Dearest Sugar, Light of My Thursday Afternoons:
I teach a few creative writing courses at the University of Alabama where the majority of my students are seniors graduating in May.
Most of them are English and Creative Writing majors/minors who are feeling a great deal of dread and anxiety about their expulsion from academia and their entry into “the real world.” Many of their friends in other disciplines have already lined up post-graduate jobs, and many of my students are tired of the “being an English major prepares you for law school” comments being made by friends and family alike, who are pressuring them towards a career in law despite having little or no interest in it.
I have been reading a handful of your columns to my students in an attempt to pep them up and let them know that everything is going to be all right. They have written like motherfuckers. They have pictured the kittens behind the sheetrock.
Our school has decided to forgo a graduation speaker for the last five years or so, and even when we did have a graduation speaker, often they were leaders in business or former athletes, and so their message was lost on the ears of the majority of 21- and 22-year-olds. So Sugar, I am cordially asking you to deliver a graduation speech for our little class of writers. While we might have difficulty obtaining you an honorary PhD, believe me when I say that among us are some extremely talented writers, bakers, musicians, editors, designers, and video game players who will gladly write you a lyric essay, bake you a pie, write you a song, and perform countless other acts of kindness in exchange for your advice.
Fondly,
Cupcake & Team 408
Dear Cupcake &Team 408,
There’s a line by the Italian writer Carlo Levi that I think is apt here: “The future has an ancient heart.” I love it because it expresses with such grace and economy what is certainly true—that who we become is born of who we most primitively are; that we both know and cannot possibly know what it is we’ve yet to make manifest in our lives. I think it’s a useful sentiment for you to reflect upon now, sweet peas, at this moment when the future likely feels the opposite of ancient, when instead it feels like a Lamborghini that’s pulled up to the curb while every voice around demands you get in and drive.
I’m here to tell you it’s okay to travel by foot. In fact, I recommend it. There is so much ahead that’s worth seeing; so much behind you can’t identify at top speed. Your teacher is correct: You’re going to be all right. And you’re going to be all right not because you majored in English or didn’t and not because you plan to apply to law school or don’t, but because all right is almost always where we eventually land, even if we fuck up entirely along the way.
I know. I fucked up some things. I was an English major too. As it happens, I lied for six years about having an English degree, though I didn’t exactly mean to lie. I had in truth gone to college and participated in a graduation ceremony. I’d walked across the stage and collected a paper baton. On that paper it said a bachelor’s degree would be mine once I finished one final class. It seemed like such an easy thing to do, but it wasn’t. And so I didn’t do it and the years slipped past, each one making it seem more unlikely that I’d ever get my degree. I’d done all the coursework except that one class. I’d gotten good grades. To claim that I had an English degree was truer than not, I told myself. But that didn’t make it true.
You have to do what you have to do. You can’t go to law school if you don’t have any interest in being a lawyer. You can’t take a class if taking a class feels like it’s going to kill you. Faking it never works. If you don’t believe me, read Richard Wright. Read Charlotte Brontë. Read Joy Harjo. Read William Trevor. Read the entire Western canon. Or just close your eyes and remember everything you already know. Let whatever mysterious starlight that guided you this far, guide you onward into whatever crazy beauty awaits. Trust that all you learned during your college years was worth learning, no matter what answer you have or do not have about what use it is. Know that all those stories and poems and plays and novels are a part of you now and that they are bigger than you and they will always be.
I was a waitress during most of the years that I didn’t have my English degree. My mother had been a waitress for many of the years that she was raising my siblings and me. She loved to read. She always wanted to go to college. One time she took a night class when I was very young and my father became enraged with her and cut her textbook into tiny pieces with a pair of scissors. She dropped the class. I think it was Biology.
You don’t have to get a job that makes others feel comfortable about what they perceive as your success. You don’t have to explain what you plan to do with your life. You don’t have to justify your education by demonstrating its financial rewards. You don’t have to maintain an impeccable credit score. Anyone who expects you to do any of those things has no sense of history or economics or science or the arts.
You have to pay your own electric bill. You have to be kind. You have to give it all you got. You have to find people who love you truly and love them back with the same truth.
But that’s all.
I got married when I was in college. I got divorced during the years that I was lying about having an English degree. When I met the man to whom I am now married he said, “You know, I really think you should finish your degree, not because I want you to, but I can tell that you want to.” I thought he was sort of being an asshole. We didn’t bring up the subject again for a year.
I understand what you’re afraid of, sweet peas. I understand what your parents fear. There are practical concerns. One needs money to live. And then there is a deep longing to feel legitimate in the world, to feel that others hold us in regard. I felt intermittently ashamed during my years as a waitress. I’m the only one of my siblings who went to college. I was supposed to be the one who “made it.” At times it seemed instead I had squandered my education and dishonored my dead mother by becoming a waitress like her. Sometimes I would think of this as I went from table to table with my tray and I’d have to think of something else so I wouldn’t cry.
