Opinion: Studying humanities at Edinburgh is not for the weak

I thought this was supposed to be easy?

4 hours ago

Too often, humanities students are told that their degrees will be far less work, easier than those doing science. I am here to let you know that is not the truth.

Like many naïve freshers, I was under the assumption that with my low contact hours, first year would be a breeze of socials, pubs, and parties, with my degree as the occasional side hustle. However, nothing could have prepared me for entering my first day of classes to be told that there was an expected five hours of work per day just to keep up with the pace of the class (spoiler alert they were not exaggerating).

Being forced to stay in George Square, morning to evening three days a week is harder than it seems. Humanities students are forced to sit in lectures which could easily have been sent as slides, before being assigned mountains of the most verbose articles that feel like they were written by a person who just discovered a thesaurus.

Even the view from Main Lib doesn’t make it easier

However, it is still worth mentioning that there is an inequality among humanities degrees, so do take this opinion with a slight grain of salt. Those taking language-based degrees, especially those where a new language is being learned, would naturally have a higher workload than those, taking degrees in English or history where contact hours remain relatively low.

This is not to say, however, that these degrees are any less easy since anyone who has ever written a university essay will understand the absolute pain of staring at a question and sitting there with no thoughts, head empty. At least with an equation sheet, there may be a definitive answer. Perhaps the most frustrating thing about an essay is never truly knowing whether your answer exudes intelligence, or reads like an illiterate five-year-old.

Hard at work or hardly working?

But it is not just in our studies where humanities students face challenges. Oftentimes, the perceived “ease” of our degrees means we are forced to take on as many extra-curriculars as we deem necessary simply to stand out in the crowded graduate market. Speaking from experience, this only further adds to the stress of pursuing a university degree and can make it seem impossible to balance so many things at once.

This is not even to mention the judgment that proceeds after telling anyone the title of the degree you are doing. It can feel exhausting constantly having to justify the reason you have chosen your subject. There is certainly an inherent value in studying something you truly enjoy, not that you feel obliged to, yet our parents and now our government want to shame us for doing these “Mickey Mouse degrees” (whatever that means).

Best class ever?

Nonetheless, there are still moments of respite from the academic grind, since could you ever imagine a STEM class doing memory work to the tune of a children’s Halloween song? I imagine not. Does this make up for the hours spent conjugating Greek verbs? Perhaps.

As I sit writing this perhaps slightly jaded with a two-hour stint of Latin ahead of me, I think it is important to remember to respect all degrees, regardless of their perceived intensity (unless it’s business, of course).