Outside of the smallish group of folks with whom I hung out with regularly during my high school years, the most frequent guess of former classmates has been that I majored in English in university. Oddly enough, some of them can remember specific things I was forced to make for English class. (I survived English by taking it seriously non-seriously... submitting well-formed assignments on the most ridiculous topics that I could think of).
Given that my field of study falls in the sciences - notoriously bad at communication - I tend to take people's assumptions of Dave the English major as a compliment. However English is probably the subject that I felt least inclined to major in. In fact the only reason that I took Philosophy at university was that the only alternative was English. I hated English for overanalyzing literature and its commitment for rules, when I think that English is one of the few areas where rules are meant to be broken.
That said, titles on my shelves include: On Writing Well, The Elements of Style, Orson Scott Card on Characters and Viewpoint, a book on Plot, and a number of other books in a similar vein in addition to an increasing amount of classic fiction.