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naila-missous
15th November 2011

I love it; I love it not

The loving and loathing of linguistics and literature
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TLDR

I have a love hate relationship with my degree. I can’t deny the fact that my allegiance swings between the two subject matters quicker than a moody teenager.

“I’ll apply for Literature AND Linguistics! It combines my two passions and well, I’m quite good at languages and reading loads”. Little did I know, I’d get to University and realise that, in actual fact, I’m not top of the class like I was back in A levels.

I started first year apprehensively: the literature appeared of easy grasp (apart from you Oronoko, I don’t like you) and I thought “I know a few of these titles, I should be fine!”

It became clearer as the year went on that indeed I had befriended Linguistics, developed my love for it and thus cheated on Literature quite openly. I’m sorry Literature.

Oh Linguistics. How I enjoyed knowing the distinction between dialectal differences in American English and British English. I even worked extra hard on learning the difference between diphthongs and monophthongs; knowing how to write the vowels in the phonetic alphabet and everything.

“This is great” I thought. “I’ll balance my degree so that Linguistics outweighs Literature. I have this down.”

I’m in second year now. I still study Literature and Linguistics.

I love my free choice module in Middle Eastern politics more than anything.

naila missous

naila missous

Former lifestyle editor (2011-2012).

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