Doing Joint Honours does not mean I’m having an existential crisis

No, I’m not doing two subjects because I ‘couldn’t make my mind up’


Joint honours. “Surely that is the best of both worlds,” you say. After all, you can learn about two things that interest you. You get to say you did a degree in two subjects, which obviously sounds smarter than saying you did just one, but is it actually worth it? Probably not. I’m sure there are plenty of lucky people who study two courses and absolutely love it (please go take your smugness elsewhere) but then there are the rest of us who don’t.

So many books, so little time

Our timetable is mad. First year is fine, usually you are given the modules they want you to learn, or, as most of us did, not work whatsoever and scrape that 40 per cent. But come second year and third year, you get the dreaded timetable clashes. Whereas your single honours mates get to pick the modules they want to take with some certainty they will get on to them, we can’t do the modules we want to do without finding ourselves in a total conundrum and picking modules on a whim just so you at study at least one thing you like that doesn’t clash.

Then the work load. If you haven’t figured it out, it’s double the amount of reading and two completely separate styles of writing in two completely different subjects. At least when you’re studying the same thing along the same trail of thought you can roughly work something out, but when can Economics ever help your Philosophy? Never, that’s when.

The D word. DEADLINES. Deadlines are perhaps the worse, we dread them. But when you have two on the same day, not to mention exams double headers, no wonder you roll into a library to quivering eyes, multiple cans of empty red bull and the wafting smell of despair.