Let me preface this: I am bad at English Literature.

And that is exactly why this class is useless for me. Literature is basically an art, and it should be left to those who are talented at it.

I am STEM oriented; I enjoy physics, math, and of course hacking, yet I see tremendous value in a well-rounded high school education. The social studies and foreign languages classes that I’ve taken all added something to my life, whether it was looking at the world from a historical or macroeconomic standpoint or learning to survive in France with minimal assistance from Google Translate. Even my previous English classes taught me lots, from improving my writing skills to helping me kill the SAT.

It’s the lack of objectivity that ruins English Literature for me. Obviously, the sciences and the maths have clear right and wrong answers, but upon deeper thought, I realized that even all the social studies classes and English Language class were essentially objective. For example, in history classes, we learn the facts and practice constructing arguments with them. Some arguments end up clearly better and more correct than others; therefore, grading can be done objectively and fairly.

Today, I had an experience in English Literature class that once again demonstrated the issues I have with it. We were going over a test about metaphysical poetry, and got to a question about making an inference from a John Donne poem. One of my good friends picked what the teacher deemed as the wrong answer, but he challenged her to explain the correct answer. After a few minutes of giving explanations that not only didn’t explain the correct answer but proved my friend’s interpretation to be correct also, the teacher finally resorted to, “Well CollegeBoard says so…” Seems like a cop out answer to me. In any other class, teachers are always able to respond to challenges with clear evidence that plainly supports the correct answer. To be clear, I am in no way blaming my English teacher here; it is just unfortunate that we are forced to be graded in such an objective manner in one of the most inherently subjective classes.