A degree is one of the more significant life choices that young adults make in their lives. It comes with debt, responsibility and (objectively) an excessive amount of fun. But is it possible to match someone to their degree?
I’m not sure about you but I’d rather not be up until the early hours of the morning, fawning over what the meaning of life is. It takes a certain type of person to do that, and they tend to be philosophy students. If you see someone in the library, laptop open AND book in hand, daydreaming out the window, contemplating everything. You guessed it: philosophy. They’re the type to go to the cafe, ask the barista why they should suffer through a morning shift, and subsequently leave with an existential crisis and not an expresso. With any luck, they’ll be behind that bar in a few years too.
As Confucius once said ‘study the past as you would define the future’. Well, with regards to the current competitive nature of the post-grad job market, cost of living, and consecutive useless governments, we haven’t done a good job. Nice one history students. From being able to recount American presidents or every single time Julius Caesar shit himself; these students are full of useless knowledge. History students love to have strong opinions on things that happened several lifetimes ago. Also, they are likely to be impulsive. They don’t worry about the future. Too busy looking at the structural flaws of the French military in the Franco-Prussian war, than to realise they don’t have a backup plan.
There is a niche market for overly pretentious people, the types to tell you the Marquis De Sade was ‘not that bad’ or that your breakup text is wrong for its short sighted use of apostrophe and its scattering of the proverbial body. They’ll be English Students. If you see a cohort of similar looking people that consider themselves ‘somewhat edgy’, cosied up against a tree, reading. Yep. That would be English students. Overly facetious? Don’t know the difference between everything and everyone? Unemployed four years after graduating? A trawler coat and a beanie? English Students.
Introverted and lacking social skills – here comes the engineering students. They can create a makeshift hadron collider but can’t hold down a romantic relationship. Prefer a laptop over human interaction. Yep. Go and make a nuclear bomb instead. What’s undeniable is that they do work hard. If you see an engineering student enter the library at 8am, wind rushing through their hair, brimming with optimism and a stride in their step – just know by midday they’ll come out flatlining and shellshocked, questioning every decision that led them there.
Whether you wear it or not, Arts & Design students are almost destined to, at the very minimum, own a beret. They are distinguishable because their fingers are usually blanketed in acrylic paint, and their laptop is one drop of paint away from exploding. If someone tells you off for using a certain font, you know what they study.
‘Let’s circle back’ to business students – if they use this quote in casual conversation then you know what they study. Dressed in button-up shirt, aggressively managing projects with loud, booming voices in the library, and connecting with you on LinkedIn before they actually have a conversation with you – these students stand out like the sorest of thumbs.
Regardless of what you study: choosing a subject can be a hard and stressful task. Despite all the slander, it’s ultimately a massive commitment. Obviously, not everyone fits into this criteria but it can’t be that far from the mark. If there is one piece of advice I would give to the freshers starting out – enjoy each and every minute of your university life and your degree.
