rating books from my literature degree based on how close they brought me to dropping out
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- čas přidán 7. 09. 2024
- did i finish my literature degree or did my literature degree finish me
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"You went out clubbing until 3am and the next morning at 9am you're in a lecture about socratic dialogue" This is the definition of Univeristy. It's a universal experience.
Disagree, no chance I made it to the 9am lecture if I got in at 3am. Not once.
I did school remotely because I'm not a people person. Which is ironic since I made it to a doctorate in psychology.
Hahaha you want hell take political theory and lit theory in a 6 week period in the summer. I still have PTSD from that bad decision and to make it worse I had an argumentive writing course as well and the teacher hated me.
But imagine you are the one giving the lecture.
The trick is learning not to go to sleep in between. It’s much easier when you learn not to.
Jack i've got a video idea for you: "can i guess the book title based on their 1star/ 5 star reviews?"
omg i second that idea
SECONDED
Yesss
That's actually genius
This a great idea!!!!
As a historian, I admire and understand how important Plato is. As a person, I would do ANYTHING to fight Plato in a parking lot.
I think he would be happy to do so.
Be wary, you know why he's thought to be called Plato right?
I think defoe being first thing u read isn't only for chronological purposes but to also double check you if you're sure you actually want this
and the answer was I do not want this
The thing about Bleak House is that when read gradually over the course of a wintery 3 months it’s a bloody great time
Read it during Covid..it was a wonderful ride...I cannot imagine reading it in a week
I had this same experience during my college degree, Literature with a major in Creative Writing, many books I was rushed to read I never enjoyed them until I read them outside college.
A profesor of mine once flexed about reading the Quixote over a single weekend, the fact none of my generation even thought to question it shows how intense said profesor was 🤣🤣🤣
My college years were definitely the time in my life when I read the least. I'm not sure that I ever finished a book assigned for class (writing major) and because I was so burnt out on reading for school, I rarely read for leisure. I've gone back and read some of the books I was supposed to read then and now that I can read them at a reasonable pace, I actually enjoy them!
I’m so happy someone else recognises the difference between interesting to read vs interesting to study
Best video title on CZcams ever
REAL
Very much agree❤
It's crazy how nobody is talking about a book Health and Beauty Mastery.
Not Jack releasing a video about how many times he almost dropped out just hours after I get readmitted to university for literature after dropping out 2 years ago
congratulations on readmission!!
Congrats!!! ❤
this video is so old jack core im here for it
I'm also an English lit student. We had Moll Flanders in 4th sem and I'm telling you, that book soaked all the blood out of me. I couldn't finish it and ended up watching summary videos on CZcams for the final exam. However the story was good though ngl.
you gotta do whatchu gotta do yknow. atleast you watched the summary
We did Moll Flanders as well, I feel that pain; that book had me considering book burning as a viable career choice 🤣
I feel like everyone universally hates reading Moll Flanders.
i hated Moll Flanders, too, but the worst part is that that was the least terrible book for my class. the professor assigned six books and on the same reading list was Ooronoko and Tom Jones. i always tried to finish each book assigned for the courses i took, but by the time we got to Tom Jones i just could not do it anymore. 18th century English lit is my enemy.
@@aventine95 What did you dislike? It's such an engaging story.
I double majored in English and German literature and let me tell you, the number of times I wanted to drop out, especially in the beginning when I had to learn Old English and Middle High German, was HIGH. The sheer amount of required reading sucked any enjoyment for literature out of me and it took me years to start reading books for fun again. Glad I made it back, and your suggestions and enthusiasm for books played a huge role in the process!
Middle German almost broke me. You can't imagine my shock when 50% of the courses in my masters degree were about that shit. I had to pick what was left.
I’m studying German literature and literally same!! I dropped out of my Middle High German course this semester bc it was so annoying and I accidentally chose the worst prof 🫠
@@vorgebrauchschutteln3859 50%?? That’s a crime omg. My uni made me take two Middle High German classes during my master‘s even though I had dropped it after the introduction and a seminar during my bachelor degree. The system was so stupid, I had to study it all over again.
@@localabsurdist6661 I feel your pain🫠 but try to hang in there if you otherwise like your major. lots of great seminars and profs await you once you get through the introductions and can choose more specific topics! you got this!🫶🏻
It was exactly the courses on Old and Middle English that kept me going through my degree in English Language and Literature. 😂😂😂. I loved them!
