I’m the only Humanities student in an all-science house and this is what I’ve learned

For the past two years, I have been living in a student house full of medics and engineers. I, a humble philosophy student, have been the only one flying the flag for Humanities.

It has been an experience and a half, to say the least, so here’s ten things I’ve learnt during my time as the only Humanities student in an all-science house.

Their lectures will put yours to shame

They have lectures from nine a.m. until five (and sometimes even six!) every. Single. Day. Compare this with your seven contact hours a week, and you start to feel pretty silly about complaining when you have to wake up in time for your one ‘early morning’ lecture – which is actually at midday.

When any maths is involved they are life savers

If you ever need to do any sort of maths, you can force them to teach you how to do it (or get them to just do it for you).

Any rogue statistics that comes into your modules will be automatically directed to them. As well as this, they’re great to have around when figuring out how much everyone owes for the WiFi bill, for the Uber back from Oceana or that late-night Deliveroo you all shared.

They make you feel smart when you have to proofread everything they write

They may know the chemical equations for just about anything, but boy are they bad at writing. Having to write a 1000 word report makes their eyes water, yet I do essays longer than that on a weekly basis.

Your email inbox will constantly be full of them begging you to proofread their essays, CVs and internship applications; your WhatsApp will be full of screenshots of their conversations with Tinder matches, wondering how they should respond to every “u up?”. If all the writing you did was actually for you, you’d be working for Deloitte and have about seven boyfriends by now.

Their socials are the best things ever

All science socials (but especially medic ones) are the best nights out ever, and that’s a fact. There must be something about all that pent-up energy that they get from having about a million lectures a week, because they will go absolutely wild on their socials, and that means you can
too.

They also have the best Christmas balls, that are actually nice and not just a rented room in Ocies. Yes, the ticket might cost what you'd normally spend on three nights in Jesters, but they usually have a photobooth so it's worth it.

Their course mates are all fit af

Do I even need to say any more? Medics and engineers are simply a world above everyone else at uni. That must be what the confidence of having secure post-degree job prospects does to you.

You’ll spend most of your time home alone, freezing your arse off

They’re all out at uni all day, and leave you entirely alone. This leaves you with two options: put the heating on and hope they don’t figure it out when the gas bill comes, or sit in your bedroom, surrounded by blankets and wait for the evening when your house will be warm and full again.

Yes, you could go to the library, but honestly who wants to do that outside of exam time?

You get to know the strangest facts

You may be able to recount the entire works of Shakespeare, but that’s nothing compared to what your scientist housemates can tell you. After a long day at uni, you can come home to be told far more than you would ever need to know about the prostate, given a detailed explanation of how to stitch up a banana, or witness a heated debate about how best to make a flamethrower.

When you’re ill, they give you scientific facts rather than sympathy

When you have a cold or the tickle of a sore throat, and mope around the house professing that you’re on the brink of death, they can provide you a long list of reasons (with scientific evidence) as to why you’re actually not going to die.

Yes, these explanations are all more than rational, but there’s nothing more annoying than when you’re just looking for a bit of sympathy and get facts in return.

It's always a great night when you manage to get them out mid-week

You can wave goodbye to your Sobar Tuesdays, unless you go to your other mate’s houses. No matter how hard you try to get them to come with you (“just come to pres, you’ll love it!”), they can’t be convinced and will just moan at you about the full day of labs that they have coming up.

However, when you do manage to convince them to sack off tomorrow’s lectures and come out with you, you get the best of both worlds. No one else in the house will be in the next day, so you get the great, hungover, post-walk of shame chats with them all to yourself.

You do have some great nights in with them, though. By the time you’re in third year, is there really anything better than a night where you do nothing but eat crisps and watch a kid’s film on Netflix?

They’re great at looking after you

Whenever you’re genuinely sad, ill, stressed or hungover, they will always be willing to run to Sainsbury's and get you a Diet Coke. Even though they have loads of work to do, they’ll always bring their laptops downstairs and sit with you on the sofa in your time of need, whilst you cry and watch Brooklyn 99.

For some reason scientists absolutely love to cook, so you can be sure that your house Christmas dinner will be absolutely banging. Every so often they’ll also take it upon themselves to surprise the house by cooking or baking something, and those days will be the best ones of your life.