Entirely subjective
From the moment you arrive in Oxford, you are more or less defined by your subject, especially when no one knows anything else about you. This seems to imply, though, that your degree course firmly and irrevocably decides who you are, what you are, and what will become of you. Personally this worries me. Does this mean I am irretrievably doomed to a life where I am incapable of finding my way anywhere and glare at people for misuse of apostrophes? We all know the familiar stereotypes: there's vomit on the floor, the lawyers have been having a party; people are running in fear, a physicist is talking about quantum mechanics. But are the stereotypes true, and if so, can we escape them? What I mean is - will I always be an English student?
Broadly speaking, students divide into two categories - Arts and Sciences. And never the twain shall meet. Scientists come in many species, but all share a frightening enthusiasm for calculators and an inexplicable attachment to black jeans with white shoes. Oh dear. They are also overwhelmingly male and will regale you with stories of "what my lecturer said about vectors" until you pluck out your own eyeballs just to have something to throw at them. Chemists, for example, spend entirely too much time surrounded by noxious gases and chemicals, not all of which are of their own making. Imagine what this does to the brain. Apparently someone dies in labs every year, so they are evidently a little too trigger-happy with those lethal substances. Avoid for your own safety. As for biologists, beware of anyone whose course involves live animal dissection. Don't eat lunch with them for a start.
To paraphrase someone famous: Some are born geeks, others have geekdom thrust upon them. Others still do not do Physics and thus avoid either pitfall. Physicists are largely poor, sad creatures who tell jokes with no words in them. They stay in their rooms a lot, listening to Cher and instant-messaging their next door neighbours from their computer - friend, teacher, mother, lover. Never touch a physicist's computer: they will tear your fingers off before you can say 'double-click'. Avoid them like the plague - they probably have it. PS - A note to mathematicians. It doesn't matter what it says on your degree. The name of your qualification is not the salient point. If your most meaningful relationship is with a logarithm, you are a scientist.
This is not to say, of course, that arts students are any better. They are mostly arts students because they are so lazy they would not get up even if you set fire to their feet. Let's face it - two set hours a week leaves entirely too much time for drinking tea, watching daytime TV and contemplating the meaning of life. While asleep, naturally. Because for most arts students, bed is the temple, centre and wellspring of all life. I should know, I am one. And as most of them are incapable of operating a ballpoint pen, let alone a PC, they tend to hang around college a lot, sipping five hundred cups of coffee and moaning about 'writer's block'.
The group to come in for the most flak is undoubtedly English students. Because they have no work to do, they spend their time doing things like performances of Hamlet in drag, or writing spurious articles in student publications (hang on...). Never watch television with them, as they will invariably turn the whole plot of Eastenders into a homoerotic, post-Oedipal drama filled with phallic imagery. Probably the worst thing about English students, though, is their tendency to dramatise every single little thing. Why work by day when you could have a 4 am crisis and threaten to immolate yourself on your own pen (Mightier than the sword anyway, apparently)? Why be stoical in the face of disasters such as losing your library card when you can weep, wring your hands, rent your garments and declare that your life is over? It's all about image, darling. Beware of anyone who thinks pentameters are more important than people. As for History, it is widely suspected that most people only do this subject for the cups of tea in the Faculty building. While foolish scientists toil away over hot crucibles (don't correct me if you don't use crucibles; I don't care), historians are drinking tea, reading Cosmo and occasionally writing essays on medieval genitalia. Or maybe that's just the people I know. Modern Linguists are another group to be feared. A year abroad lends an air of mystery, yet also results in weird foreign habits, such as wearing berets and eating squid. The ability to drop exotic phrases into conversation leads unavoidably to pretensions, polo necks, and obscure French hip-hop, and then there's nothing for it but the flame-thrower. In cases such as these, the arts-science divide appears to be unbridgeable.
The difference in the two categories is by no means always so obvious, however. Lawyers, for example, do not seem to fit clearly into either category. They are without exception either obscenely hardworking or disreputable drunkards, as if they can't decide whether to be artists or scientists. Despite being destined to end up as their own clients, they are the only people I know who will ever have any money. They actually plan their careers, whilst I am barely able to plan what socks I'm going to wear. The same goes for medics, who are obviously scientists, but behave like maniacs hell-bent on ending up on the other side of the stethoscope, suffering chronic cirrhosis, emphysema, and syphilis. The real dividing line is probably more in the attitude to proof and reason. Arts subjects teach you that conclusive answers are impossible, and to live by an ethos of intangibility, so much so that you end up unable to answer even the simplest of questions with a yes or no. 'Is the grass green?' Well, it all depends on your concept of 'greenness' and the assumption of blah blah blah. Scientists, on the other hand, learn that numbers and chemicals and whatever else you get up to (I have my suspicions) are supposed to provide right and wrong answers. So maybe this is how our degree decides the course of our lives - not what job we will have or what kind of person we will be, but whether we will search for answers, or give up and decide that there aren't any to be had.
31st Jan 2002