I swear you come up with the BEST book/reading related content. Bookworms thrive because of your contents.
Right like it’s always a concept I’ve rarely, if ever, seen before
I wrote a A+ essay on The Heart of Darkness without reading the entire thing. One of my proudest uni moments. My mythology class was on Wednesday morning, 8 am.
I had a numismatics lecture for two hours at nine on a Thursday. There were only five people in the class and I had a bar shift to night before that meant getting to bed about two am. I remember the pain of the light coming in the window directly into my eyes every time, never understanding anything the teacher was going on about and the pressure of being in such a small group. Not ideal. It’s been nearly thirty years! Still know nothing about coins, although I did accidentally go to a numismatics lecture this week and enjoyed it, so perhaps the issue was the teacher, not me……
the title is so real and im not even an English/Literature major student 😭
the WILDEST video title man
edit: also not the SECOND book being on the very left bottom corner already 😭
I didn’t drop out but I stopped reading for almost a year after my degree because it drained the enjoyment out of my reading life.
This is definitely my experience too lol. I thought it was just me. I haven’t been in school since 2021 and I feel like my personal reading habits have been piss poor since then lol.
That’s me right now😂😂
I took on online class and had to read every Plato and Aristotle text and script….it was alarming to learn that after dissecting it, they were just saying every other idea i’ve ever had in my life. No original thoughts here. I wrote the best essays on the due date around 10-11pm (due at 11:59 pm) basically just being like “twinnn i literally had this SAME IDEA”
"No original thoughts"? Even if they had all the same thoughts as you, they had them 2400 years before you did! I think they were pretty original at the time. It's a bit like the lady who didn't like Hamlet because it was "full of quotations". Their ides have saturated Western thought ever since, which is probably why you got them before reading them in the originals.
jack please make a syllabus of your perfect english lit course - what would you read, and do you have any writing/ journal prompts for them?
watching this 2 days before starting my literature degree. big motivation
The fact you can remember all of your thoughts from your first year when I can barely remember the books I read in my third year when I only graduated last week is WORRYING
And the Oscar for best video title on CZcams goes tooo…
looove this as a soon-to-be durham english second year who lost my mind in michaelmas (defoe we have BEEEEF!!!!) (the vibe shift in ER201 when emma rolled around…. magical!)
oh and praise the lord they scrapped Villette for intro to the novel, though its on the second year victorian module so ..!
That x/y axis really shows why I read penguin classics as a non native English speaker. Is it cool and interesting to read dracula and H. P. Lovecraft, yes. Does reading one page drain me of all of my energy trying to read 1920's English, heck yess.
Books in my native language feel like a breeze now.
I loved this! On your final note, I'd actually love a video where you talk about the "interesting to read + interesting to study" books you read for your degree ❤
i cannot believe that a person who enjoyed reading the heart of darkness actually exists 😭 they made us read it for our ap lit class in polish hs (since the author was polish) and eveybody hated it hahah
I just got down to your CZcams channel. I started my Bachelors degree last year and I was searching all over the internet for jobs and other stuff related to Language and Literature. Others people saying to regret and among them got down to you and realized i am on a right track.. thanks for openly telling what it is being into English Language and Literature...🤩🤩🤩🤩
As a philosophy student Plato’s dialogues are often such a nice breezy break from the dense highly technical stuff but I feel this ahaha, The Republic is a bit dense with ideas
Not me watching this a month before I start my first year in college for English 😭 now I’m terrified
Same 😭
I think The crying of lot 49 has one of the funniest scenes I've ever read in a novel like I was CRACKING up
which one? I love part about The Courier's Tragedy
I'm working on my lit degree right now, and so far the only book that I've really struggled to study has been Paradise Lost. So obtuse -- my copy is quite literally half footnotes!
This is your friendly reminder to re read my favorite book The Master and Margarita. Thank you :)
I have a lit degree from the other side of the Atlantic, and it’s really interesting to see the differences and similarities in what’s being studied. We, probably obviously, had significantly more American authors, but we still got the solid English classics as well. The Canterbury Tales [in original Middle English, please just let me perish now] are what almost did me in personally. I wouldn’t force reading those on my worst enemy, but they were legitimately fascinating to study.