Years after I no longer worked at the last restaurant where I waited tables, my first novel was published. The man who’d been my manager at the restaurant read about me in the newspaper and came to my reading. He’d been a pretty awful boss—in fact, at times I’d despised him—but I was touched to see him in the bookstore that night. “All those years ago, who would have ever guessed we’d be here celebrating the publication of your novel?” he asked when we embraced.
“I would have,” I replied.
And it was true. I always would have guessed it, even all the time that I feared it would never happen. Being there that night was the meaning of my life. Getting there had been my every intention. When I say you don’t have to explain what you’re going to do with your life I’m not suggesting you lounge around whining about how difficult it is. I’m suggesting you apply yourself with some serious motherfuck-i-tude in directions for which we have no accurate measurement. I’m talking about work. And love.
It’s really condescending to tell you how young you are. It’s even inaccurate. Some of you who are graduating from college are not young. Some of you are older than me. But to those of you new college graduates who are indeed young, the old new college graduates will back me up on this: you are so god damned young. Which means about eight of the ten things you have decided about yourself will over time prove to be false. The other two things will prove to be so true that you’ll look back in twenty years and howl.
My mother was young too, but not like those of you who are so god damned young. She was forty when she finally went to college. She spent the last years of her life as a college student, though she didn’t know they were her last years. She thought she was at the beginning of the next era of her life. She died a couple of months before we were both supposed to graduate from different schools. At her memorial service, my mother’s favorite professor stood up and granted her a PhD.
The most terrible and beautiful and interesting things happen in a life. For some of you, those things have already happened. Whatever happens to you belongs to you. Make it yours. Feed it to yourself even if it feels impossible to swallow. Let it nurture you, because it will.
I have learned this over and over and over again.
There came a day when I decided to stop lying. I called the college from which I did not have an English degree and asked the woman who answered the phone what I needed to do to get one. She told me I had only to take one class. It could be any class. I chose Latin. I’d never studied Latin, but I wanted to know, at last, where so many of our words come from. I had a romantic idea of what it would be like to study Latin—the Romance languages are, after all, descended from it—but it wasn’t romantic. It was a lot of confusion and memorization and attempting to decipher bizarre stories about soldiers marching around ancient lands. In spite of my best efforts, I got a B.
One thing I never forgot from my Latin class is that a language that is descended from another language is called a daughter language.
It was the beginning of the next era of my life, like this is of yours.
Years after I no longer lived in the state where my mother and I went to college , my first novel was published and I traveled to that state to give a reading. Just as my former awful boss had done in a different city mere weeks before, the professor who’d granted my mother a PhD at her memorial service read about me in the newspaper and came to the bookstore to hear me read. “All those years ago, who would have ever guessed we’d be here celebrating the publication of your novel?” she asked when we embraced.
“Not me,” I replied. “Not me.”
And it was true. I meant it as sincerely as I’d meant that I always would’ve guessed it when I’d been speaking to my boss. That both things could be true at once—my disbelief as well as my certainty—was the unification of the ancient and the future parts of me. It was everything I intended and yet still I was surprised by what I got.
I hope you will be surprised and knowing at once. I hope you’ll always have love. I hope you’ll have days of ease and a good sense of humor. I hope one of you really will bake me a pie (banana cream, please). I hope when people ask what you’re going to do with your English and/or creative writing degree you’ll say: Continue my bookish examination of the contradictions and complexities of human motivation and desire; or maybe just: Carry it with me, as I do everything that matters. And then smile very serenely until they say oh.
Yours,
Sugar
80 responses
Yes yes yes a thousand times! Sugar, you are superhuman.
So much love for you. Thank you.
I am inspired, Sugar. Thank you for this.
I always sigh when I read one of your columns. You know. You absolutely know how it is. I always shed a tear when I read one of your columns. The posthumous PhD made me reach for the tissue.
You’re so young and so wise.
I needed to hear that Sugar. I DONT need to get a job that makes others comfortable. That is going on our family blackboard. My girls need to hear that too. Again, thanks.
Oh Sugar, how you BRING IT. I went to art school so many years ago, and I have never regretted it, even though I am not a proper artist. But just now, today, I registered for 3 of my 4 classes toward my creative writing MFA. At almost 38! I never would have guessed, and still I guess I’ve always known.
Thank you for making today even better; for saying the things that I feel, very eloquently; and for reminding us all to carry everything that matters with us, always.
Okay, this one made me cry.
Thank you. Again, you made me cry, but it probably needed to come out soon anyway. This one hit so close to home for me, cause even though I’m a few years out of college, not just graduating, I still feel a little lost. I’m finding my way, though. So, thank you again.
“I hope when people ask what you’re going to do with your English and/or creative writing degree you’ll say: Continue my bookish examination of the contradictions and complexities of human motivation and desire; or maybe just: Carry it with me, as I do everything that matters. And then smile very serenely until they say oh.”
