/lit/ - Literature

>>15464874
hahahahahaha pretty nice takedown, and I'm always going to enjoy roasting humanitiesfags, but this idea that a degree in literature is so far below a STEM degree is pretty fucking stupid.
As a STEMfag myself I have to say an undergraduate degree in any STEM science is not going to make you suddenly immune to barista dead ends, you need to be in the top 10% of your class or a uniquely creative/enterprising guy to make a career out of it.
So if any STEMlords are feeling smug just remember there but for the grace of god go you.

>>15464874
English degree here. Waste of fucking time. Don't do it unless you are actually planning to have a career that you know you can rely on. Waste of fucking time. Don't bother doing an English degree. Waste of fucking time and it goes nowhere. Wish I'd realised that earlier.

>>15464892
haha sup English bro, I got my English degree last year and still can't find work. what are you doing?

>>15464881
>As a STEMfag myself I have to say an undergraduate degree in any STEM science is not going to make you suddenly immune to barista dead ends
that's false in CS, virtually 100% employability in high paying jobs but yeah, good luck with a sociology bullshit degree

>>15464874
I'm so glad I majored in the Classics.

The obvious fact that a degree in humanities is a complete mistake shouldn't be confused with calling humanities useless
Humanities should be everyone's hobby and personal pursuit

>>15464892
i just received an english MA (funded) from a prestigious school and wanted to second the sheer idiocy of the academic humanities in general and english in particular

>>15464909
if you actually learned greek + latin, then this is def a vastly better use of your time than english

>>15464902
The propaganda they push on CS majors is made worse by the natural autism of one who is drawn to CS, who takes their clumsy attempt at manipulating the value of labor in a new market as fact because it validates his secret suspicion of himself, all along he knew- I am valuable! I am more valuable than I seem! I am more valuable than my peers believe!

All while he drives down his own stock,
he floods towards this promised land of
milk and honey,
rupi Kaur's feet drawing him in
finding himself in yet another hive
A storage shelter for autists.

Where are we? What are we?
rows on rows of murmur,
dingy slogan shirts
a cum stained figurine
nimble, pale, thin fingers
like spiders-
no, for spiders are natural as
a sun, as a running youth who
finds their dusty refuse in the underbrush
intolerable

rather, a cancer
organic and yet- overproliferated
taking on that property of
that which self replicates beyond repair

the fingers are metastases-
they reach forth, corrupting

and yet, they know not
what they do.
They can only do
what they were told by
nature, nurture, culture, etc.

Foolish computer scientist-
don't you see that
with your own simulated "passion,"
you corrupt your field

in our haste to define yourself you
have cheapened the very essence, you
have eased the way of the venture capitalist, you
have found a way to be independent and yet
still suckle at the teat of your dear mother.

Or-
Ignore the lies and
Forge your own path-
Avanti e Coraggio!

>>15464961
Beautiful

How do you all feel about middle degrees, so to speak.

Political science, economics, business / public administration, etc.

I have an English degree, not lit, but general English, and i think it helped with my approach to the subject. I treat English as a set of skills to be master i.e. rhetoric, speech, argument, analysis, research, etc., and that's how I marketed myself to businesses when looking for work. I work as a project planner for an engineering company, and I get to use my abilities in research, analysis (of data), and argument (writing proposals, creating and arguing for projects) in order to move the company forward and get us contracts with various people. A degree in lit by itself is stupid, but a general degree in English can be useful if you treat it as a set of skills

>>15464892
Agreed. What a waste of time. I regret studying EngLit in university so much. Wish I had studied Law or something and at least been employable. Had a vague idea of going into journalism, but honestly even that industry is absolutely fucked now.

>>15465000
If it's likely to get you a job, go for it. University for many (and not only humanities) students is just an excuse not to work for three years. I guess I feel into that category, and I feel ashamed that I did.

>>15465000
business and public admin are fine, economics and polisci are a shitshow unless you live in a major metropolitan center and actively gun for internships asap

>>15465034
Already in public policy and economics, career prospects here where I live are pretty good. Doing some philosophy classes on the side.

Some friends of mine by virtue of their parents are able to pursue English / Phil / other humanities degrees essentially for free at decent unis. Kinda wish I would be in that position, in that case, I would for sure have done history to entertain myself.

Any free book site you anons know. I want to read Plato and get my brain bigger during quarantine cus the library’s closed. Anon do your press ups and get shit done

>>15465057
Huh, that's interesting. I'm in the Netherlands and the job market here for a dedicated econ degree is pretty good, due to the high demand from private research institutes and government itself.

Agree for pol science, really have to be exceptional to have a chance at any institute for an academic career or whatever.

>>15464961
Well done

Unless you really stick to it and are very smart youll prob end up teaching middle or high schoolers best case

>>15464874
Kind of hilarious

>>15464892
>>15464874

Was literally in a thread on /sci/ about people who wish they hadnt done STEM

I knew a guy who did English at Cambridge. He had literally zero exams in the first year. He just had some books to read.