But I think that, no matter what part of the English-speaking world you studied in, the easiest way to spot a fellow English Lit degree in the wild is to ask, “so what do you think about Dickens?” and then try to decipher the atonal shrieking that follows.
As an American with a Master’s degree in English from an American university, I have thoughts on a few of the books you mentioned. Although my big focus has always been on American fiction, I do like Dickens a great deal and liked Bleak House, though I read it on my own and not to study, which probably makes a difference. On the other hand, I did read Ethan Frome for a class, and it remains one of my favorite novels - I think you need to take another look at it. And I also read The Crying of Lot 49 and found it frustrating, but I then went on to read other Pynchon books (yes, including Gravity’s Rainbow) and enjoy them a great deal more, even though they are incredibly long and dense.
As a philosophy student... I get why it was a struggle but it doesn't really get much more chill and nice to read than socratic dialogue in my opinion hahaha
reading the republic made me feel like my brain was leaking out of my ears, but TALKING about the republic was like achieving enlightenment lol
My high school AP Lit and Lang teacher did his PhD at either Oxford or Cambridge on Tess or the D’Urbervilles so we literally spent like 3 months on that god forsaken book. But to this day my group chat with the high school besties is called Less of the D’Urbervilles 😂
I simply love your diagram . Great idea 😊. Must do one for the books I‘ve read and compare with friends. Thinking of making a party game out of it.
if you haven't read it my favourite Arthur Miller play is 'All My Sons'. so devastating and just incredibly powerful
I love Dickens! The Pickwick Papers was absolutely hilarious for me. 😅
My favorite Dickens.
That is the best graph for talking about classics!
I love this idea! I hope you’ve started a new trend since lots of booktubers r lit students, I’d love to see this for a lot of them.
7:03 Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Definitely not Jack Edwards
2:49 Charles Dickens? Woooo we’re already in iconic discourse territory
I love a Tale of Two Cities but can not get myself to finish his other stuff so I always find this discourse fun
honestly, in the context of studying for a degree, charlie boy is kind of a nightmare. Both oliver twist and bleak house cropped up in two different modules, and I didn't finish either of them. There's just so many other things you need to read for your modules, and research for essays, that 50-60ish chapter books sort of get left in the dust
@@spookyscary6400 tell me why my highschool made us study _Great Expectations_ for our GCSEs. it's not the most challenging read ever, but for a gcse text it is LONG - like, about 5 times the length of A Christmas Carol, the Dickens book other (more reasonable) local schools and kids in our lower English sets studied. In my year, at most five people actually read the whole novel lol
@@amiraebrahim1008 I have the same experience, the tale of two cities was the first classic novel I've read. I was quite confident in my C1 level in the English language but that books proved me other wise 😓.
i remember this era of you struggling to balance uni with trips to london and your career taking off 😭
Quote of the Day: “Dickens walked so Eastenders could run.”
"Heart of Darkness" travels up the Congo rather than down the Nile.
Sorry you’re right I was thinking of Season of Migration to the North !!
What’s up Jack? I read Things Fall Apart in high school and reread it recently. It was wonderful.
The only Dickens book I've read is A Christmas Carol (a banger) and I'm honestly scared to read any others.
I liked a Christmas Carol but his writing is soooo dry that there is no chance I would ever finish any of his billion word books
"Bleak House" is so great. I hope you read it with the time it needs. Dickens was not paid by the word at any time in his career. That's a myth. He was paid by the installment. Regarding Moll Flanders, capturing characters in their full socio-economic reality was what made Defoe distinct. '..Lot 49' may be the first American PoMo novel - if you know what he's doing it's fine. "Gravity's Rainbow" is fantastic. Heart of Darkness is about sailing down the Congo not the Nile.
im trying to figure out how the graph works but my brain is not letting me😞
yes my brain is a single piece of sweet corn
Top right is interesting to read AND study (his preferred books), bottom right is interesting to read, but to study (enjoyable without much substance), top left is interesting to study but not to read (not inline with personal tastes, not good prose, etc. but contains themes and ideas that are very interesting and relevant even now), and bottom left is not interesting to read or study (worst books)
@@tardiswhisperer5764 OHHHHHHHHHH okay😅🎀
Sillitoe and Vilette and Lot 49 are books that make me wince in memory of the pain I felt while reading them. Still adore Ma Woolf decades on. Such fun to learn some of the stuff that formed you as a reader.
