By Jessica Chen — Studied business. Learned more from a poetry class. Still surprised by that.
Last updated: April 2026
I was a business major. I took classes in marketing, finance, and management. I learned how to write a resume, how to negotiate a salary, and how to read a balance sheet. Useful stuff.
My senior year, I needed one elective to fill my schedule. The only class that fit was a poetry workshop. I almost did not sign up. Poetry? I had not read a poem since high school. I did not write. I did not even like reading.
But I needed the credit. So I showed up.
On the first day, the professor said: “You will write one poem per week. You will read them out loud to the class. You will listen to other people read their poems. You will not be graded on talent. You will be graded on trying.”
I was terrified. I was not a poet. I was a business major. I wrote spreadsheets, not sonnets.
By the end of the semester, I had written 12 terrible poems. I read them out loud. I felt embarrassed. I survived.
That class taught me more than any of my business classes. Not about poetry. About how to think.
What I Learned From a Poetry Class
How to revise.
In business classes, you did the work, turned it in, and got a grade. You rarely went back to improve it. In poetry class, we revised every poem. We cut lines. We moved stanzas. We changed one word and saw how it changed everything.
That skill—revision—turned out to be useful in business too. I revise emails. I revise presentations. I revise my approach to problems. I learned that first drafts are never the final draft.
How to give feedback.
We read each other’s poems out loud. Then we talked about them. Not “I liked it” or “I did not like it.” Specific things. “The third stanza felt stronger than the first.” “This image confused me.” “This line stayed with me.”
I learned how to tell someone what was working and what was not. Without being mean. Without being vague. That skill has helped me in every job I have had.
How to sit with discomfort.
Writing a bad poem and reading it out loud is uncomfortable. I wanted to skip class. I wanted to disappear. I did it anyway. After a few weeks, the discomfort faded. I realized that being bad at something in front of other people is not the end of the world.
That lesson has been useful every time I have started something new.
What I Used to Think vs. What I Learned
| Before Poetry Class | After Poetry Class |
|---|---|
| Creative classes are useless for business majors | Creativity is a skill you can learn |
| Feedback means “tell me what I did wrong” | Feedback means “help me see what I cannot see” |
| First drafts are fine | First drafts are just the beginning |
| Being embarrassed means you should stop | Being embarrassed means you are trying something new |
What I Am Not Saying
I am not saying everyone should take a poetry class. Pick your own uncomfortable elective.
I am not saying business classes are useless. They taught me useful things.
I am just saying: the class I almost skipped taught me skills I use every day. Not because of the subject. Because of how the class was taught. Revision. Feedback. Discomfort. Those matter more than any poem I wrote.
A Few Things I Still Remember
The professor’s name was Dr. Morrison. She was kind. She was also tough. She did not let us get away with “I do not know what to write.” She said: “Write about not knowing what to write. That is a poem too.”
I still have the notebook from that class. The poems are terrible. I keep it anyway.
I also still have the email she sent me after graduation. She said: “You were not a poet. But you learned to think like one. That will serve you well.”
She was right.
The Bottom Line
I was a business major who took a poetry class to fill a requirement. I almost dropped it. I am glad I did not.
I do not write poems anymore. I have not written one since that class. But I revise my emails. I give specific feedback. I sit with discomfort. I try again.
Those are not poetry skills. They are life skills. I just happened to learn them in a poetry class.
About the author: Jessica Chen studied business. She writes emails and reports now, not poems. But she thinks about that poetry class often.
This article reflects personal experience. Every class and professor is different. What worked for one person may not work for another.
