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Sunday, 16 March 2003 10:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
taimatsuWent to visit parents with Robert. Was good. It was very nice to see my family again, and they were touchingly affectionate. More stuff soon; managed to have sane conversation with mother, which was good. Actually on Friday I had a great hour-long phone conversation with her (this is vanishingly rare) all about English as a degree subject. I know at least one of my nice readers did English - got any thoughts? I'm considering it as an option.
I'm at Robert's at the moment, and we've just watched the film 'Save the Last Dance' which was really rather good. We both like romantic comedies and generally romantic kind of relationships films, so this is not a surprise. I've decided we need more Reese Witherspoon, though (after our 'Legally Blonde' DVD session a couple of weeks back, and so his video of 'Election' could be inching up the viewing list.
Robert cooked, too, and produced some absolutely delicious fresh tagliatelle with bacon, tomato and onion. I was most impressed, and finished the lot even after eating four kiwi-fruit.
Notes to self: pay in cheque. Pay bills. PRINT DAMN ROTA ALREADY. Do some cleaning. Move the ironing. Call the LEA. Email Serena at the agency. Yes, Krys, I'm sorry - my plans for tomorrow revolve around housework.
I'm at Robert's at the moment, and we've just watched the film 'Save the Last Dance' which was really rather good. We both like romantic comedies and generally romantic kind of relationships films, so this is not a surprise. I've decided we need more Reese Witherspoon, though (after our 'Legally Blonde' DVD session a couple of weeks back, and so his video of 'Election' could be inching up the viewing list.
Robert cooked, too, and produced some absolutely delicious fresh tagliatelle with bacon, tomato and onion. I was most impressed, and finished the lot even after eating four kiwi-fruit.
Notes to self: pay in cheque. Pay bills. PRINT DAMN ROTA ALREADY. Do some cleaning. Move the ironing. Call the LEA. Email Serena at the agency. Yes, Krys, I'm sorry - my plans for tomorrow revolve around housework.
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Date: Sunday, 16 March 2003 03:25 pm (UTC)re: english as a degree, it is great as long as you really love reading! sounds obvious but you have to do tons and tons, and be prepared for it to sometimes ruin your love of a good book.
pippa xxx
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Date: Monday, 17 March 2003 02:44 am (UTC)Dunno if I count as a nice reader :) but IMHO you should do what you want to do, rather than what other people think you should do. That may be an Art degree, or may be an English degree, or may be Not Doing A Degree At All. (A degree isn't something that you have to do in order to graduate to adulthood, you know.)
Unless you want to teach English, an English degree is no better or worse than any other Arts degree (I'm assuming you're tending towards the Arts). In terms of expected salary, recent stats suggest that we'd have been better leaving school at 18 than trying to do Arts/Humanities degrees; but salary isn't the only important thing in life.
Basically, unless you want to go for jobs where a specific degree is required, what you do at university isn't going to drastically change what paths are available to you in the future -- so do whatever will make you (that's you, Lucy, not your mother, okay?) happy.
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Date: Monday, 17 March 2003 06:12 am (UTC)I haven't seen Save the Last Dance, but I am a big Julia Stiles fan - I loved both 10 Things I Hate About You and The Business of Strangers. 10 Things also has Alison Janey in it - CJ from the West Wing.
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Date: Monday, 17 March 2003 10:07 am (UTC)I do want to do a degree, I just don't want to rush into anything. I really am standing up to my mother, honest :)
The point of the question was me trying to work out what will make me happy. I had always dismissed English because at about 8-11 I hated writing book reviews; and my English A-level teachers weren't all that inspiring. My mother made me reconsider that. What were the best and the worst bits about the subject (as opposed to Oxford system ick) when you studied it? ƒ
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Date: Monday, 17 March 2003 10:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Monday, 17 March 2003 11:45 am (UTC)Hmmm. I'm not sure I can do it as a "best things" / "worst things", because a lot of that depended on which periods we were studying at the time, and that's just a personal preference. The work all followed very much the same mould no matter what we were studying, but I don't know how different English at Oxford would be from English elsewhere.
It's certainly not about book reviews; but you knew that. You need to be able to engage critically with the text rather than just thinking about whether you like it; you need to be able to read analytically, and you need to be prepared to have your reading-for-pleasure ruined for ever by the inability to read anything, even Mills & Boon, without reading it as an English student. ... Okay, that's a clichéd thing to say about studying English, but to an extent it's true -- once you've started doing it, it's very hard to stop doing it.
I would say "You need to be happy to write lots of essays", but to be honest I suspect Oxford is a lot heavier in that area than other universities may be. I remember meeting up with schoolfriends in the holidays and laughing (hysterically) when they started complaining about having to produce 3 essays in a term -- we had to do 2 per week for two years!
What did you enjoy about studying English at school? If you didn't enjoy any of it, it's hard for me to say whether you'll enjoy any of it at university... and it'll probably be harder to get to grips with it. Which bits (if any) made you feel that it could inspire you, if it wasn't for the poor teaching? What did your mother say to make you feel that it was an option when you didn't think it was before?
What do you want from your degree?