This made me remember books that were forced on me in school as well. I really didn't care for Lord of the Flies but loved Oedipus Rex, for example. Heart of Darkness was disturbing, The Canterbury Tales was fun, Candice made me want to jump off of a cliff, but Don Quixote was ok. I realized that fantasy, mythology, and a bit of Sci fi were my preference.
"i actually feel like i remember absolutely nothing about this" made me feel so validated as a literature student
Jack we are still waiting for the in depth analysis of TTPD!!
Yay! Amazing videos. I love getting a brand new Jack video while I’m writing!
Stop taking sponsorships from harmful companies challenge
Nice to know that Jack and I are First Class in Honors Degree Holders.
Humble brag right there
Jk jk, good job man ✨
From my Introduction to English Literature lecture onward, I have been nursing a passionate hatred for "Where Angels Fear to Tread" by E.M. Forster.
It's so interesting to see how vastly different most of your reading was from mine (I went English Studies over Literature because I didn't want to have to take Shakespear a second time LOL)
Dante’s Infero and Old English texts were the tipping point for me😭
Great timing as I finally got out of my reading slump
NOO “Ethan Frome” and “The Crying of Lot 49” were my top 2 reads of last year 😢
Oh noooo! I had to read Heart of Darkness in high school and it is one of the few books in my life that I did not finish! I just couldn't get into it at all! Maybe it was because it was senior year and I had other things on my mind, so I might need to give it another chance.
I can't take the hate for Pynchon man 😭 The scope of what he achieved with his writing is so breathtaking
The KING is finally BACK with some new content!! Your content makes my day, mr. jack edwards!!!!!!!!!❤❤
As a recent English literature graduate, this video is right up my alley
Thank you for sharing these reads. I have been on more of a classics read this year so it's been interesting to come across my favorites, ones I have not been to in a while, and ones I had on my to read list. Your analysis on Dickens was relatable as I enjoy his works (Christmas Carol my all-time fave Dickens), but why it can be a struggle. It's nice to see more appreciation for Jane Austen's Emma. She's a character in the Austen fanbase that gets mixed reactions, but I find her to be Austen's most evolved heroine who goes through her coming of age to become a better and more mature version of herself. Jane Eyre is my all-time favorite book and the paperback copy I have had since the late 90s is worn out from constant rereads as a young woman who remains resilient through hardships and overcomes her obstacles while Wide Sargasso Sea is one, I read around 2015 and gives a good retelling on Bertha's origins and how she descended into madness. When it comes to the classics though, I always recommend to people that it is essential to do the research of when these books were written which was helpful for me with Austen, Bronte, Dickens, and more.
Ethan Frome is my mother's favorite and I find it a heartbreaking story. Interestingly, I was at Edith Wharton's home The Mount in Lenox, MA a couple of months back and such a beautiful house with amazing landscapes and gardens! I will have to check out some of these in your video when I get the opportunity as I have some busy days at the moment.
This unlocked a vivid memory of reading all of Shakespeare's poems and sonnets in one sitting and waking up the next day with no memory of any of them. 😂
I actually loved Bleak House, but I would read all the chonky books during holidays and make margin notes. Those long summers are the best time for assigned reading.
I definitely wouldn't want to attempt a close reading in a single week while studying multiple modules.
Now THIS is a video idea
I you liked Jane Eyre and The Wide Sargasso Sea, try Thornfield Hall by Jane Stubbs which is part of the trend of below stairs novels, except this one is "in the attic". It was written by an English literature teacher and I wish I had been taught by her.
If anyone wants to read Hardy, try Jude The Obscure and The Mayor of Casterbridge, not just for their brilliance, but also the discussion on the position of women in Victorian society, Hardy's sympathy for them and the his views on marriage and divorce and rural poverty. He was also articled to an architect for many years and his description of architecture is as wonderful as his description of the landscape.
title is so real
Such a cool topic! Thank you, Jack! Love your channel!!
I had a similarly traumatic Bleak House experience…English professor messed up the syllabus and we had a weekend to read it before an in-depth exam. Somehow finished the book and passed the exam but all I remember of the book is pain. Definitely my strongest urge to drop out mid-degree 😂
Jack's video ideas are just at another level, aren't they?
