I came to ECU in the Fall of 2024, which would mark about one year since I’ve been here. A few jobs here and there and my subsequent abandoning of them, the nightly thoughts about what I want to do with my life, and a bit of ambition had me applied, admitted, and sat in my first class on the Monday of that autumn semester (Fundamentals of Human Communication with Professor Vickie Reifsnider at 10 a.m., if I remember correctly – great class!)

It was a good Monday, it was good to be in the classroom again. I liked to learn and it was nice to be around a community of people who were around my age, although older folks are a great time too. And the latter, especially, was the thing I was looking for: community. University is a great place to learn, but if someone is determined enough – the Library of Alexandria is just a tap away.

What I was really looking for was a community, and ECU provided it in different ways. Different interests. Business or sports could be the topic for some people I’d talk to. Science or Art. Different identities, different languages. Yet, for me, I knew there was something that I was more interested in than anything and wanted a community for more than anything: English. Literature. Poetry.

I’d like to be clear on what I mean by English, since I recognize it’s not exactly obvious by the name. By English, I mean not only the arrangement of certain words in a certain way to produce something grammatically correct. “I am not a dog. I am a person.” This is English, yes, but it’s not very interesting. It’s like an egg with no salt, no pepper, no nothing – just straight yolk and egg whites. It gets the job done, but it is what can be done with this egg that I am interested in. I am interested in what can be done with the English language, which I have found within poetry.

And with this interest, I found that community on that Tuesday. The moment I walked into Dr. Joshua Grasso’s Shakespeare class.

To note on the actual learning – we of course would read Shakespeare, give our own ideas about some parts in the plays, and read some of Good Will’s sonnets. But I really want to emphasize that what we were primarily interested in was not just the technical aspects of English, but Shakespeare’s power in which he wielded it to create something beautiful. “Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow/creeps in this petty pace from day to day” Tomorrow creeps, like your shadow hiding from the streetlight, in a petty pace, like its ashamed or weak, from day to day – eternity. To study English is to study the possibilities of the English language, or really, of any language. Ancient Greece and Rome have come and gone, but the Iliad and the Aeneid still beat their dactylic hexameter hearts today.

Grasso was, and is, an immense expressor and professor of these possibilities, and helped show me why Shakespeare keeps showing up. Yet it was also through his class that I started to get a sense of the English community here at ECU, including the First Monday Open Mic that is frequented by poets from across the state.

But even in the Horace Mann halls, I can personally feel it. The professors ready to help any student, the passing students talking with a smile about philosophy, mutterings of words in a foreign language, speaking of Shakespeare and Jane Austen and Pushkin, and the free-book shelf. Language dancing in old halls. In a walk of that long hallway, I have felt a community breathe.

I dislike generalizing, but if I were to describe the English community, it’d be words and phrases such as tight-knit, vocal, and people who generally are interested in the beautiful things in life. Whether in my classes or in departmental events, the vibe I feel is one of a mutual understanding and kinship of our belief in expression. Which is, of course, tied into language itself. I can’t fully define it, especially since I don’t want to talk about people too directly, but all I can personally say is that I feel very at home here, and perhaps you may too, regardless if your degree is in English or in some other discipline. But don’t listen to only me.

Fellow English major Sarah Christensen had the following to say: “I think the English community at ECU is really special because it’s a group of people who value critical thinking, freedom of expression, and literature overall. In my time in the English community here I have felt empowered to discover my own opinions and through my classes have learned how to eloquently express them. The people in this program are exceedingly diverse in their opinions and that often creates meaningful discussions both in and out of class.”

Christensen continued, “As I pursue my chosen career of being an English teacher, I value the environment of the ECU’s English department. The passion each professor has for their subject is truly inspiring and a perfect example of how I wish to run my future classroom. With the passion of the professors being so strong it overflows onto my students. I enjoy attending my classes and engaging with the class discussions that involve the entire class and all the different opinions within.”

Christensen’s an eloquent person, so I’m glad I asked her, and I want to note her emphasize on discussion. English, as I also noted above, is an expressive discipline. If you have nothing to say, you have to find it. And when you have to find something to say, perhaps you find something you were missing.

There are also some non-degree students taking English classes. I asked one of them, a great friend of mine, Eli Grasso, why he takes English classes while being a Molecular Biology student. He said, “I take classes in English even though I’m a science major because I enjoy being able to explore a world of language and ideas that can be very freely debated. In science, every claim has to be backed up with an abundance of evidence, and there is no room for the subjective experience. That means good results, but also that the soul longs for things to contemplate, ruminate upon, and debate freely. Language is an antidote to the absurdity of the world, and subjectivity is an antidote to the necessary but stifling sterility of the scientific process.”

I’m starting to think people who take English classes are eloquent, a pretty crazy assertion, I know. Something I want to note within Eli’s quote is that of subjectivity and language’s role within it. Language’s ability to capture the subjective is one of its great abilities, I think, and perhaps the greatest writers were able to capture the parts of the subjective that are within all of us. So that when I read the ambition of Macbeth, I may see a mirror, my own eyes staring back at me – in another soul, another time.

That’s a general overview of the vibe of the community. We have community events such as book readings, The Scissortail Creative Writing Festival, the Originals literary journal (to which any student should submit, don’t need to be an English major), open-mics, and things of that nature. And of course, I’m sure just asking one of us, faculty or student, could get you pointed in the right direction.

That is the community of the English and Languages department at ECU. Yet we are not isolationist, noting Eli’s tendency to take classes outside of his major’s field. No knowledge is an island, no community is truly separate from another. Einstein played violin too.

All of us here at the university, for instance, are a community of those involved in higher education. All of us together make up the different organs of thought and knowledge, and our great community is a community of a love of learning. May we chase, even though we may never reach, a reality where the community that loves learning to be equivalent to the community of all of humanity.

-ECU-