{"id":12706,"date":"2014-03-21T11:04:53","date_gmt":"2014-03-21T15:04:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/?p=12706"},"modified":"2026-03-26T09:59:51","modified_gmt":"2026-03-26T13:59:51","slug":"siobhans-blog-english-degree","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/2014\/siobhans-blog-english-degree\/","title":{"rendered":"Siobhan's Blog – My English Degree"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n Siobhan's Blog – My English Degree\n <\/h1>\n \n \n <\/header>\n\n <\/div>\n\n <\/div>\n\n <\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n

I was sitting at Mike\u2019s Place this Wednesday for trivia with some friends, when the inevitable question of the value of an English degree came up in conversation. I had been complaining that sometimes it can be hard to explain to people what it is that I do as an English student, without belittling the degree down to the simple terms of \u201cI read and I write . . . a lot.\u201d My friend and fellow English student responded in earnest that it is valuable to be an English student, and made me feel guilty for ever second-guessing my degree or feeling the need to justify it to myself or others. She went on a mini-rant about how we have the most valuable degree because we look at a range of cultures from various perspectives and can think critically about other people\u2019s ideas and imaginary worlds. It is likely that it sounded marginally more insightful and awe-inspiring after a beer or two, but it made me grateful to have people like her in my life that remind me why it is I do what I do. And while I wouldn\u2019t say that an English degree is any more valuable than the next Arts degree, I do value what I\u2019ve learned and what I can take away from my time here. Most importantly, I\u2019m happy that I can sit at a bar with some friends and critically discuss the importance of the past four years of our lives and not end the night in a deep pit of pessimism and despair.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Talking about the last four years of my life does tend to leave me with a sense of nostalgia for something that isn\u2019t even over yet. I remember a very vivid moment in the second semester of my First Year Seminar English class as my professor gave our class yet another piece of advice. She warned us how quickly the semester would be over, and advised us not to get too stressed but to find time to enjoy our experiences. I think she meant both the educational and the not-so-educational experiences that we would encounter that winter semester of 2011, and in the four years of our degree. I cannot believe that here I am, four years later, procrastinating from writing my last three term papers by writing what will be one of my final blog posts for the department. I feel like that stubborn five-year old who is bewailing to an impatient parent; \u201cI\u2019m not leaving! You can\u2019t make me!\u201d Ok, ok, I am leaving, and I don\u2019t really want to sit through yet another year\u2019s worth of undergraduate classes, papers, and novels. I\u2019m just saying that I\u2019ll be sad to go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But I\u2019m not saying goodbye just quite yet. Mostly this is just a filler post, like those obnoxious TV episodes where they play clips from past seasons with some overlaying commentary to give the show some structure while their writers get extra time to write real material. Writing this post seemed like a better idea than tackling one of the three papers that have been on my to-do list since February. Fret not, I haven\u2019t completely given up on school with less than three weeks to go! I have managed to do most of the preliminary research for two out of the three essays, which is a good start. The library and I have become good friends in my last semester at Carleton, and I think I am finally starting to master the art of researching. Well, maybe master <\/i>is a strong word, but I think I am starting to get the hang of it. Let\u2019s just hope it shows when I finally submit the forty-plus pages that will effortlessly flow from my caffeine-infused brain to the tips of my overly-energized fingertips in the hours leading up to the deadlines (she tells herself with false hope and overly exaggerated enthusiasm).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So there\u2019s that. I am not too sure what to think of this post. I think I needed a place to empty my brain of some of the nonsense before I could really begin to tackle the more serious writing that my professors are expecting of me. But that\u2019s the beauty of writing, and mostly why I am an English student. Writing helps clear my head; it\u2019s just what I do.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was sitting at Mike\u2019s Place this Wednesday for trivia with some friends, when the inevitable question of the value of an English degree came up in conversation. I had been complaining that sometimes it can be hard to explain to people what it is that I do as an English student, without belittling the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17032,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[26,27,28,25,849],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12706","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-english","category-news","category-siobhans-blog","category-student-blogs","category-student-voices"],"acf":{"cu_post_thumbnail":false},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12706","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12706"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12706\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53695,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12706\/revisions\/53695"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17032"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}