People who belittle academia bother me

Haha! Okay, Lidka got there first (just)!

And yes, defensive much? But really...as English students we get this ALL THE TIME< and it really is quite annoying!

And yes, defensive much? But really...as English students we get this ALL THE TIME< and it really is quite annoying!

Now, I'm going to get off TSR and go read a good book.

*runs away*

I'll throw something at one of them the next time I hear "How does studying Shakespeare help the people around you?".

That's because you do a doss subject.


*runs away*

I'm on Moll Flanders at the moment. Hence TSR.

It's because they reckon they're gonna save the world with their groundbreaking physics. Whereas actually, they're going to kill us all. What has a historian ever harmed? Sensibilities?

It's because they reckon they're gonna save the world with their groundbreaking physics. Whereas actually, they're going to kill us all. What has a historian ever harmed? Sensibilities?

I never claimed it to be "highly employable over any other degree"; don't inflate my words into something that wasn't there. What I said was is that it's just as respectable as any other degree - it doesn't deserve the bashing it gets. English students - we don't "major" here - rarely, in fact, become writers or literary critics (or actors, or journalists, or teachers, or academics... etc. ) , and I don't see why we should - do you expect every scientist to work in a lab, or every linguist to become a translator? A degree doesn't - or shouldn't, if it's worth its salt - equip you with only one skill useful in one place. What most English students come out of university with are transferable skills - we may not need to write essays any more, but employers can still use decent communication skills, a good command of articulate written and spoken English, the ability to read quickly and critically, a knowledge of current affairs (and past ones!) and the ability to see multiple sides to an argument (you can see why a fair few English students enter the Law). And depending on what modules you picked/course you did, there's always the foreign languages, the linguistics theory, the theatrical and musical knowledge, experience of film and filming, book-binding, psychology, art history... Oh, I love my subject.

Sorry for my misinterpretation. I agree with all of that. I interpreted very employable as meaning more employable than an academic degree in most other subjects, which is why I objected. I understand the concept of transferable skills, etc, and think English grants them just as well as any other subject and thereby opens one to a wide variety of careers, but I don't think English is particularly rich in transferable skills over any of the other subjects you mentioned, which is why I said what I did. (By the way, I don't think you think English is superior to other subjects in terms of transferable skills either, but my original comment was based on that interpretation of what you said earlier.)

English = employable, just not better.

Well, I don't know about that...!

OK, I could have put this in GD, but I thought here would attract some interested respondents. When young you tend to think that Oxbridge and academia is the pinnacle of achievement then that changes. You come across people who think they are more savvy or 'real world' people who belittle academia as dull and academics as lacking savvy. I guess I'm referring to the corporate world, perhaps law, people with their own businesses, patents taken out on things etc. Sensitive intellectual souls are often very different animals and these people can make me feel distinctly uncomfortable. I guess high flying academic people you might think would not let this bother them, but it did and does me. When people exhibit this rubbishing of academia it actually gets to me and makes my families achievements, and my efforts in that direction feel insignificant.
It also makes me feel like I should be striving for something else which is wrong, because I don't want to strive in a world I'm suited too. Why are these so called real world people pushy and disrespectful towards academia in this way?
Does anyone else feel this way about the divide between these sorts of people and them? Feel pushed around by their values? Are they just derisive of academia because they are not talented in that way, or is there some real world savvy that makes them above it?

Taste and ethnic minorities:

Nick Griffin was born in Barnet and grew up in Halesworth in rural Suffolk, England. Initially educated at two Suffolk public schools, St Felix School (in Southwold) and Woodbridge School, Griffin studied history and then law at Downing College, Cambridge.

analyze

Wow, I'm fairly sure I just felt the ground shake from the power of the collective intake of breath from all the English students on this forum...