14 things you’ll only understand if you’re an arts student

1. Getting your reading list for next year and telling yourself you’ll bash it out over summer

Ulysses? I’ll get through that in a couple of hours…

2. But you always resort to using Sparknotes and Wikipedia anyway.  Even Shmoop will do.

The saviour

3. Seeing someone on your course looking for the same book in the library and being prepared for a Hunger Games-style fight to the death

Looking for Bowring’s ‘Report on the Prussian Commercial Union’

 4. Being atrociously under the word limit on an essay and resorting to talking absolute bull

5. Attempting to reference, with mixed results.

6. Experiencing that euphoric feeling when you find the right article on JSTOR

7. Realising that you’re essentially paying £9000 a year to teach yourself

 8.  But you still sleep through your one lecture a week, despite your housemate’s best efforts

9. Wanting to flee after accidentally looking up in a tutorial where you haven’t read anything

10. But then experiencing that mixed feeling of smugness and disbelief when you actually manage to wing it

11.  But let’s take a moment to think about those awkward tutorial silences…

12.  Or when freshers complain about their formatives

13. Pretending not to hear whenever anyone mentions the word ‘dissertation’

 14. And, of course, getting your hopes up when a job asks for ‘a degree in any discipline’