English is great, you’re just jealous

Last week, our dearest compatriots a la Cambridge Tab published an article condemning a degree in English Literature as an “utterly pointless” academic pursuit which will leave you with zero future prospects and inevitably ruin your life.

Apparently, any English student can waltz their way to a first, simply by spending “an hour a week in a bubble bath reading storybooks about swordfights”. This is, of course, a romanticised version of events – but genuinely not too far off. Bloody Shelley only ever went to one lecture, and that was on mineralogy. He spent all day in his room at Univ exploding chemical substances and blowing holes in the floor. Seriously.

Easier than it looks

I’ve found English is actually quite akin to GCSE Chemistry – it’s all a careful process of meticulous filtration. You could easily be set a weekly essay on the Victorian Gothic and spend the next six months reading every novel, short story, drama, contemporary/modern piece of criticism in existence. This is not required, but some fools still think it necessary.

Once you learn how to ascertain what is and what isn’t absolutely essential to an essay, it’s all a bit of a crepuscular walk in the Elysian park. The ability to identify a “gold mine” critic from a “fucking waste of time” critic is utterly priceless. Filtering down your reading means less time on essays, and more time on social cappuccino appointments with other drifting English students buckling under the same, gargantuan pressures.

The shelf of your average English student

But what’s that I hear, “a piece of piss” you cry? “Study a real subject”? Well my friends, you are simply jealous, and there’s no denying it. You resent our unsettlingly nonchalant work ethic and our quite ludicrous exam schedule (four finals, bah), but secretly, you want to be us, and can’t quite admit it. Whilst you’re banging your head against the desk of your forlorn booth in a bleak and doleful library in the latter half of Trinity, we shall be revelling in the joy of finishing finals, before anyone else.

So don’t hate the players, hate the game: we know our degree is a tad farcical but at least we’re happy to admit it. We love our subject because we can write about whatever, whenever, for however long we feel, and still conjure a 2.1 at the end. If that’s not bloody brilliant I don’t know what is. To end with a quote from the illustrious YikYak; “If you’ve got a 9am tomorrow I feel bad for you son, I’ve 99 problems but they start after 1”.