Because arts students have it hard too.

It’s not easy being keen (about humanities)

arts degrees Cambridge Drinking Freshers

I got up at 8:00 this morning. Yes, readers, my alarm went off at five to, and after an obligatory five minutes of moaning about how I did not want to get up, I rolled out of bed. At 8:00.

I mean, I usually wake up at noon anyway, but at least it’s a problem I’m trying to address.

“But Lia,” I hear you protest, “nobody cares about when you get up in the morning, and also, you do English! Everyone knows arts students don’t get up till noon.” Well, anonymous NatSci, this is my column, and I will update you on the inane details of my life as I see fit. More importantly, however, I am here to rouse the downtrodden arts students, who’ve been brainwashed into believing they don’t do a real subject.

Because no, arts students don’t have six hour labs, or lectures on Saturdays. But we do have six hour days of reading the Fairie Queene in the library till the letters start moving on the page in front of us, till even the books on Agricultural Practices in Tudor England seem temptingly interesting. And, worse than anything, we have to contend with what I would posit is the greatest evil that Cambridge offers, greater even than the architecture in Churchill, or the imposingly phallic structure of the UL. I speak, of course, of self-discipline.

Not Pictured: My will to live, which I lost somewhere around week 3 of Michaelmas

Do you know what that means, NatSci who is set a certain number of questions which all have correct answers? It means that when I get up at eleven, and face the overwhelming blanket of silence that settles on my staircase because everyone else is at lectures or the library, I spend the rest of the day consumed with guilt – so much guilt I am rendered paralysed and cannot get any work done. Trust me – the cycle of self-reproach and procrastination is far more soul draining than any three hour maths question.

“But Lia, I know there are days where arts students don’t do anything. I’ve seen them enjoying themselves!” You say, indignantly. This is true. Nonetheless I am relatively certain that rowdiness (and the ocassional bout of laziness) is a cross-discipline phenomenon. HSPS-ers can dedicate their lives to the ADC and adjacent bar, and medics can dedicate themselves to both saving lives and also going to Life.  

Students across disciplines united in their mutual desire to do as little work as possible

But that’s not the point. The point is that the people who do ‘real’ subjects, yeah, they might get to brag that they have “a chance of being employed”, but let’s be honest, we’re all going to end up behind a desk in The City anyway. 

At least I don’t spend all day colouring in.