Who you should date if you’re an English Lit student

A bibliophile’s guide to love


Many English Lit students are die-hard romantics: after all, we spend all our time reading poetry and classic romantic novels and searching for the Romeo to our Juliet.

Here is our guide to who you should (and shouldn’t) date as an English lit student – from the honeymoon beginning to the bitter breakup.

Art students

An English Lit student and an Art student go on a date

You’re both well dressed, do the edgiest subjects and love to analyse things. You would go out on the waviest nights, wear glitter and drink Red Stripe.

You’d also spend occasional nights in, making trippy William Burroughs inspired art and watching artsy documentaries because you are both so cultured. The dates you go on are mostly to art galleries, and you sometimes argue about whether literature or visual art is a more relevant art form.

You eventually break up because you realise Art students are cooler than English lit students and the jealousy is overpowering.

Politics students

You both like to have long discussions about what you’re passionate about, but the passion in the relationship does not go much further than that.

They bring up politics all the time and when you try to have a discussion they shut you down. Just because you’ve analysed Blake’s poetry from a Marxist perspective does not mean you understand Marxism, apparently.

In the end, your views are too idealistic for them and they’re too serious for you.

Philosophy students

Finding yourself

You can talk for hours and hours. You smoke weed in the park to try and find yourselves and have open conversations about the universe. Soon, though, you realise that philosophy requires even more waffling than English Lit.

You only need to know a little bit about Freud for your essays, but now you know more than you wanted to and don’t know who you are anymore. You’re no longer a person who is dating a Philosophy student.

Maths/Science/Engineering students

You find it refreshing to spend time with someone who studies something completely different to you. You like some of the same bands, but other than that you are opposites, like Rochester and Jane Eyre.

They look at things in a very matter of fact way, which is a breath of fresh air from over analysing all the time. However, they have many more contact hours and don’t go out as often as you do.

You argue about the difficulty of your studies and when they imply that arts students are stupid, you break up.

Languages students

Bye hun

You both love literature and your dates involve discussing Albert Camus over black coffee and croissants. You plan to travel the world with them and their fluency in another language will mean you can communicate with locals at ease.

Ever since you read On the Road, you have always wanted to travel. It’s all going so well, until they go on their year abroad and adopt a more French attitude towards sex and have an affair. You break up over Skype.

Business students

They have high earning potential, which is much more than studying English Lit has to offer. You imagine your future together. You write poetry from your London apartment while they work all day, funding your zero income career.

They are classy and know how to have a good time, but their lack of creativity soon starts to bore you. Ever since you read American Psycho, you’ve been put off professionals in suits anyway.

Drama students

Too much drama

Your degrees have a lot of similarities and you both love Shakespeare. You go on dates to the theatre and talk about playwrights.

After a while, their eccentricity and extroversion becomes too much for an introverted tortured poet like yourself and you need to take a break.

Medicine students

Their preppiness looks hot alongside your vintage style garms. Your parents are proud and keep telling everyone you’re dating a doctor. They work hard and play hard.

You imagine them saving your life like in a scene from a 19th century romance novel, but you break up because they’re too preppy and mainstream for you.

Other English Lit students

In the early days this romance seems to hold so much promise. You have so much in common. You agree that The Great Gatsby is the best book ever written. You go on cute dates to tiny cafes and talk about Ernest Hemingway.

Your nights out will be wild, drug-fuelled adventures where you have deep conversations about Beat poetry and get out your phone to try and write some yourself.

However, the love affair will burn out soon after it has started as you realise you are both too emotional for each other, disagree about who is the greatest poet of all time and get bored of always talking about course assignments.

Locals

They are different and exciting. They own their own apartment and have a full-time job. You find them interesting because they have lived their life, giving you plenty of inspiration for the novel you are currently writing.

However, you soon realise that the real world isn’t all that exciting. Your local lover sometimes make fun of students and can be condescending. Their job is really quite boring and you don’t want to become boring.

Plus, they haven’t even read The Great Gatsby.