I know I'm on the wrong course and I don't know what to do

If you want to try it out for a bit then give it a go, honestly you may be surprised that after a while once your properly engaged with the subject, you want to carry on.
However, if your pretty sure (and it looks like you are) on the fact that you don't want to carry on the course, see if there is another course which takes your interest.
Or are you not able to take a gap year and try again in later?
Also, if your academic advisor is not replying to your emails is there not anyone else you could go to? Like maybe the head of year one of your course or maybe your course leader, I'm not sure whether they're the same person or not...


Posted from TSR Mobile

I have no clue what I'm doing and I don't want to study a degree I don't want to do to get a job I don't want to do and be left thinking what if?

You need to find out how, if at all, your different options will affect your student loans, because it sounds like whatever answers you get to that question will affect your decision making. Since you can't make an informed decision until you know that, there's not much point in worrying over what the right choice is yet—focus on clarifying your situation and the consequences of your choices before you focus on working out which choice is right for you.

With any luck your personal tutor will get back to you sooner rather than later but there may be other sources of advice you can go to. Many student unions, for example, employ trained and experienced advisers who are independent and confidential—I strongly recommend that you check to see if yours does, and then talk to them if they're available. Even if they don't have a full professional advice service, they may well have representatives who are more used to dealing with student problems than you. Do also see if your uni's careers service can help you.

English isn't going to lock you into one English-related career path, as it's not a vocational degree. My first job after an English degree was in medicine. So don't be afraid of having to care about verbs for the rest of your life. But it does sound like you really ought to be giving archaeology a shot if it's possible to set that up.

(By the way. This probably won't make any difference, and it's not a branch of English that first year undergraduates normally get to do much of, but there is a subfield within English where it intersects with archaeology—book history, or 'the archaeology of the book', which involves a lot of careful work, sometimes quite empirical work, with surviving physical books to work out how they were made, why, who for, who read them &c &c.)

I don't know whether this will be any consolation but I'll say it anyway in case it is: whether you do archaeology or not, your degree isn't going to define you for the rest of your life. It sounds like you're in a tough spot, but rather than contemplating the long-term future too much try to focus on the concrete things you need to do in the next few weeks to clarify your situation and then decide on a course of action.