by Megan Stafford-Adatia
I’m a final year English Literature student—and this is where all those overflowing Psychology, Law, and Medicine students inspired by an aesthetic or parental pressure scoff—and you know what?
English is already looked down upon as a degree. I’m not going to sugarcoat it or pretend otherwise—though I bloody wish the department did!
The hit with reality came in year one. I studied Creative Writing and was politely told that writing does not pay. It just doesn’t. Unless you’re one in a million like that Harry Potter author, and even she had to wait ages for some literary appreciation. So, humbled as one might be, I returned to my main department modules.
Ah! Success! A publishing seminar. This could really open my eyes to branches that English could lead me to and prove everybody wrong—
“Publishing and copywriting doesn’t pay much, you have to work your way up’.”
Right. Work your way up? In publishing? Wouldn’t that mean becoming a published writer and we already heard that that profession doesn’t pay. So, that leaves me, in my uninventive brain, teaching.
Oh. God. No. We’ve seen across departments the major strikes at the University because teaching, even at its highest level as a professor, does not guarantee job stability, decent pay, or a chancellor that respects your department.
And you know what? I’m sick of it.
Us in the English department are marked out of 100 like the rest of you, and yet explicitly told when we begin the degree that ANYTHING ABOVE AN 80 IS IMPOSSIBLE UNLESS IT IS PUBLISHABLE WORK. So, we’re already at a disadvantage using a system that is not designed for students but for published writers, with professors admitting that it would be difficult for even them to achieve such a high mark.
So yes, you guessed it. A first is practically untouchable, and we all float in the 2:1 category. Of course, there’s steep marking too, so we’re usually stuck with 62, 65, or 68, and that’s for those of us who are fortunate enough to be deemed to have done well.
So yes. A good English essay is around a 62/100. Now, with a degree already looked down upon, being judged from the outside using those marks alone is brutal.
“You’re studying an easy degree and only just got above 50%?”
YEAH? YOU TRY ANALYSING THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN MARLOWE AND SHAKESPEARE! I bet half of you don’t even know who Marlowe is. Granted, I’m not sure it would help you much in your everyday lives, unlike the worthy expertise that comes from studying Freud. Love your mummy, do you?
And you know what?
What’s everyone got against English students? Words form our perception of everything. Even a Freudian slip (that’s for you psychology students out there) shows how words reflect our subconscious.
It helps form and express our perception of the world. You ever wondered why charisma was favoured even in the most unintelligent leaders? In retrospect, you think, “How on earth were they get elected?”, but it’s usually put down to “their way with words”, because words dictate people’s perceptions. It’s not until much later that people realise that they’ve been fooled.
And that’s the surface value of words: they express impressions.
Literature students study and analyse words, like psychologists analyse micro expressions, so in a way, we’re far more in tune with the reality behind the pretences people present of themselves.
Regardless, that was a side rant. Back to it. Now: the English department.
I’m in my final year, returned from a year abroad, and it’s like the university has been hit with the plague.
Departments are dropping all around me like flies: Film (there goes an interesting degree), Modern Languages (there goes the future of communication), and now they’re looking at the School of Education (now how did you figure that, genius?). We’re like the last department standing, armed with a Shakespeare shield and the pure hope in the literature Gods that the chancellor leaves us alone.
Student loans have gone up this year – 9.5k we pay! And now the University is broke? And now we’re knocking off departments? At least make the explanation believable.
And you know what?
I thought at least from all of this I would get to return to the classes I pay for. Well, firstly, strikes.
And, aha! Surprise! Final year is no lectures and seminars full of tutors declaring “you can do it yourselves, you don’t need me!”
Final year English has turned into a glorified, paying-out-your-butt book club. It consists of seminars, which involve discussing with other students the books I have read—things I could do at a coffee shop 101.
I assumed final year students, with out freedom, would still receive a similar amount of contextual briefing about chosen books, but I suppose this year we’re just paying for the reading list.
But hey, at least we now have an AI declaration form!
Right, because self-reports are notoriously valid… Even better, in first year I was taught how to use an M dash for academic writing. Now we’re told to avoid them, so our work doesn’t look AI-generated—you know AI, the system based on mimicking human writing? The same human writing that English Literature studies?
So, little recap: if your writing is not sophisticated enough, you’re stuck at a 2:1, and if it’s too sophisticated, it risks being flagged as AI. Yeah. Welcome to Education in the UK.
And you know what?
I’m sick of institutions deflecting with the “but we’re trying, it’s our first time doing this” excuse. Because you know what? If it’s your first time wiping your arse and somebody told you a better way to do it, would you argue it’s your first time or would you clean up your shit?
But I suppose I’ll see you all at graduation, where we’re all united as departments by the Comic Con-style wizards handing us the stand-in degree certificates rather than the lecturers who helped us get said degree (or the therapists in the first place).