Where WERE you when I was in college? I approximated these answers so many many times, but couldn’t convey this, the real meaning of my degree.
New English grads – There’s no test from here as to whether you’re doing enough with your degree in English, but if there were, it would be pretty short. Are you still speaking it? Still reading it? Still writing it? Still questioning, analyzing, luxuriating in words? Congrats, you passed! Good luck continuing to find your place in the world. It’s a little harder for us liberal artists, but a little easier too, because we have so much company.
I too majored in English, and I understand what these recent college grads are going through (as a 2010 grad myself!). It is tough when people ask “what are you going to do with English?”, but I always thought back to the fact that I definitely enjoyed my education, much more than I would have had I been sitting in Statistics or Chemistry classes. I spent four years learning how to analyze, constructively criticize, internalize, connect, and create. Just a year after graduating, I can tell you that I’m doing just fine. It really all does work out. I have a good job and I “continue my bookish examination of the contradictions and complexities of human motivation and desire” almost everyday. 🙂
Why is everything you write the best thing I read each week? There’s some voodoo magic in the Dear Sugar page.
Great advice. I have so many degrees I forget them all sometimes, but the result of all of that work is the value I carry around in my skin every day. This is what these young people will have for the rest of their lives, in addition to the wonderful and inspirational advice you have given. KICK ASS.
Sugar, again, I love you.
Cupcake here. Not only am I incredibly thankful for Sugar’s response and care she took in talking to my students, but her timing couldn’t have been better. The University of Alabama is in Tuscaloosa, which as you know has been slowly rebuilding since last week’s storms. A lot of these students lost their homes, possessions, and their fellow classmates. The seniors were also robbed of the end of their college career; all classes were canceled and they were told to vacate the city. I feel awful for them in this regard–graduating college is a big emotional moment and now has been saddled with this tragedy. Many of them will not be able to walk as graduation has been postponed until the end of the summer and a lot of them will be busy with their new stage of their life. So, this letter takes on an even larger importance considering the circumstances, and for that, I am eternally grateful for Sugar’s words, and I am also thankful to all of those in our writing/reading community on The Rumpus & elsewhere for their kind thoughts and generosity.
Thank you. A thousand times, thank you.
I’m one of those “so god damned young” recent college graduates. I just graduated in December of 2010 and now I have to confront the “what are you going to do with your life” questions. I just moved across the country to a relatively unfamiliar city far away from my family, who I love more than anything. It’s been tough, to say the least. This column had me crying but in a way that made me feel so much better about everything. Thank you, Sugar.
Lovely
“Carry it with me, as I do everything that matters.” I needed this a couple of days ago when someone asked me that very question. Thank you for fixing the next time I’m asked what I’ll do with my degree.
…but I’m gonna call up that college from which I don’t have my creative writing degree and find out how to finish it. Thanks, Sugar.
I am SO thankful that instead of having to brave the elements to climb some impossible Asian peak to reach a tiny temple to receive these priceless pearls of wisdom from a recluse sage, it is delivered into my inbox every Thursday. In my book you are kicking Confucius’ ass and giving some major religious texts a serious run for their money. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.
I have a BA degree in History of Religion, a MA degree in History of Decorative Arts & Design, and am 2/3 of the way through a second MA degree in Architecture. I say this not to parade around a bunch of academic qualifications, but as proof of my own complicated, non-linear journey through higher education (and maybe also proof of my own issues with believing that a credential could magically bestow something upon me that I lack.)
I have been asked many, many times (and I sometimes ask myself) what I planned to “do” with this weird, motley grab-bag of book learnin’. I haven’t always known how to answer that question. But now I know what I’m going to “do.” I’m going to keep trying to be a decent human, and I’m going to tell anyone who asks that I’m planning on “carrying it with me, as I do everything that matters.”
Thanks, Sugar.
Thanks for giving hope to a soon-to-be college grad. 🙂
@Still a student
Well put.
I might just make you a pie for the heck of it. Thank you.
Just so you know, Sugar, just to be clear, you’re pretty good at this… 😉
Thank you again, Sugar. Thank you for everything you have said and everything you will ever say.
The question of what we’re going to “do” with a degree can be a ridiculous one. It’s like asking, “What are you going to do with that heart-to-heart talk you had with your sister?” or “What are you going to do with that time you spent paddling in a creek?” Academic learning (and other forms too) is about so much more than just job preparation. And the question of what we’ll devote our attention and energy toward is something many people will revisit many times over the years. Changing directions or taking on new adventures is part of what makes life interesting and fun.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
And perhaps there’s a way to get some homemade pies to Brian Cupcake and the students at Alabama? So sorry for what you guys are going through.
And Sugar, if we were to make you a banana cream pie, who would be an intermediary who could be trusted to get it to you? Or be trusted not to eat it until you could pick it up? I’m serious.