>>15465197
I memed myself into STEM at 18 because I was good at maths. After a couple of years I have noticed that the lack of interest in my field of study's practical side would leave me depressed in a dead end job that I'm going to hate. I'm thinking of taking the risk and restarting with something that I actually love (It won't drop me into debt. no tuition in Germany).

Would phil/lit make any sense in that case? (my conclusion was inspired by Robert Musil in the sense that he left his engineering career to commit himself to studying philosophy, but maybe the times have changed too much since then)

>>15464953
Yup. I studied Latin in high school thanks to AP classes and moved to ancient Greek during uni. We actually spent our time studying literature and the art of writing/reading rather than social problems for contemporaries.

>>15464892
I’m finishing my dissertation right now, I back this, don’t English lit unless you want to enter the pyramid scheme that is humanities academia, if you just like reading and would be happy making 40-50k a year become a plumber or something

>>15464881
STEMfags are in for a rude awakening in a few years when their salaries are crater by a flooded job market and automation

The reality is that there are too many universities and too many people going to college who don't need to. It's mostly an Anglosphere problem.

>>15465513
depends if you need the money or not

Watch Picnic at Hanging Rock, it's the best possible depiction of humanities education

>>15465624
finish the phrase: n_ol_ber_lism

>>15464874
Making snark anonymously is cowardly
And yes, I know where I am

>>15464924
very thoughtful, and correct! though I have a lot of respect for english students. in the grand scheme of things their degree is not useful, but interpreting texts is not easy, and over the course of doing something like english lit at least you obtain the ability to analyse what you read in a much better way to the average reader.
should the 'value' of their degree be determined by how useful it is in the field of work? no! analysing literature goes beyond just the english faculty, it has uses in psychoanalysis, classics, philosophy. however, I think there are a lot of more interesting topics to pursue for me personally, hence I am not an english student. I also think people who choose to study it should think about how much interest they find it, and whether the issues it'll cause for them entering the workforce are worth the pursuit of the subject. if this is the case, then fair enough, but you cannot have both.

>>15464909
classics is also a nice degree to pursue. you guys have it v hard, at least at my uni

>>15464874
>nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo you can't study English, how will you use it in your future career of staring at python all day in service of your corporate tech overlords?

>>15464874
>>15464881
I majored in English Literature and never got my degree because I never took my last class (Spanish 2). I now make 185k a year. not even lying AMA

the people i know doing english are either wokescolds or heavy twitter users, who spend most of their time outside their degree doing drama/student news/etc. not many of them seem to have their actual interests coincide with what they study.

>>15467108
is a 185k salary enough to pay off a debt for a degree that you didnt finish because you couldn't be bothered to take one final class?

Why do burgers have to do more than one subject at Uni, what kind of bet hedging bullshit is this?

>>15467133
I'm debt free

>>15467108
>I now make 185k a year. not even lying AMA
What do you do for a living?

>>15467178
and yet without a college degree. who cares about money, being a dropout gives you an undesirable reputation within any educated circle of people. should have taken that spanish class anon!

>>15464902
the market demand for comp sci is artificially inflated to justify outsourcing. These effects will be present but come in waves.

The forefront of the humanities is the intersection of anthropology, evolutionary psychology, politics, and art. Yet for some reason academia has retreated even further into a fart-sniffing wonderland of pure constructivism.

This won't last, but it sure is annoying while it's here.

Imagine studying the Western canon alongside the function of narrative in human society and human psychology.

>>15467208
I'm in tech sales
>>15467213
>being a dropout gives you an undesirable reputation within any educated circle of people.
I don't really think about going back to school ever. I unironically think people are more impressed with me than with a Stanford grad or any other big name school, all other things being equal, because they think of me as someone who bootstrapped his way to success. I'm well-spoken and clean cut so I generally fly under the radar anyway.

>>15467213
>being a dropout gives you an undesirable reputation within any educated circle of people.

I'm a doctor and I despise your educated circles of people

>>15464874
If people want to learn about a subject, let them do it. People from all epochs and cultures have written, read and studied literature and philosophy so I don't think that it is gonna stop any time soon.

If the problem that guy haves is with the quality of the teaching that's another issue altogether. In fact, the lower quality probably comes hand in hand with the idea of seeing the university as an industry, which that old cunt repeats. Then again he also probably has a problem with the democratization of tertiary education and thinks that such useless degrees should only be available to the higher classes which can afford to live their lives in leisure.

In any case, if you are studying a vocational degree like most of humanities and hope to be employed you are either deluded or misguided and should not be there at all. Learn because you have an interest, because you find the subject beautiful or important or because nobody else cares. Knowledge is valuable in itself, not because of how good a job it can get you.

>>15467327
Based

>>15467327
>that guy haves
that guy has*
Sry it's really late here. Polite sage

>>15467327
another britfag? from my experience, a lot of these old profs really do get mad because universities are more meritocratic now. hell, some still partake in secret dining society noncery

>>15467305
good. education =/= wisdom

>>15467353
Nah mate I'm a Spaniard and back here shit's still endogamic as fuck. I studied in Scotland for one year tho and I kinda got the same impression but I couldn't know from just that experience.