“Like B-AM, B-AM, B-AM, B-AM, B-AM, B-AM, B-AM, B-AM, B-AM, B-AM, B-AM, B-AM, B-AM, B-AM, B-AM, B-AM”
-Wait (The Whisper Song)
There is nothing quite so terrifying as listening to “WAIT (The Whisper Song)” alone in the dark. Except perhaps being a second-semester junior without a major.
I know everyone else has fears. There are second-semester seniors without jobs, second-semester sophomores without internships, second-semester freshman with virginity … but these situations are normal. These delinquents have peers. They have Facebook groups telling them that they are sexy. And they are. Sexy. But what do I have? An angry father, an abysmal future and the lead paragraph of a column that may inadvertently alienate the DUS of every conceivable department.
I suppose my problem resulted from my tendency to dabble — in all sorts of things. Genres. Exercise. Streams and ponds. Unfortunately, I do not dabble in things that would be beneficial, such as healthy communication skills, or fulfilling academic requirements.
Freshman year I decided I would be an epidemiologist. It took me a full year to realize that I had made that decision based purely on 1995’s disease-thriller “Outbreak.” Science was irrelevant in the movie and I figured it could be so for me as well. Additionally, I didn’t want to lose my advisor, Porn in the Morn’s Bill Summers. He made students so comfortable that one actually e-mailed him asking if women can get pleasure from anal sex. Personally, I am more interested in other enigmatic holes, such as black ones — gravity’s relentless playground.
I was shopping a class on AIDS that year, content in my white-coat career path, when I was struck with the most intense panic attack of my short, panicky life. I realized that I was bored. I hated science, and I hated PowerPoint. Sweating like a banshee, I texted my father, “fuck hate aids.” He responded, “that can sometimes be a logical progression.”
Sophomore year was the era of sociology. I took an ethnographic writing class and loved it. I took a class on crime and deviance and loved it. But I met with the DUS and realized I would have to begin taking the theory requirements, so I backed down. Anyway, the sociology department smells like death.
What followed was a major melée. A good friend once described her freshman-year sexual antics by saying, “Put anything near my mouth and I would blow it.” Put one class of any department near my face and I wouldn’t hesitate to go all the way. I pounded psych, hammered humanities and even slowed down to envelop the WGSS department.
I finally fell into political science. Unfortunately this is one of those examples of falling where you’re walking along beside a ditch and your father runs up out of nowhere and shoves you into it. Now I’m thinking about English, but I’m skeptical. Given infinite semesters, wouldn’t a return to epidemiology be inevitable? Shouldn’t I wait a bit longer?
So I’m left with no DUS, no seminar pre-registration e-mails and a lot of questions. How did this happen? Why am I the only one? Is there something wrong with me? Who are you, cute man in red and white jacket in Commons? The people around me have questions too: “Is that tikki masala?” And: “Has there been any actual sex yet?”
The answer to that is, “No, just grinding.”
Choosing a major this late in the proverbial game does not really rely on interest anyway. It is like those ducks with weird puzzle-like genitals: I am just trying to find a vessel into which I can cram into my last three miserable semesters. The end of my days at Yale will be so fraught with requirements, with genital twists and turns, that I will hardly have time to spread my duckly seed. I can’t fathom why Yale finds it necessary for me to take stats and a year and a half of Spanish, while race and gender studies courses are entirely optional. Just like the English department finds it necessary that I take courses in literature, poetry and writing, as opposed to the much-preferred “doing what the fuck I wanna.”
I wish all of us blacklisted no-majors could be herded into a corral so that the DUSes could pick teams, dodgeball-style. I definitely have skills that make me a desirable pick. I can clap very loudly. I will beat you at Speed or Egyptian Rat Screw. If I do not beat you at Speed or Egyptian Rat Screw, I am trying to build you up so I can break you back down later. I can translate the code prostitutes use in European newspapers to advertise their sexual limits. I can stand on my own and sit then stand again with minimal fanfare. And I really like how men look in flannel. Unfortunately, none of these skills are particularly marketable.
The English major is dissipating my terror of the major question. And Kelis is dissipating my terror of the Whisper Song. She created her own version in which she replaced the words, “I’ll beat that cat with a dog” with “Just eat this cat like a dog.” Take that, Ying and Yang, poli and sci! This catbag is chowin’ down on Chaucer.
Molly Green is currently investigating the American Studies distribution requirements.