After a lot of soul searching this summer, I've decided to switch from history to English. I'm currently entering my third year, so as can be drawn from that I'm going to be taking a lot of English... nearly four courses per semester.

Does anyone have any experience with this? I'm a bit afraid I won't be able to handle it - given the extreme amount of reading. Of course, I'm also told history is one of the more intense majors in the humanities as far as work load goes, so perhaps I'll adjust. This all has be slightly considering going back to history - second thoughts.

Any advice? Thoughts?

The title of this thread automatically made me think of this:

I've taking lots of English and History electives and I've found that they are pretty similar in terms of reading. English will have a bit more, of course, but I think you'll be fine if you've done well in History so far. The only difference to me was that I was able to get away with not doing my History readings. For English, it's hard to skip them.
If it turns out you can't handle it, you can always switch back

Originally Posted by jamescw1234

The title of this thread automatically made me think of this:

I thought of that awful looking Jennifer Aniston movie from last summer.

I'm double majoring in History and English so I totally understand your dilemma. I am essentially double majoring because if I decide in the future that I don't really like one of them or I'm not doing so well in one, I'll just make that my minor and major in the other. But the ultimate game plan is double major.

So, from the perspective from someone who's done both, I would say that it's really the same amount of reading. As you know, you can really get away with missing a chapter or two of your history text and just reading the conclusion, but in English you have to read the whole text. You also really have to keep up with it; it's not like you can read a missed chapter the next week (like in history) because sometimes, you only focus on one book every 1-2 weeks, so it's fast paced. I personally had a hard time adjusting to history in 1st year because 1st semester, all my classes were English and 2nd, my classes were history. The writing style is totally different for these faculties. Also, in English you use MLA while in history it's Chicago. I read some novels in my history class and had a really difficult time honing in on the historial meanings instead of the writing styles and literary devices.

I think you should maybe consider minoring in history, because you must enjoy it seeing as it was your first pick. Also, history and English are a really good pair for a major/minor.

I hope this helps. Good luck!

p.s. I love Seinfeld!

Well, I've gone through with the courses switch, more or less (missing a few I'd like, see if I can manage to pick them up). As for a minor in history, I would only need one more course to complete the minor due to the large amount of history I took in second year. As well, regarding the work load, how did the amount of papers/length of the papers compare? I know history papers can become insanely long, sometimes hitting 3500 words (which frankly led to me being quite burnt out on history as I'm a rather concise writer and prefer shorter, precise writing).

I totally know what you mean! All first year Englsh papers are lterally 500 words long, and I even had a hard time doing that at first! Then I got into history and discovered the 1000 wor essay. I seriosuly freaked out. With English, well first year, anyway, the essays are really designed to see what levl you're at and making sure you're writing correctly. It's really more about how you write instead of what you write in first year. Well, it's always like that, but what I'm saying is the papers are so short because that's essentially the aim in first year.

History essays are about the content. It's completely about what you're discssing. However, I have to say that, although TAs aren't looking for lterary devices and you picking apart the text (as it is with English), they do really look at how you're writing. I found that a huge challenge. Then, maybe I just had a really rappy TA (ok honestly, I did have a really crappy TA for my 2nd ever history class, but a great one for the 1st).

Now that I've taken two 2nd year English classes and I've found that the essay length is about 1500 words max and I've taken one 2nd year History classes and found that the essay length is 2500 words, I shudder to think of how long thy're going to be as I go up in years.

History papers are ridiculously long in the upper years. My second year history courses had 3000-3500 word papers (British and Germany history). My longest English essay was 2000 words in Modern Counter-cultures, which was far easier to write given the length.

Have you had Dr. Horn? He told me that his second year papers are 10-12,000 words. Yikes!