I’m not a writer. Even though I’m still just learning what it means to be a writer, and figuring out the way in which I want to make a name for myself, I do know that I want to encapsulate the world around me and put it into tangible words, feelings, and expressions. In his speech “The Artist’s Struggle for Integrity,” James Baldwin said, “The poets (by which I mean all artists) are finally the only people who know the truth about us. Soldiers don’t. Statesmen don’t. Priests don’t. Union leaders don’t. Only poets.” I will forever tell the truth about the world around me, and, damn it to hell, I am a writer.
Statement Columnist Anna McLean can be reached at agmclean@umich.edu.