I'm interested in art, literature and cinema though my studies are scientific. I do seem to have developed a bit of a disdain for some forms of "humanities" as of late, or rather how they are studied in modern society.
Even so, I try to remain objective and realise everything has merit. It's not so much the subjects actually, more the way society perceives people who follow certain academic routes.
Weirdly, I've always had a kind of innate connection with words and English language. I don't know if others feel it in the same way too? I'll try to explain it.
Ever since I was a small child, I've been able to spell really well. I used to get perfect scores on every spelling test almost through some sort of unusual intuition - I could just "do" it even without reading a huge amount.
Even now, I find I instinctively know suffixes for words in different tenses, even when I've never heard or used the word before. It's very rare that I spell something wrong (unless it's a typo or something of course!
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So it's weird that, in a way, I've gone against that natural talent to pursue science. But I just thought that following the scientific route:
1 - Would teach me practical skills. Call me crazy, but I just feel like if I ever needed to "survive", knowing the practical things that I do would be useful.
2 - Would make me feel I'm doing something worthwhile with my life by furthering or at least revering the knowledge of humanity.
3 - Would make me explore the world I live in to the fullest before my exit from it.
4 - Would hopefully earn me decent career options at the end of it all!
Which sort of brings me to what annoys me about arts and humanities in general: ironically, I am frequently looked down upon and sneered at by people who study subjects such as English, Politics and Art at a higher academic level.
I put in up to 23 hours a week lecture time, plus 15+ hours a week personal study time in order to learn my subject to an acceptable standard. It's a constant academic challenge and I don't get much of a social life.
However, for some reason people seem to view themselves as "more sophisticated" for pursuing arty courses. This obviously is not true of everyone, and there are some very friendly arts students out there!
But it does seem to be a recurring pattern that people see me as some kind of robot or uncultured tinkerer purely because I chose the practical above the artistic.
I constantly deal with a guy a friend of mine is dating, for example, who attends a University he considers more "prestigious" than mine. He is always telling me how long he spends in the library on his artistic degree.
The heavy inferrance is that I haven't done a day's "sophisticated" work in my life and I'm some sort of philistine for studying what I do.
Through sheer politeness, I refrain from stating that the only difference between us is that I could probably take his exams and pass with a week to look at the material...and he could study three or four years for mine and still be clueless!
So, if all things were equal and there wasn't an odd sort of "perceived class issue" present with studying the sciences even to this day, I'd say that both the arts and sciences have equal weight. It is after all a combination of the two that makes us human in the first place!
(And I do hope I haven't offended any Arts students here. I don't mean to make any sweeping generalisations at all).
