Soapbox - 10

Those of you who have done or are doing Humanities degrees will probably be well-aware of the scorn you have to face telling people, especially older relatives, about your degree, your areas of interest, and your future plans.

This scorn, though repeated many times, never pierced my idealistically thick skin because I adore my areas of interest. I have dreams which feature political philosophy; I apply the philosophies I learnt in Gender Studies in my normal life, and I am proud to have friends who major in film and can teach me more. I think of my degree as invaluable – I wouldn’t be who I am not without it – even if I wasn’t always so hard-working or ‘present’.
So, I have a huge amount of understanding for people doing seemingly ‘impractical’ degrees – I’m the kind of person who gets in an argument with my family defending the student who got a scholarship to do post-graduate anthropology research on ‘bogans’ or a phD on Xena. Despite this idealistic streak, I also have a lot of respect for people who decide their job isn’t going to be their first priority, their lifestyle is, so they decide to do something practical like Accounting – no doubt leading to a beautiful house in a leafy suburb and annual tropical holidays. Fair enough. (Note: I have met some very surprising accountants who do love organising numbers, but most have told me in a moment of honesty that they know their jobs are boring, but their non-working life makes up for it). 
What I don’t understand, and never will (unless one of you strange creatures explains it to me), is those of you who are doing an entirely impractical degree that you don’t even like. What. The. Hell. Unfortunately, the degree in which I came across this the most is MFCO – Media, Film and Communication. And I’m not just talking about people taking a first-year paper here and there; I’m talking about people who are doing it as their major. (NB: Reports tell me there are also several of these students milling about in Art History and English). To be clear, I think all of these degrees are wonderful and, of course, also completed by deeply passionate, fascinating individuals. But in every tutorial group, there is someone clearly bored out of their mind making inane comments which illustrate their contempt for the topic and everyone else in class. Now, I’m not saying everyone has to love what they do, but I really have to ask myself – what, precisely, do these kids think they’re going to do with their amazing Bachelor of Arts, major: MFCO, once they graduate? No one gets anywhere in these fields unless they have a burning love for them, and even that is often not enough. Being bored is fine and good, but if you’re going to be bored and contemptuous of your topic anyway, why not study something that will at least make you bored and rich? With high job security?
Actually, I don’t care what you do, but just please, stop sitting in 300-level MFCO tutorials asking “So, Tarantino is an auteur, right?”, arguing that all modern art simply is not art and complaining when we have to do essays, because “I just thought we’d be watching movies.”*
*All actual examples.
 
Posted 2:44pm Sunday 11th July 2010 by Critic.