Can everyone please stop mocking Geography degrees?

You’re at your mates pre drinks and as she introduces you to one of her flatmates, the inevitable small talk question arises: so what course do you?

Unlike the Medics, Economists, Philosophers and even the Journalism students, you don’t hold their gaze with a brazen air of academic superiority and self righteousness, nor do you proceed to chat at length about your ridiculous work load, heavy timetable or varied career prospects. Instead, you find yourself dropping eye contact ever so slightly and mumbling into your gin and tonic that you “actually do Geography”. What’s that, they ask? You do Geography? You look up and see an eyebrow raise and a smirk begin to spread across their face. “Please god no, not another crayon joke,” you think to yourself.

When people say sarcasm is the lowest form of wit, they are wrong. It is in fact the long running, purile suggestion Geography students partake in any more colouring in than the next person at uni. You try and intercept any possibility of that cropping up in conversation and almost begin to roll your own eyes at your degree choice. “Obviously I’m only doing it for the two contact hours and free trip to New York this April”, you laugh. Together you giggle away and bluff through their ridiculous questions like how many countries are there in the world not including the Vatican, and is it true you just have walks in the Peaks instead of actual legitimate seminars?

It is honestly not like this

But despite your empty laughter, and feeble attempts to justify your choice, you are dead inside. Your uni experience has so far been epitomised by people holding your degree in as much as regard as they would BA Circus Skills at West London or Gaming at Bolton.  It hasn’t always been this way, and that’s what makes this cross particularly difficult to bear. Geography lessons went from being an exotic and exciting treat once in a while in primary, to a timetable staple in secondary school. As you flirted with the idea of picking Food Tech or Dance for GCSE, your teachers and parents gave you that knowing glance: come on now, shouldn’t you be picking something a bit more suited to the future CV? A respected humanity perhaps, why not Geography?

The same sort of mantra was repeated when it came to choosing A- Levels, and you sailed through two years of slopping round sand dunes in the piss wet rain in the firm knowledge that soon, you’d be at a sweet, sweet Redbrick uni studying a well thought of, academic subject. Except, it’s been far from it. You’ve spent more time hiding your highlighter sets, functional trainers and those particularly spider diagram heavy worksheets this semester alone than you have going out throughout the whole of the three years.

The dream

When the squad are half cut and trying to find that new cocktail bar, Google Maps is instantly thrust in your direction, and you’re met with a sea of perturbed, demeaning glances as you explain that map reading isn’t, nor has it ever been, on your geography specifications. You encounter the same sort of faces at the pub quiz, when you’re unable to recall the main rock type of Inner Mongolia, or the particular tectonic plate boundary of the Himalayas.

The false expectations and consequent disappointments become exhausting. Every single day you are faced with a new barrage of tired jokes and demeaning comments. Did Prince William receive the same sort of stick when he studied the subject at St Andrews? No he didn’t, and it is time the rest of us were treated the same.