🚀 go-pugleaf

Your note doesn't sound like a question about majoring in English,
but a question about the discipline (?) "English", what it's worth...
and you add a spin by asking about the gatekeeper role of freshman comp.

As a specialist in rhetoric and composition, I most emphatically do
_not_ see myself as a gatekeeper, screening out the unworthy -- I'm if
anything a lock-picker, someone interested in showing people the ways
into the discourses they aspire to, or ones they might like to explore.

Do I hope my favorite students become English majors?  No, not really.
Certainly I wouldn't want them to become the kind of "English major"
you describe.  Mostly I want my students to become people who can
think, write and read strategically -- aware of what rhetorical choices
they make and why.  If that's asking for mimickry, then I'd say that
there ought to be more of it in this country.

[flame off]

Lili Fox Velez                           "Rhet in the Blue Linen Labcoat"
Rhetorician in Residence
Department of Biological Sciences
Carnegie Mellon University                 lv08@andrew.cmu.edu.BITNET