Thank you again Sugar. I graduated with a BA in English and Drama in 2004 and still don’t know what I want to do with my life. People used to always ask me if I was going to be a teacher, as if studying English only trained you for that particular job. I’ve had many jobs before and after my degree. I’m currently working in a bookshop with some of the most amazing people I’ve ever met, who all love books as much as I do. Sometimes I feel embarrassed or ashamed that I spent 3 years getting a degree just to work in a shop and I sometimes feel my family think I should get a ‘proper job’. Maybe they’re right, but I know that any job that doesn’t involve books just wouldn’t do it for me so at least for now I’m happy where I am. Thank you for your wise words, as always, Sugar.
I’m 34 years old with a wife about to give birth to our first child. Most of my friends own many bedroom homes and fancy cars. I own none of these things.
I’m 34 years old and the most expensive thing I’ve ever bought is a plane ticket.
When I finished school I knew I wanted to be a writer. “Get some crappy job and write,” is how I put it to the three people interested. So I graduated and traveled the world, lived in Asia for five years. I lived. Fuck me, I lived. And now after attempting twice to write a novel and failing twice on my ass, I’m back on that horse.
From the rented apartment that is our home, that is soon to be a home for three, I wake each morning to sweat and struggle and just almost often enough get high off the fact that I’m actually living my dream, he says without a car to speak of or a great literary success to dangle in front of the world.
By foot it’s a slow climb, but you know, I wouldn’t trade it for all the Lamborghinis in Monte Carlo.
Wonderful, Sugar! Thank you!
I have to stop reading these on my lunch breaks. *wipes tear*
Dear new graduates with degrees whose use is not immediately apparent: do not go to law school unless you have really thought about it. I took my psychology BA and tried to turn it into something useful that way six years ago, and while I learned and grew and became a different person, there were many practical considerations (like the fact that I did not have a spare hundred grand) that I handwaved in my effort to find myself. You can find yourself in community theater or a local writer’s group or a series of depressing but eye-opening jobs, and none of them leave you with a second rent to pay every month afterward. Also, if you think it’s hard to justify a liberal arts BA or BFA to your loved ones, imagine trying to justify an unused JD. And finally, law school has fewer starry-eyed idealists who love to debate constitutional law than you’d think — most of them are people who want to make money and/or go into the family business, and you will not be recreating your philosophical undergrad days with them.
That said, whatever you choose to do may feel like a mistake at the time, or a mistake in retrospect, and there’s no good answer to what to do when you’re graduating into what seems like a blank wall. I have had a hard eight years myself, and am looking into more dim future. I think the only thing you can do is regard your life as a forge that is forming whoever you turn out to be.
Thank you so much. The person who asked the question is my teacher and I was in his 408 class. This gives me hope that I don’t have to justify myself to my family or friends because I love what I do and I know that I will succeed in life. Again.. thank you so much for this.
Dear Brian,
I am terribly sorry to hear that the very students I addressed in my column this week have suffered so. As you know, you sent me this letter some time ago; as soon as I got it I knew I wanted to publish it around graduation time. It is a mere coincidence that I answered your letter this week, in the wake of the terrible loss and destruction your school has faced. When I wrote it I wasn’t fully aware of what you’ve all been through. I hope you will post here about anything I or The Rumpus community can do to help you all in this difficult time. I thank you (and all of those who’ve posted comments) for your kind words about my column.
Love,
Sugar
And by the way, I really do love pie. Arrangements for future deliveries could be made. But I think y’all in Alabama need me to make you a pie far more than you should worry about making one for me.
I’m in school even though I’m much older than my classmates. When I was their age, I couldn’t be doing what I’m doing. I had to fight too many demons first. But I fought them, and I’m here now, sober, sane, and stronger for all of it.
Thank you, Sugar. I will face school with some serious motherfuck-i-tude. Thank you.
I’m going to read this to my students. Thank you.
Thank you, Cupcake/Brian. Thank you, Sugar.
I was never B’s student but I am graduating in English/Creative Writing. Or maybe I have graduated. It’s going to be this nebulous thing until August, and still then I won’t know when it happened. Everything is thrown into upheaval, and I am one for closure. I am one for all the “last”s–most of which I didn’t know I was having, didn’t appreciate for what they were. For all the ceremony, the parties, the final goodbyes, the tears that you expect will come. And now I don’t know when they’re coming. I don’t know how to think of myself, having work postponed and due in June but being congratulated on my graduation. It’s that feeling of almost having a degree, although–unlike Sugar–I will only have to wait a few months before it will be absolutely true.
For over a week my head has been a mess of too many things to think about, of agony over being pulled away from Tuscaloosa and not being able to volunteer, of a guilty relief that I don’t have to be there anymore. I haven’t been able to write. I’m looking for something less nebulous than these abrupt endings. But there are no do-overs. I have to take this as mine and go with it. Sugar writes, “Whatever happens to you belongs to you. Make it yours.”
