Wednesday, February 22, 2012

Sincerely, a proud arts student.





'English only, no?'


I don't have count of how many times people have told me this when I sigh a tad too loudly that there's a lot to study or way too much work to do.


To begin with, there's a lot more to the degree than the composition and comprehension luxury than 12th std last offered. There's literature from different countries, centuries, eras, feminism, criticism, linguistics, media studies, communicative studies, journalism, popular culture studies; essays, short stories, novels, movies, songs, poems and concepts to analyze, unlimited presentations, short films, ads and projects to create and most of all, endure it all under the societal hood that has a pre-conceived notion that we either have a carnival running behind us or that we sit and bake cakes and sing rhymes all day.


For all you oh-so-cool-so-difficult-and-complex-to-study engineering students: No, we're not complaining. But there's a lot more to arts, you know?



My very good friend Deva adds, "If you want to talk about English, read Neruda, read Hemingway, read Doestovsky, read D.H Lawrence and read Blake. Then talk about it being not interesting or it being easy. I shall then consider listening to your argument."

Mind you, he's a CS student from IIT-M with an average GPA of 9.something.


P.s: You might've been right about the carnival bit. We are capable of creating one instead of endlessly groaning about the work load we tend to get.





-        Just Someone.

3 comments:

Skapade said...

About time someone told off those unbelievably irritating buggers.

Oh oh. Especially those maama maamis who go "Aiyo! What will happen to you now? B.A English ah? Atleast B.Sc IT eduthirukalaame?"

IN. YOUR. FACES.

PS. Epic Picture! :) So proud of you.

mrNumbers said...

Any subject can be easy or difficult, but to excel in it, it's never easy. But I think you will agree with me that some of the other professional courses are more competitive.

Maitri Harys said...

I soooo agree with your view - even though I'm not in B.A. Literature... A pity, may be.

Everytime I have an English hour, though, I stare at your time-tables and try to figure out what those abbreviations stand for - American Literature, Poetical Criticism, Film Critism, Indian Literature, European Literature... Let's just say, my mouth frequently dropped open at the mention of rarer subjects, every now and then!

I know people who find it boring and consuming to just read one complicated piece of literature (anything more than 35 pages of fiction is complicated them), but to become efficient enough in foriegn literature enough to criticize it - only you English know the knack. Now, don't you? ;)