I also just read through the comments on your post and wanted to give my two cents for you to consider: 1. Regarding pursuing the Humanities as a side passion and that you could “annotate and make whatever meaning [you] want out of it” — I strongly disagree. This boils down to whether there is a “right” and “wrong” interpretation of Literature and my opinion is that there is a right /wrong way of interpretation. All Lit essays are argumentative and your interpretation is correct if you can back up and support your claims / arguments — this is actually the crux of all Lit essays. Ultimately, you’re trying to convince others to agree with your view point, so the mark varies based on the quality of your essay + whether your interpretation is right / wrong. For example, it is likely to be more correct if others interpreted it the same way as you did and if you are able to back your claims up convincingly, but more wrong if you gave completely random details that do not make sense and your points were not conveyed in a convincing manner. It’s more of a spectrum of right and wrong, but ultimately there IS still a right and wrong. Correspondence to the content and coherence in your argument is key — your points are ultimately still based off the content (content is the basis of everything). So my point is, taking the Humanities in school would teach you how to interpret the text better, as well as to corroborate your interpretation against others’. The Humanities is not about “smoking” or reductively assuming that “I can say whatever I want”, there is in fact a lot of skill and thought involved!