From the bottom of my heart, Sugar–thank you.
To the new grads, I’d say this: I spent twenty years after college running around being angry with the world and trying to change it to fit my preferences. To be frank, it wasn’t wise. What the world needs in people who love what they are doing, baking, parenting or writing. That is one hell of a contribution to make to your self, those you love and to the world. Don’t use up your time blaming anyone for anything. We all have our odd, wild reasons for doing what we do, mostly in default because we don’t know how to do anything else. Yes we fuck up , learn a lot and howl later. The fuck ups aren’t optional. But neither is your glory. So let it shine! Enjoy the ride and hang on to your hat!
Wonderful column. It’s strange to look back on one’s career, choices, successes and failures. I went to nursing school, primarily because it was practical. But what I wanted was to be a writer, and (ahem) a fashion designer- both very “impractical”. And the two career aims don’t really go together. But now in mid life, I’m trying to make one of those happen – and I love both of them. And I have grown children, and a garden…so much to love. Graduation is a strange time full of expectations, but little actual delivery. Delivery happens in the every day choices, and we become what we must become.
Oh Sugar!
My great grandmother left me thinking that those white caps the sea brings rolling in are sugar topped. Over the years I’ve tasted the sea, wetting my finger in the waves over and over again, tasting salt. I grew anxious, even felt at times dejected, but what rose the surface always resembled inspiration, and I became ever more determined to taste that Sugar. Now, more salt than pepper in my hat, I can call an end to the search.
I’ll just leave the beacons running. You satisfy a deep need. Thank you.
I have a feeling this is going to be one of those columns that everyone feels is amazingly timely and perfect advice, just for them, right now.
“You have to pay your own electric bill. You have to be kind. You have to give it all you got. You have to find people who love you truly and love them back with the same truth.
But that’s all.”
I think I’ll put this on my fridge. Love as always, Sugar.
You all have done some amazing work for Tuscaloosa–many thanks. I’m assembling an eBook of Tuscaloosa Writers writing about Tuscaloosa that will be out after this weekend and I will make sure to spread the word. We will certainly accept all pies. You’ve made a lot of us down here smile today, and so we’ll be holding on to that and carrying that with us.
Carry it with me, as I do everything that matters.
This. Thisthisthis. I needed this.
Thank you for yet another beautiful batch of words.
I’ve posted this above my desk and called it manifesto.
Right on. Couldn’t have said it any better (and proud to be an English major 20 years ago this spring)!
This could not have come at a better time. I, too, faked my graduation – it’s so easy, and it must happen all the time. I walked down the aisle knowing I hadn’t passed my Concepts of Chemistry online class because I had abandoned it mid-semester as being too much of a hassle. I had the party, sent out the invites, and then headed off to Spain. I should have been done with college, but I wasn’t. I had to move back to my university town and attempt to pass just one class. It didn’t work for two years – I kept self-combusting on the academic front even as I felt so tethered and stuck in a town I should have left years ago. I started my other job during this time – teaching. It’s ironic to say that I’ve been teaching for 7 years now, even as I had a crazy, complicated relationship with academia. I think it’s actually made me better as a teacher, because I understand when students make mistakes and have to face failure.
Knowing all that, it took a ton of processing and gumption to apply for graduate school last fall. All these years I felt unsuccessful about school even as I held great responsibility and loved my students. Now this fall I am going to a great MFA program, which part of me can still not fully believe. After making all those mistakes, I get to try again. What’s more, now I have all kinds of world experience. I have something to write about. Most importantly, I know that I really want to write – that the urge is not going to go away, and that after all these years of avoidance I am embracing my ancient past. This column helps me feel less intimidated to go back to school and be among people who had a more traditional education. It’s not a competition. It’s about loving yourself.
Dear Sugar, Want you to know that you always inspire me, but this column in particular inspired me to do something I’ve been terrified of doing. Thank you.
This is the speech I wish I got when I graduated with my English degree in 2006. I’ve felt like a failure ever since the night before graduation, when I cried and cried because I realized I had no further plans, no idea what to do, and nobody to tell me how to be a success. I blamed myself, I blamed the public school system of America, and I blamed the myth that urges people to go to college straight out of high school, despite the cost and despite not knowing what to do when we get there.
I tried to stop feeling like a failure by going to graduate school, where I earned an MA in…you guessed it…English Literature. Then, the night before graduation, I cried and cried again, for all the same reasons. I had not figured anything else out, I’d just delayed the inevitable.
I’ve felt pretty much like a failure all the way up until today. I’m not sure how to properly thank you for changing my perspective, but, you did, and for that, I’ll be grateful for a very long time.
