Oxford English Lit students—anyone here?

I read History at Oxford a long time ago, but several of my friends there read English, and one of them teaches English at Oxford and publishes extensively. I think that the English Faculty maintains excellent standards. It still requires undergraduates to study Old English, so they get to read Beowulf in the original. Unlike some universities, where you can obtain a degree in English without reading a word of Shakespeare, at Oxford you read everything that he wrote which survives. The university and some of the colleges between them own several First Folios. The Oxford English degree allows you to immerse yourself in English literature from the last thousand years.
English undergraduates may choose to go to lectures, but many of them prefer just to work in the libraries. They write lots of essays, and read all the time, but are under less pressure than people studying STEM subjects and Law. English undergraduates have sufficient time to be the coolest kids in college, with the best music collections, clothes, hairdos, and what not, because they don't have as much work to do as others. NB they do still have to work.
My friends who read English went on to a variety of careers in television, film, the law, publishing, journalism, and academia. One of them is a published poet, another a successful playwright and screen writer, and another a successful actor.