So, as the title should suggest (I don’t know whether it actually does, I’m writing the body of this blog in advance), I am going to be breaking from the regular format for a lil’ opinion bloggity-woggity, or “rant” if you so please. As this is a rare occurrence for PBOCS, I must first gather my thoughts…
Ah, you’re still here. Let’s get down to the nitty-gritty then, shall we? I’ll talk about Arts first and then I’ll probably go off on several random tangents before (hopefully) arriving at some kind of witty yet informative closing remark. Don’t look at me like that, I don’t plan these things.
Arts. When I first heard the term in relation to college and university, I assumed it something to do with, well, arts and crafts. How wrong I was. Any Americans who may have the misfortune of reading this probably have something similar in your (albeit far more exclusive) universities. When one takes Arts at a university, they pick one main subject to study along with a number of other subjects, usually covering several different fields.
For instance, take my friend Niamh, whom I shall be using as an example at certain points throughout this blog. She is studying Arts at University X (it’s not actually called University X. I am substituting X for the actual name. However, I think we can all agree that would be one fucking badass university). She is reading Psychology (“majoring” for you snazzy Americans), and also studying English and two other subjects. I can’t remember what they are. That’s not important. Anyway, we’d met up in the city and were conversing at length about third-level education. The general feeling I got from Niamh was that, barring Psychology, she was feeling rather out of her depth (of course, no offense meant, but Niamh always seems to feel out of her depth. But I digress).
Niamh is not exactly what you would consider an English nerd. At least, she doesn’t consider herself one. She reads books, yes, and she did do extremely well in her final English exam back in secondary school, but books aren’t exactly her passion, so to speak. As such, the (badass) University X English class is rather intimidating. There they are, talking casually about literary greats (you know, Gatsby, Catcher, Winny The Pooh), and she’s sort of left floundering in their wake. Of course, all this information is coming from a biased source, Niamh being Miss Insecure-About-Her-Own-Abilities six years running, but still. She also told me about the auditions on the first day of Drama club, but that was kind of understandable. University X waits for no one.
I can’t quite remember where I was going with this… oh yeah, that’s right, why the hell are all these many and varied subjects plonked in to one thingy? Why can’t they be their own thingy? Why must one study a main subject and several subordinates? Surely the point of university is to narrow one’s field of study, to hone one’s skills in a certain area, to specialize? In the spirit of fairness, I will accept that sometimes another language can be handy in certain lines of work, and Arts is a good path if you want to go for secondary-level teaching. But still, the whole thing just doesn’t sit right with me for some reason.
Me and my close circle of friends (barring Niamh and one or two others) all went to different colleges, but we all studied specialized subjects like Software Development, Business and, in my case, TV & Film. Narrow (but not too narrow), specialized areas. What, in my eyes, third-level education is all about. If you have any views on this, please enlighten me in the comments.
Back to Drama club… damn, University X clubs seem like they are really, really bitchy and exclusive. Apologies to anyone who puts just as much work in to clubs as their education, but seriously, auditions on the first day? This may be the norm for Drama clubs everywhere, but not everyone joining is gonna want to be thrown into the mix like that so quickly. The film club seems cool though. This one guy came up to me in the city (I was carrying my tripod around quite openly) and asked me if I was in the University X film club. He called me “dude”. I would’ve asked him for an application, but of course, it’s for University X students only. Clearly I am not badass enough.
Finally, for anyone worried about Niamh, the conversation I mentioned took place at least a month ago, just a few weeks after start of college. She now seems to be settled in all right, from what she has relayed to me via text.
Yay for blogs that don’t really go anywhere and pose far too many questions! If you are reading this blog, please comment. I want to know just how few of you guys there are, so I can tell how much slacking I’ll be able to get away with.