Wonderful essay. So well said. Substitute “English degree” for “Theatre degree” and “waitressing” with “working in a bookshop” and you have the story of my life. I also took far, far too long to get my degree… and yet, had I popped out of college in a mere four years, with a business degree, or “something practical” I think of how much living I would have missed. I wouldn’t have traveled to England and to China with a theatre troupe, wouldn’t have ended up working behind-the-scenes on Hollywood television sets, wouldn’t have met half the interesting, funny, zany people that I know.
I loved this line: “There is a deep longing to feel legitimate in the world, to feel that others hold us in regard.”
So true, so true.
And this too, of course: “Carry it with me, as I do everything that matters.”
Thank you, thank you, for providing the perfect answer to the next well-meaning but boorish stranger who questions ones education.
I think I’ve cried at every one of your columns that I have read. Some part of me is deeply touched by something, every time. I feel compelled to express myself and reach out with my writing but have difficulty getting out of my own way. I want you to know how inspired I feel by your words and your heart to keep on trying.
Oh Sugar – I want to meet you someday, even if it’s not until heaven so I can give you a huge hug (if you don’t mind) and say thank you! Your column heals wounds every time I read it. Even though I’m an English professor myself, I still feel the sting of “what are you going to do with that?” and “has it all really been worth it?” And I see the abject fear in my students’ eyes every time some thoughtless soul asks the same question of them. Thank you so much! My students know they need to pay the bills. They also know that first and foremost they have to be human, real honest humans, not fake “normal” people. And they are so overwhelmed by the fear that they can’t do both at once, or that they aren’t really valuable people because they aren’t “normal.” And they fear the lights going off, the cupboard being bare, the landlord kicking them out, and not without reason. So thank you for telling us these truths again, that we can be real humans and pay the bills, that the value of education is first and foremost the education itself, and that it will actually be okay. Thank you.
I teach high school English. Yesterday I found out one of my students had scabies. Today I sat in a room of high school freshmen who could not tell me what the word ‘contraception’ meant. After school I talked with a tearful mother whose son is doing much better now that his depression medication has been regulated. I walked out of the building and said, “I don’t have anything left to give.”
I know you are a writer, but I hope you also think of yourself as a teacher. Candor. Honesty. Love. Pouring your heart into the blackness when you cannot see the light. That’s what it means to be beautifully human. I can tell from your writing that you are a great teacher because you are a great human being.
Thanks for reminding me that I love being a human too, that life isn’t all roses and that compassion can move mountains.
Lizzie
My undergrad was in Philosophy. When anyone asked me why, I said: so I could think better.
Sugar- I’m graduating in less than a week with a BA in English and you cannot know how much I needed this. Thank you so very much. I’ll carry this with me, as I do everything that matters.
I loved this column. As someone who graduated with an English degree more than a few years ago (but less than several) and had a lot of pressure to go to law school – I can only say, don’t go if you’re not sure! Of course after doing two other careers, I will be going next year because it IS what I want to do, but only now, after everything else and after developing a real social conscious through my previous career. Ironically, I am now dealing with pressure from everyone around me telling me it is a horrible idea (see: all those recent nytimes articles). Le sigh! I guess people who are dissapointed in other people will always be dissapointed in YOU whatever YOU do (or whoever YOU are). Thanks for the great column each week.
I most certainly have moments where my eyes brim up with tears of frustration as I walk between tables at work, or when I’m rolling cutlery, or staring vacantly at someone repeating myself for seemingly the millionth time about something trivial. And all the while I’m wondering where my liberal arts degree has brought me.
My great great grandfather told my dad that even if you never use it the way you’d intended to, any education always makes you a better person. Not a superior person – not a better person compared to others – but better for your own self.
I think your column really helped to remind me of these things. And reminded me to have patience towards being all right.
Kerouac closes chapter one of On the Road with words that still sing to me thirty years after I first read them:
“Although my aunt warned me that he would get me in trouble, I could hear a new call and see a new horizon… I was a young writer and I wanted to take off. Somewhere along the line I knew there’d be girls, visions, everything; somewhere along the line the pearl would be handed to me.”
Follow that new call and the new horizon. The pearls abound but only for those who take that path.
Or don’t.
If the call is genuine, it will come back to get you sooner or later. The later it comes, the more you’ll have at stake, the more you’ll have to lose.
And if it doesn’t come back, maybe it was never there in the first place.
“You have to give it all you got. You have to find people who love you truly and love them back with the same truth.”
Mmmmmmmwah.
O snail
Climb Mount Fuji,
But slowly, slowly!
Sugar, you rock my world. You move my soul. Shine on, shine on. This is so bloody good.
Can some one tell me why attending law school robs a person of any creative legitimacy/credibility. As a former theatre major graduating this week with a J.D., I’m curious to know. With that said, great article.
“I was a waitress during most of the years that I didn’t have my English degree. My mother had been a waitress for many of the years that she was raising my siblings and me. She loved to read. She always wanted to go to college. One time she took a night class when I was very young and my father became enraged with her and cut her textbook into tiny pieces with a pair of scissors. She dropped the class. I think it was Biology.”