Huh. I definitely understand the the point of trying to squeeze too many books into too short a time, but when my wife and I read Bleak House (I read to her while she’s cooking) over perhaps 6 weeks, we loved it. I also really enjoyed The Crying of Lot 49 when I read it around 2008 or 2009.
You may want to reread Heart of Darkness if you think it has anything to do with the Nile.
Jack, we need part 2 of this! Please!
The movie adaptation of Death of a Salesman, with Dustin Hoffman, is great as well. One of my favorite titles I had to read for my degree!
What made me want to drop out though was James Joyce. We had to read both Ulysses and Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and I hated both.
Interesting to see what different unis teach! Can relate to reading Moll Flanders at UoM 😭
I am gonna be 18 in half an hour 🎉
Happy birthday !!
This is an incredible insight to what English literature students have been subjected to because in my non-english literature degree, we never touched half of these titles. It's really interesting to see what titles were included in the curriculum.
oof, what you said about charles dickens 'bleak house' being serialized and why it makes it An Experience™to read is how I've been describing Dorian Gray for yeaaaaaars now. it is such a tedious one if you try to read it in one go, ahah.
I keep intending to read more Dickens - I loved A Christmas Carol, and Great Expectations is my sibling's favourite book, but I haven't even got around to reading that one yet. Perhaps I should watch an adaptation to whet my appetite?
So so so glad you made this. Been looking for lit fic study classes and having no luck. Atleast I have a list of booked for self-study if anything 😋
The books that made me nearly drop were 'Moll Flanders' and 'Absolute Beginners', I full on launched those books off the roof of the campus library after I graduated 🤣
Thankfully, 'Tenant of Wildfell Hall' and 'War of The Worlds' kept me invested in my degree 🤣🤣
I’ve been blessed with two jack videos :)
love your videos i’m obsessed!
“i only recommend reading this if you hate yourself” do not tempt me like that jack
I did my BA in English literature at KCL at the same time as you, Jack, and it’s so nice to see that you were also hating some of the books we read 😂
I did an English Literature degree in 2005 and I'm amazed how many books you read that were published in the later 20th century. By the time I graduated they were still debating the inclusion of more women into the canon. My English degree felt like it should have earned me a history minor.
I’m going to do this with the books and reading I had to do for my bachelors of estudios hispánicos (Hispanic studies)
thank you jack. this video gave me the final push to completely abandon the idea of getting a literature degree (i needed it).
I dropped out of an English major in first year and here’s why: Prufrock by TS Eliot & To the Lighthouse by Virgina Wolf. I did love Heart of Darkness and Waiting for Godot tho. I think I was mostly intimidated by the sheer number of books I’d have to read every month.
Without you intending it, you built a scatterplot for a correlation: The more interesting to study a book, the more interesting it is to read (in general, kinda) (we do lots of statistics in uni, I just can't unsee this)
What! I loved Lot49. You didn't like it? That's an all time favorite for me.
Absolutely adore your content jack! I have one suggestion and feel free to ignore if you disagree: the background music gets stuck in my head so badly and it reminds me a lot of the hold music for my GP. I would love if the background was just silent or just any music that doesn’t loop.
Jack, I don't know how long ago it was that you finished studying but if it has been some time then it would be super interesting to have you re-read those difficult books now at your leisure and hear what you think of them.
Although I did sadly drop out of my English Literature class, the required reading did end up being wonderfully beloved once I did get around to them. Especially Joseph Conrad's 'Heart Of Darkness'. I do whatever I can to honour his legacy and bring his works out into the light. (Also obligatory "Congo River, not the Nile").
I'm an English major from Serbia and though as such I'm not as heavily focused on lit, I had a course that also had us read a book a week (or honestly 1,5 books a week) and one time for class, where about 30 ppl should've shown up, maybe....7 did? And the prof asked us how many of us read the book for the week AND: one person did, and another two only parts?? like a half/third/fourth? and the prof was like "oh great, amazing, let's get on with it!" without an ounce of sarcasm 🤣It was so funny and a little sad (as an aside, I cannot be bothered to read what I don't want to so sparknotes all the way BUT, the only two grades to be in 90s % were in lit...i don't know what happened there ಠ_ಠ)
I was a graduate tutor on that first year English course, and when you say Bleak House was tough for everyone involved, I can say that yes, even for your teachers 😆 (I actually thought Moll Flanders was quite fun though)