“Our delight in the sunshine on the deep-bladed grass today, might be no more than the faint perception of wearied souls, if it were not for the sunshine and the grass in the far-off years which still live in us, and transform our perception into love.” — George Elliot, The Mill on the Floss
I’ve always been a writer. From as early as I can remember really. I wrote songs that I sang to the cows on the farm. I followed sun puddles around the floor in the winter and wrote poetry about the north wind. I wrote letters to my uncle who lived in Florida. I wrote in diaries – pages and pages. I attended the K-State Writer’s Workshop in high school – and the experience made me SURE I was a writer. Even though I tried a year of architecture in college, my favorite class was my freshman honors composition class, so I changed my major and never looked back.
Six years later, I had my master’s degree in English Literature. My favorite professor was Dr. Donnelly. He taught me Shakespeare, Milton, and all things Renaissance and Age of Enlightenment. He called me Angela when he called roll at the beginning of class, and it always sounded better when he said it. Dr. Dees was my major professor in grad school, where my concentration was Arthurian romance – because well, those books were old and cool. I wrote, and I got pretty good at it.
I attended my 35-year high school reunion a couple of months ago, and an old friend asked me, “Are you still writing?” It was a kick in the gut. How did she even remember that I wrote? How could I have forgotten? The bittersweet knowing immediately followed. Yes, somewhere along the way I had stopped writing. Life had happened instead – beautiful, crazy and complicated life.
So, when Deborah Murray asked me if I’d write for the English Department blog, I hesitated for two full years. What could I possibly have to say?
What does my English degree mean to me – especially now, a lifetime later, when I’ve essentially stopped writing?
It is certainly accurate to say that my English degree enabled my 30-year career in business. Obviously, it helped me to communicate. But, moreover, it made me a critical thinker. It made me observant – of business details, of behavior, of paths to success and failure. It helped propel me from Proposal Writer to Senior Managing Director where I now manage a team of 19 writers, designers, trainers, and consultants. I work for a good company, and I have a rewarding job, and I’m proud of the difference we make in the world.
But that’s not what my degree means to me. Not really.
Instead, I value how it gave credence to my imagination – making a different way of life seem and become possible – from a Kansas farm girl to a curious professional and world traveler.
My degree mattered most in the quietest hours of the day as I raised a family – bedtime stories, chapter after chapter, until bedtime reading turned into middle school eyerolls and mutters and YouTube videos. My degree mattered each night at the dinner table through involved conversations about anything and everything they learned or questioned about life from baseball to barometric pressure. Those two little boys grew into young men who appreciate philosophy, science, nature, different cultures and ways of being, and who continue to find joy in the pursuit of learning. They are beacons of brightness.
It also matters to me in smaller, personal ways. Almost every day I write down quotes and passages – snippets of books or magazines, masterful phrases that burn like a fire in my brain. These brighten my world in small shades. These are truths uncovered each day because someone took the time to write, and I took the time to read.
Truth and brightness are hard to come by these days. We shouldn’t always do things because it will land us a job or a bigger paycheck, although that’s certainly a necessity for most of us. We should do things because they matter, because they make life brighter even in small shades for the corporate functionary, the stay-at-home dad, or the young girl who is a writer and wants to live, live, live a bigger life than surrounds them in that moment.
You should be an English major just because it matters.
— Angie Franson, BA ’94, MA ‘97
Writer & Mom; Senior Managing Director, Growth Enablement & Training, Bright Horizons
K-State English 