As an undergrad I was a business major. Hated it. Didn't give a flip about it
Because I didn't care, I did poorly in all my classes. Well, "poorly" is an understatement. I had straight F's for like 2 years
except in Chinese, which I initially took because "well, need a foreign language credit, not interested in Spanish"
I excelled in and loved Chinese and for most of my early college life that was the only class I even went to because it was all that I actually cared about
(within the academic sphere anyway)
So, after passing Chinese at all levels, top of the class more often than not, I was given an opportunity to go abroad for half a year in China as a result. So I did
I had no idea how to teach anything (and was a bullheaded douchebag of a 21-year-old at the time), so while on my resume it says I 'taught' English at South China Normal University, I could hardly call what I did there 'teaching'
but
it sparked the fire
I was like
"wow, teaching is great, I'd love to do more of this. And attempting to teach English just showed me how much I don't know. And since I want to teach English more gooder, since I've found I like this a lot, well, let's change majors when we get home!"
So I did! But the TESOL degree at my university was for Master's level only. Closest they could do for an undergraduate was English
"Weeeell OK," I thought. "Better than continuing to spin my wheels in the business school that I dgaf about"
And prior to declaring an English major I had talked with the TESOL faculty about my interest, and we reached an accord
"you can take some of these Master's level classes that are in the subject you actually love as electives while you're knocking out the required courses for your undergrad. Then you'll only have to do 1 semester of grad school, and you'll have the credits applied towards your Master's from doing the other classes as electives, and then you'll have that MATESOL in nothing flat!"
So I did that for the 3 years that my undergrad took.
A year before I graduated with my Bachelor's in English lit, the professor with whom I struck that deal skipped out
Dr. S, with whom I'd made the aforementioned deal, abruptly left the university, and apparently the whole "you'll have your MATESOL in no time!" was very much a fly-by-night thing, since I asked around and all the rest of the faculty were like "He said you could do that? You can't do that. You were allowed to take Master's courses as undergrad electives to apply towards your undergrad elective requirements, but you can't double-dip on them and apply them to a whole-ass separate degree if you've already applied them to your undergrad. They can either count for your undergrad or your graduate degree, not both'
And since at the time I only had an undergrad, well, it's not like I had a choice, so that's what they were applied to. It was that,
However
In the course of undergrad I found that I had both a skill and a passion for literary criticism and critique and analysis and...generally all the other neat stuff that gets wrapped up in an English/humanities degree. I did well enough in my undergrad courses that the department heads offered me a teaching assistantship -- teach basic (100-level) courses for the department while taking courses towards your Master's degree, and we'll waive the tuition.
Meanwhile the TESOL department was like "we can't give you a TESOL certification but how about a TESOL 'endorsement'?" which....does no good to me whatsoever :person_shrugging:
I had a ton of support and love from and in the English department, and the TESOL department had kinda stabbed me in the back, so I went with Master's in English Literature even though I had set out for and mainly had interest in/career plans related to MATESOL.
So, that's the long story.