Hello again! It’s Grace, coming to you live from Oxford! Now that the Michaelmas term has well and truly started, I can finally provide an opinion on the academics here.
The short answer: Humanities at Oxford are no joke.
Here’s the long answer:
While I may not be in Medford, I’m certainly still an avid reader of the Daily. Recently, one of my friends, Max, published a think-piece on the importance of humanities, and the article certainly achieved its goal of making me think. I spent a long time wondering: How are humanities perceived in higher education, and does it vary based on what institution you are attending?
In my experience, the answer is 100% yes.
I’ve known for a long time that I wanted to major in English. Writing has been one of my great passions in life; however, the excitement I feel for literature isn’t exactly shared by everyone. When I tell people about it — family, friends, strangers, you name it — I usually get one of two reactions:
- “Oh, so you want to be a teacher?” Believe it or not, you can do more with an English degree than be a teacher! (For the record, I find teaching super impressive — how do you work with children every day?)
- “What are you planning on doing with that?” Still working on a good response to that one…
I understand that humanities is no longer the most traditional educational route these days, but it does irk me how different the general perception is regarding humanities versus STEM.
The reaction here, however, is completely different. When I tell other students about my English studies, I get the response of approving nods or even impressed whistles. “You must be really smart,” people say, which really boggles my mind. I’m not an engineer or a computer science student, so why are you saying that to me?
It may seem shocking, but that’s just the atmosphere here at Oxford. Everything here has a basis in tradition, and with grammar, rhetoric and logic (aka the trivium) being essential to medieval Oxford’s curriculum, it makes sense that a certain reverence for English has survived centuries later.
How many people do you think would be interested in attending a lecture about Victorian literature at 11 a.m. on a Monday? I was expecting 20 people maximum, but it was a full house — like, over 100 people. Isn’t that crazy?
In my heart, no one could ever compete with the Tufts Department of English — East Hall is essentially my home away from home — but Oxford certainly does not come to play. I mean, Oxford is currently building a new humanities building (the Schwarzman Centre) costing £185 million, or about $240 million, in addition to the preexisting separate faculty buildings for each department.
I’ve also really appreciated the ability to simply sit in on whatever lecture I want, as there are endless options for the humanities here. Yesterday, I went to a British history lecture about the Norman Conquest on a whim — not because I had to, but because I thought it would be interesting. I went to a lecture on the dramatic monologue this morning; tomorrow, I plan on going to two lectures on the English Renaissance.
On top of these lectures, of course, I also have tutorials with my professor, Oxford’s famous teaching style in which classes are conducted one-on-one. I’ll save my thoughts for the next column (spoiler alert: I do really enjoy them). If you’re a humanities major and you’re thinking about applying to Oxford, I say throw your name in the hat because there’s a whole other academic world out there waiting for you.
Thanks for reading along!
Grace x
