/lit/ - Literature

I knew all about the subject of this thread. I used to follow a lot of literary agents on Twitter, back when I was actively querying a fantasy novel series I was writing. But it's still so depressing to have this put into such stark relief, especially because the awful identity politics seems to have gotten EVEN worse in just the few short years since I stopped being as plugged into that world.

It's very depressing for me, especially, because as a writer I feel I have grown and developed and actively become the sort of writer than these agents pointedly are not looking for. Not only am I white and male, but even when I write genre fiction these days it tends to be slower-paced, character-driven, and more densely written. I'm actually working on a novel right now that even has lots of poetry in it, which I can blatantly tell that none of these agents would be interested in.

/lit/ I'm having a fucking academic-related meltdown and I want to scream over it.

>be older grad student
>took years off between undergrad and grad school, worked some jobs, lived in NYC for a while
>got the hankering to go to grad school and get an MA in English Lit to advance myself as a writer and maybe get a better job
>passed all the credit hour coursework with a breeze
>aced all my comparative literature exams
>feel no pressure about my thesis, know I could write it in a week if I wanted to
>all that's left is the foreign language requirement
>HATE HATE HATE foreign languages, have always struggled with them going back to high school and earlier
>just barely scraped by with Latin as an undergrad
>told myself I could do some self-study in Latin and then maybe take a 3000-level course, pass it, and check my requirement off
>actually get into the course
>it's all fucking gobbledygook, I can't sight-read worth a shit and I know nothing instinctive about the various uses of the various cases
>course has multiple quizzes and tests that I already know I'm going to fail

I feel like somebody's dynamited the road in front of me. If I can't pass my foreign language requirement I can't get my Master's degree, but I don't think I have the language skills in ANY other language, ancient or modern, to check the box off. I am completely and totally at a loss here, /lit/. I'm not really looking for advice, I just needed to type all this out to vent.