In high school, I was sure I’d study economics and political science. That’s what I wrote on my Duke application. It sounded solid. Smart. Useful. I figured I’d keep the creative stuff (music, writing, storytelling) on the side. Not because I didn’t love it, but because I didn’t think I was allowed to center it. Not if I wanted to be taken seriously.
By the time I got to Duke, the plan shifted slightly. I dropped political science, swapped in a minor in visual and media studies, and set my sights on economics. Still structured, still practical, but with a little room for self-expression.
And then something started to shift.
It wasn’t a dramatic revelation, no mid-lecture epiphany or teary conversation. Just a slow, quiet realization that I was most myself when I was writing. I’d spend hours tweaking a sentence in an essay, not because I had to, but because I wanted to. I’d underline the same line in a poem again and again because it said something I hadn’t known how to say yet. There was a kind of electricity in that feeling, and I couldn’t ignore it.
So, halfway through sophomore year, I declared English.
That choice came with a quiet kind of guilt. I immediately paired it with psychology, not just because I was interested in it (though I was), but because it gave me structure. It gave me options. It made the English part sound like less of a risk. And as an international student, it gave me three years of OPT (the work authorization that would let me stay in the U.S. after graduation). Still, I knew which major I cared more about. And it wasn’t the one I used to justify myself.
There’s this unspoken hierarchy at schools like Duke. Some paths are easier to explain to your parents, your peers, to strangers at a dinner table. Certain majors command respect the moment you name them and seem to carry more weight. Others require a follow-up explanation, a second sentence, a little smile to suggest you’re self-aware. English often falls in the second category. Add in the fact that I’m a singer-songwriter and suddenly I’m two for two in “dreamer energy.”
But here’s what I’ve come to believe (and what I think more people should say out loud): studying literature, language and storytelling is one of the most serious things a person can do.
Writing is serious. Choosing the right word is serious. Cutting what doesn’t serve the story? Very serious. So is reading closely. Thinking critically. Asking better questions. Understanding the difference between what something says and what it means. These aren’t “soft” skills. They’re the foundation of how we communicate, how we process the world, how we create meaning out of chaos.
And if you happen to be an artist, those skills are everything.
I didn’t expect my English classes to shape my songwriting as much as they did, but they kept creeping in. A lyric I wrote last semester came straight from a discussion about metaphor and how silence can speak just as loudly as sound. Reading Kokinshū poetry made me think differently about brevity and suggestion, how leaving space in a line can make it hit harder. And when we read “Never Let Me Go” by Kazuo Ishiguro, I couldn’t stop thinking about how tenderness and devastation can exist in the same sentence. That feeling found its way into a song without me even trying. Eventually, I stopped seeing a line between my academic work and my creative work. They weren’t separate, they were feeding each other the whole time.
And I know I’m not the only one. Even if I weren’t a songwriter, I think I’d still feel this way, because most English majors I know don’t just study literature, they live with it. We’re the ones reading with a pencil in hand, underlining furiously, writing little notes in the margins like the author might write back. The ones who gasp mid-sentence, or pause to reread a line five times because it just gets us. We’ve all had those 2 a.m. moments, not (always) because a paper was due, but because we were chasing the right words and couldn’t let it go.
And Duke’s English department never treats that passion like something small. They make it known that paying close attention — to language, to emotion, to meaning — matters.
I’ve had professors who treat sentences like architecture: something you build and rebuild until it finally holds. Who ask the hard questions not to trip you up, but to help you go deeper. Who talk about language with so much passion it makes you fall in love with it all over again. They took my writing seriously before I did. They reminded me that paying close attention is an act of care. That what we do here matters.
I used to think English would always have to be secondary. I thought choosing something creative meant giving up the “real” plan. But the more I leaned into it, the more I realized: this was the real plan all along.
And no, it’s not always easy to explain. It doesn’t come with a built-in career path or a flashy internship title. But it gave me something better: a voice. And the confidence to use it.
So if you’ve ever felt the need to justify your major or your creative path or the thing you love that doesn’t fit cleanly into a box, I hope you know you’re not alone. You don’t need to make it make sense for anyone else.
You just have to choose it.
And that choice? It’s anything but fiction.
Barbara Cardenas is a Trinity senior.
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