How can I be both an English student and a Humanities student? How can those titles be both one and the same, yet entirely different in my head?
Assembling an identity as a university student is already hard. I remember feeling I had to arrive here with all my interests sorted out, already know what I was to learn and be an expert in it before even stepping into my first tutorial. Thinking there was no room for mistakes, that I had to have an opinion on everything. Now I wake up everyday with an entirely different opinion on Wordsworth than the day before.
Then at the end of my first year the EFL closed. That strange shaped building that had the Law Faculty as its neighbour, where every book and everyone I saw was completely, entirely, an English Language and Literature student. Everyone had read Beowulf and (I confess) avoided the compulsory lectures. I recognised faces, although I had no idea who they were or whether they also did not really care for James Joyce as much as everyone else seemed to. I was surrounded by an identity that was supposed to make me feel part of something, a faculty, and yet I don't think I ever ventured to speak to anyone new. This was strange for someone who, as part of my identity, likes to think they are a sociable person.
Then came the large Schwarzman Centre, somehow encompassing seven faculties. I still even now can't really comprehend that, all those separate academic identities as neighbours. Intertwined. Contributing to this conglomerate of the humanities whilst still maintaining those separate identities, allowing themselves to be independent faculties whilst aiding and integrating with the others. Not to mention the public using it as intended: an arts centre. Am I a student, a member of public, an English fanatic, or someone who cares about humanities as a factor in policy development? All of them, at once and also at very different times. I wake up an English fanatic and leave the library thinking about Nietzsche.
It is easy to repel this merging. To see it as a sweeping comment on how humanities faculties all really are just about the same things, nothing special by themselves. But we have the STEM acronym, so why not this centre for its humanities equivalent? It is refreshing to know that ideas can merge even if sometimes I just want to speak to an English student about Dickens and not think about history or philosophy (although really we all know that is impossible). I can feel averse to this integration whilst still appreciating that it is entirely necessary for a society and culture that has been in the past few decades placing much more emphasis on the value of science over the arts. If we must integrate the faculties to prove the humanities worth, then so be it. A mish-mash crowd is better than factions.
Major shifts like this always feel scary - think of the AI and Ethics department - and it is allowed to be so whilst still being exciting. I now embrace this contradiction in my mind of being an English student and a humanities student. And more and more I'm realising it is becoming less of a contradiction. Cross-disciplinary thinking has always existed and I am excited to see what research and connections come out of this centre. If nothing else, it's an opportunity for me to nosy on people's debates over music theory whilst I'm waiting for my lecture to start.