Just wanted to let you know I cried at this part.
@Eric — don’t take it personally! I believe law school is here used as a stand-in for the polar opposite of entering an MFA program. Both are expensive but law focuses on analysis, not creativity, and most law school grads have much higher and immediate earning potential than MFA grads. That is, law school pays off. Of course, this doesn’t mean lawyers as a class are devoid of creativity — just look at John Woo.
I cried so much while reading this. I am in the exact same position as you were. I went to my graduation – almost got a speeding ticket on the way – and got pictures and everything. My sick grandmother came. My divorced parents came. I was supposed to be the first granddaughter to graduate, so I had a lot of pressure on my shoulders. A couple months later, I received a letter from my university stating that I had not sufficiently passed one class (I made a D instead of a C) and I would have to retake it. That’s it. No degree, no nothing.
I’ve been worrying about this situation for the past year. Neither of my parents went to college and this was a big deal to them. My father still thinks I graduated. I know that if he were to find out, he’d subject me to a lecture about how I wasn’t responsible enough. Then he and my mother would both pressure me into going back. Right now, I can’t even look at school. I can’t afford to take that one class, and, honestly I’m so disgusted by the whole thing that I can’t bring myself to go.
I feel I have already earned my Bachelors, but I don’t have the paper proving it. What have I learned? Can what I learned be shown on a paper? No. The paper proof shows that I was a fair student, but how my struggles as a first generation college student working two jobs to keep food on my table and gas in my car taught me responsibility, how taking classes over and over because I just can’t seem to understand the material taught me discipline, and finally, how I read both “classic” works alongside “popular” works has taught me to see. This is what I learned in my 8 years’ battle for a Bachelors, and no one can take that from me even if I don’t have a sheet of paper proving it all.
I found this today, It will go in my son’s high school graduation card. I only found you a month ago through The Sun. I am smitten. Your letters are a gift. Blessings
Even as a graduate who majors in something ‘marketable,’ the road is really unclear. I went through undergrad convinced I was going to apply to med school this summer. I changed my mind spring break of my senior year. People asked me why (grades? MCAT? no, both good), but in the end, I just know it’s not the profession I thought it was four years ago. There is something stagnant and conservative about medicine that I find I can’t get over. Your letter helps remind me that changing what you want and following your instinct is not failing, even though I often felt that way at the ultra-competitive school I attended. I would also like to say that the first opening quote moved me to a place I haven’t been in a long time. Not doing something I dreamed of *right now* doesn’t mean changing my mind or giving up what I love. I’m glad awesome people like you are out there to remind us really god damned young ones that the life we will enjoy has already taken root inside of us. It’s there, and being impatient, I want to see my future success now. But I’ll take time, cook, and host brunches for my friends.
“You don’t have to get a job that makes others feel comfortable about what they perceive as your success. You don’t have to explain what you plan to do with your life. You don’t have to justify your education by demonstrating its financial rewards.”
Thank you, thank you for validating everything I’ve been trying to figure out in the last few months. I did an English degree also, and the natural progression seemed to go on to an Editing diploma, as the world of publishing seemed so glamorous and exciting. Well, months after finishing that course and I still wasn’t applying for new jobs as publishing house minion and failing to find a reason to justify this to my mother’s ever-insistent questions.
It took a pretty bad anxiety attack to make me realise that I didn’t want to work in that world, it just wasn’t me. And trying so hard to want it or fit into it because that kind of glamorous career is what people expected or whatever seemed suddenly stupid.
I’m still interested in doing editing work, but em excited by the idea of finding my own freelance path, while also doing other things that I enjoy, like maybe working part time in a library. This kind of composite career would not even have occurred to me before.
Thanks for succinctly putting all of this into lovely words. I just wish I’d heard them at my own graduation. Though I’d probably have been too damn young to really understand.
“Continue my bookish examination of the contradictions and complexities of human motivation and desire; or maybe just: Carry it with me, as I do everything that matters. And then smile very serenely until they say oh.”
So much love. So much. <3 .
While I appreciate sincerely your undying optimism and desire to reassure all of us, I must remind everyone that this article passes over the subject of reality. For some of us, everything is NOT going to be alright. Facing eviction because I cannot find a job in which I am able use my Creative Writing degree and make a decent living isn’t something that can be considered optimistic. Like you said about law school, I am exasperated with people asking me if I am going to be a teacher. My preferred response is always an abrupt “No.” When people find out I’m a writer, they simply look at me with a blank stare on their faces before they manage “Oh. Well what do you plan to do then?” In doing so blatantly implying that I must quickly figure out a plan B because I will never succeed in life with my chosen degree. I spent almost 2 years struggling to find a job that could lead to a career, before finally settling for pursuing secretarial work. Even then, I cannot tell you how many times people told me during interviews that I was overqualified for the job and suggested I look elsewhere for better work. My father’s greatest fear was that I would become a professional waitress, despite having the degree I worked so hard to obtain. Unfortunately his fear has been validated.
