steve kydd
getting wasted - the English way
The Department of English at the University of Dundee has been consistently rated among the very best in the UK. Steve Kydd graduated in 2001 with a first class MA in English, winning the department's Sam Selvon Prize for "outstanding achievement in English studies". In his own words he is "still hanging around Dundee Uni" doing a PhD on "The Postmodern Vampire:
Vampire Culture, 1975 to the Present" - which clearly gives him plenty of time to speculate on the attractions of studying English in the City of Discovery. He writes:
As any self-respecting science student will tell you, English is a complete waste of time. In waster hierarchy, English students aren't quite
up there with art students (waster Royalty) and they'll never outrank
philosophy students, but they're wasters none the less. And as
comfortable members of waster nobility, they enjoy the privileges this brings: an eight-hour week, Wednesdays and Fridays off, a relaxed
attitude towards lecture attendance, and the opportunity to retain a straight face whilst calling reading poetry 'serious academic research'. Dundee Uni has one of the finest English departments in Britain and
is therefore among the best and most esteemed places in the country
to waste your time: here you get a much higher quality of time-wasting for your money. All you have to contend with is people, typically
harassed and peeved Science students who have a 9-5 day, telling you that you've got it easy.
It's important, of course, not to believe any of this. The smaller amount of teaching time is misleading in terms of the actual
amount of work you've to do. On top of all the usual essays, exams,
presentations and so on, you're often being asked to read upwards
of four novels a week. And that includes those brick-thick Victorian ones that are a load of rubbish. It's just that, on the whole, English students don't require constant surveillance. Unlike, say, chemistry where you could burn your thumbs off at any given moment, you don't need to be supervised by a responsible and fully qualified adult when all you're doing is reading "Finnegans Wake". But that doesn't mean there isn't a lot of effort involved - anyone who's actually tried to read "Finnegans Wake" will testify to this.
The thing is, people have a tendency to measure the value of an academic subject on the basis of how dull it is. If it doesn't involve hours of mind-numbing tedium, then it just isn't worthwhile. And if it's in any way enjoyable, it shouldn't even get a look in. English gets a rough ride because students spend their time dealing with books
and plays whose primary function is to entertain. It can't be serious
or important if it's being enjoyed. Anyone who follows this school
of thought and is suspicious of English's claim to worthiness can
rest assured that it's easily capable of being just as relentlessly
boring as any other subject, if not more so.
"But English is totally pointless - it's just reading books," people will helpfully point out. This is true in the same way that chemistry's just mixing stuff together to see what happens, maths is just mucking about with numbers, engineering's just glorified Meccano, and law is just learning to steal money from the general public in a variety of creative ways. "You've got it easy," people insist. This is nonsense,
of course. Admittedly, when you see English students wandering into
a tutorial where they're given a cup of coffee to sip while quietly discussing some obscure 18th century poetry, while at the other side of campus science students are knuckling down for a gruelling 3 hour lab session, it might appear that it's an easy option. It might look like they're having a high old time. But really, it's very hard work. Honest. That coffee doesn't drink itself, you know.
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