Questions every English Literature student hates hearing

It just takes a peek at Paradise Lost to know that English students don’t have it quite as easy as you’d imagine. Essays, epic poems, close readings, we’ve got it covered. But whilst 17th century poetry has its challenges, the biggest headache that English students face are those bloody annoying questions from their fellow students. If you don’t do English, it would be much appreciated if you stop saying the following:

You can speak it, can’t you?

*slow clap*
Yes, the rumours are true, most English students already speak English! Yet, knowing conversational Spanish doesn’t get you a Spanish degree, so there’s probably a bit more to it.

Why are you in Sheffield?

Yeah, we know it’s an engineering uni. But more importantly, did YOU know that Western Bank was opened by T. S. Eliot? Because that’s quite a big deal. Also, what better way to offset the severity of reading in ye olde English than hearing it in a Sheffield twang?

Are you going to be a teacher, then?

Whilst the urge to educate hormonal year nines may be a calling to some, most English students have other aspirations. Yes, we can read and write well. No, this does not automatically make us teachers. Besides, there’s no way we’re reading Ulysses in third year to be teaching the alphabet a few years later.

This is as scary as it looks

What do you even do in exam season?

Okay, we’ll accept that most English students have minimal exams throughout their degree. But this DOES NOT MEAN WE DO NOTHING. Getting through 7000 words of secondary reading, a novel and a poetry collection just to write one essay is no mean feat. Combine with having to juggle multiple deadlines and you’ve got a very stressed English student on your hands. Next time you see someone looking lost in the IC and weeping into a Norton Anthology, you can guarantee its an English student in deadline doom.

Why do you work in the Diamond?

Contrary to your mental image of English students reading carefully in Victorian-style libraries, we are actually capable of working in spaces that aren’t lined with leather-bound books. It’s the 21st Century and English students need computers as much as the next engineer. Besides, aren’t the Diamond’s villain chairs put to better use for someone studying the character development of Macbeth?

Why are you in my building?

THERE ARE LITERALLY NO LECTURE THEATRES IN JESSOP WEST. We are intellectual vagrants, leave us be.

Do you just read Shakespeare all the time?

Firstly, don’t underestimate the magnitude of ‘Speare – we literally owe the word ‘swagger’ to him (check out A Midsummer Night’s Dream). Secondly, English students read a whole range of literature. Don’t be surprised to find us reading Karl Marx or critical theories about the apocalypse in modern society. We don’t have to throw it back to the 16th century just to be English students.

Can you proof read my essay / CV / personal statement?

Look how they all come crawling back. English students might be the butt of engineering jokes 363 days of the year, but there’s at least 2 annual occasions when engineers realise they have no clue how to properly use a comma, let alone the dizzy heights of the semicolon. Yes, securing a five-figure graduate job is partly down to their working hard on a good degree, but all English students know their impeccable editing skills are the real reason behind their success.