When a person is 60 years old, of course they can look back at being 26 and claim “Man I was so young back then!” In most cases I believe people are referring to their bodies and the agility they used to posses, rather than exclaiming over the excitement that the world was at their feet. Emily Bronte’s world was far different from the world we live in today. Being “young” doesn’t equal being successful and does not put food on the table for your family. We do not have time to wait until we are middle aged to achieve our goals we have secretly been carrying around for the last 20 or 30 years. I must agree with your comment about telling someone how young they are is not only condescending, but at times can be insulting as well. At your age it is so easy for you to carry optimism and hope for our generation, but you will never truly understand what it is like for us trying to make our way in this day and age. Your wonderful achievement of publishing a novel is a rare one and not something a great majority of us will ever experience. How do you think the term “starving artist” was coined? A great deal of optimism is born out of hindsight. Again thank you for your words of encouragement and I truly hope others out there like me who hold a Creative Writing degree will find satisfaction and success in their lives.
You are phenomenal. As a student about to enter her first year of college in a Creative Writing program, I’d just like to say thank you for instilling this optimism. I shall carry it with me as I move across the country this week, feeling all the well braver because of it.
Shit. Now I have no excuse – I have to get another degree, a non-nursing degree, even though it has nothing at all to do with my associate degree in nursing. I don’t know yet what other degree that will be, but I know it’s not nursing. Maybe philosophy, or sociology, or maybe even English.
Sugar, I know I’m not the first, nor will I be the last who says you have this unique way of ripping my heart out and cuddling it at the same time. Thank you for pouring out your emotions and your experience all the while being a work in progress.
Wow. Shine on.
I recently graduated with an English degree, so this was very inspiring to read. Thank you.
The commencement speech we/all/you/yours should/can have had.
@BREANNE VANDER PLUYM: I wholeheartedly agree that you’ve learned more than most. I also believe you will have “proof” one day. I’m 44 and exactly 2 classes from my first degree. It’s not even my BA just an AA…(and going on 3 years.) It’s been a struggle, but just like you, I’ve learned more from my struggles and I’m okay with that! I will be struggling for a while because I’m not giving up the fight this time and I WILL have my Bachelor’s just as I’m sure you will, too!
Just stumbled upon this column at precisely the exact moment I needed to read it. Thank you, Sugar.
My sister linked this article to me yesterday evening. I am going to be graduating with my Creative Writing degree in five months. I am constantly asked “the question,” for which I never had a true response–some sort of self-deprecating, dismissive response about being a real-life writer one day, usually. But there is something I can’t truly express about my education, my degree. It has filled me up in so many places, like mortar in a fieldstone foundation. And the rocks are the events, ranging from big to small that comprise who I am, and who I am constantly discovering anew. That being said, I love my degree. I love to write. It is the only thing I have discovered where I show some sort of long-lasting yearning or desire. (Musician, artist, financial adviser, husband, bartender, and retail yuppie never really made the cut.) But I have a home in words. A real connection to reading and writing, but I cannot express this so easily. Especially not to parents those who continually ask, “what about the money?”
I do not have any idea where I am going to end up in six months, let alone the rest of my life–even though I don’t fall into the “goddamned young” category. I am not concerned because I have found my niche. I, unlike most of my poor college-counterparts, am at peace with whatever life throws at me because I am constantly filled to the brim with wonderful books, stories, friends, and experiences.
So, perhaps, as this response has given me time to truly understand how valuable my college education has been, I will now have an answer.
I am going to soak up every experience I can with the short amount of time I have. I’m sure everything else will fall into place along the way.
Thank you for your words of encouragement.
That was lovely. Thank you.
I received a link to this by one of my very close friends. “Read this~” was all that she put. And now here I am, a teary mess.
I’m an English Literature major and coming from a less than “middle” class family, my parents always hoped and dreamed that I would be THE one to make something out the education that they so fought for me to have. My senior year of high school, I had to make the tough choice of laying down the ground, looking them straight in the eyes, and saying, “I’m majoring in English.” But it never once failed to hear back a response, “What are you going to do with that?”
I’ve always loved literature. To read and write is my passion. And while others around me chose careers to make others comfortable, like you say, I was one of the few who risked knowing my “uncertain” future. Sometimes I cry because I end up so frightened of what will actually happen to me after college. But you are right. I’m young, 19. I have so much ahead of me. And yeah, I will fuck up. I’m sure of it along the way.
However, you just made me more confident in why I have made the choices that have led me where I am. And why I should continue making those choices. It’s people like you that inspire me immensely. And I’m so grateful for your words of encouragement, especially in a time where I’m starting on the “hard” road. Thank you SO much. Much love from Texas.
Latin rules. Read Ovid or Juvenal or Cicero. Reads like running water.
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