 English & Theatre
Introduction
Welcome to the English Department at the University of Scranton! Today, you enter our hallowed halls—well, we only have the one hall, but you know what I mean—you enter our building as a fresh-faced smiling teen-ager
with a good academic pedigree and all the enthusiasm and potential of youth. Over the next four years, you will learn many things, and before you know it, you will be ready to leave our hallowed—well, let’s just say our program—and to begin work in a hospital, helping out-of-shape people rehabilitate their torn rotator cuffs and strained
sacroiliacs.
No, wait, that’s Physical Therapy.
Welcome to the English Department at the University of Scranton! Today is the first day of the rest of your life. In your new lifetime, you will learn many things, and when you leave us in the not-too-distant future,
you will be a mature and well-educated young adult, ready, able, and oh so willing to take on the world from your new post as the second assistant junior-level accounting department trainee for a multinational conglomerate called Soulless Drones, Inc.
No, wait, that’s—well, never mind what that is. It’s not fair, really.
Welcome to the English Department at the University of Scranton! We assume that you’re here because you enjoy reading, writing, and talking about literature, theatre, and the world around you. We like those things, too.
Over the next four years, we hope that you will improve your skills in all of these areas, and we want to help you do that. We hope as well that you will increase your capacity for enjoying and appreciating the value of these activities as you go along. We think that when you finish your four years with us, you will have an excellent
liberal arts education, and that you will have a range of interesting choices still to make.
We really mean that.
Some of our majors go on to become teachers. Others become lawyers,
editors, ad writers, or executives. Some go on to graduate school in literature,
theatre, or writing. A few of our recent graduates have gone overseas on Fulbright scholarships. Every once in a while, we even send our graduates to medical school.
You may wonder why we are bringing the career question up to someone who’s just beginning his or her undergraduate career. The answer is really quite simple. Successful undergraduates succeed because they have
participated fully in their own educations. Don’t wait for learning to happen to you. Right now, at the beginning of your time with us, you should look into our departmental programs, publications and activities, and when you’re done with your survey, you should make a few plans or commitments—to a
University Players production, maybe, or
to the Aquinas or to Esprit. Go to a poetry reading. Consider becoming part of the
Honors Program or the Business Leadership Program. Look into the University’s Foreign Study opportunities. Find out about the internships some of our students have had. Begin thinking now about where (and what and who) you hope to be four years from now—and
then think about what you need to do in order to get there from where you are now.
As a first step, you might try setting up your own personal version of the “permanent file” that your high school guidance counselors kept talking about. If you’re used to throwing away your notes and papers and selling
your books back to the bookstore after every course you take, it’s time to stop that. Save your papers—especially the good ones—and save your notes and the books that you marked up while you were reading. Remember, you’re building something—the new, improved, state-of-the-art version of your educated self—and you’ll need to know where the
blueprints and progress reports are kept when you get to the other end of the project and find out that somebody somewhere wants you to account for what you’ve been doing and why.
The cool thing about all of this is that if you do it right, you’ll get a good education while nevertheless having the time of your life. That’s your job for the next four years. Now get busy.
Jody DeRitter / English Dept. Chair
Return to top
Return to Advising Handbook Navigation
| 
