25 truths about English Lit students

1. You never see the sunrise because 11am is your earliest lecture.

2. Anything more than 6 hours a week of uni seems like a breach of your human rights.

3. Any assignment under 2000 words is merely an afternoon’s work.

4. You can’t go along to a social event without people asking if you want to be a teacher…

5. And in your final year you start to panic you might actually have to be a teacher.

6. You kick yourself on a weekly basis in your final year that you didn’t choose a vocational degree.

7. The cheap student lifestyle you adopt at uni will probably have to be maintained permanently.

8. You branch out into drama and music societies, but the gym terrifies you.

9. You feel a huge amount of pressure to meet artsy intellectuals and have stimulating conversations over whisky.

10. To attempt this lifestyle, you will take up smoking.

11. You live on a diet of black coffee. Because you think you should.

12. You have been learning guitar for the past 4 years.

13. It is no longer possible to read for pleasure.

14. You take time to ridicule sports clubs and their weekly binge drinking, but secretly wish you weren’t a regular with EnglishSoc at the old man’s pub on campus.

15. You receive the best grades of your life on ERASMUS because you’ve got the edge of English being your first language.

16. You bitch about JK Rowling’s lack of writing ability to your other English friends whilst spending hours trying to revamp the HP and Twilight series into a new bestseller. Hell, you even tried your hand at S+M erotica after ’50 Shades of Grey’ was published.

17. After 3-4 years and thousands spent on fees, living costs and biros, you only come away with an impressive book collection.

18. You’re inspired to write poetry late at night by your lecturers, and dream of being discovered in the light of your candles and cigarette smoke.

19. You are a ‘slut to your writing’ and do almost anything just to turn it into a story.

20. Following this, you’re one of the last degree groups that think having a fling with a middle-aged lecturer would be exciting.

21. You would happily bet your life-savings that Shakespeare didn’t mean every single possible fucking analysis for his sonnets.

22. Poetry readings are considered foreplay.

23. Sex is passionate and filthy, and a post-coitus fag is always shared.

24. A post-graduate is only delaying the inevitable unemployment.

25. Reading this article may well be the most useful thing you do with your day.