| Worrying news out today that "arts and law students are most likely to die early." Alas, that includes myself, Ollie, and my girlfriend. It was just the news I wanted to see when I woke up.
To be fair, though, my anecdotal experience backs up the researchers' claims. Although I'm not convinced that "[a]rts students were more likely to have experienced socioeconomic deprivation in childhood," I am sure that their belief that the "arts culture" encourages smoking is correct. Not so much because of some trendy, rougish lifestyle aptly described "arty" that encourages smoking through peer pressure - we're probably about forty years past that - rather, compared to science students we have far more free time. Masses of the stuff in fact. Smoking (and drinking, although Medics were found to be the most alcoholic) is for many people something to do to pass the time, because when you have one essay a week, boy is there a lot of time to pass. Prevention and the welfare of our future society can be obtained, I would suggest, by making arts students read more, write more essays or *gasp* have daily lectures to attend, like scientists. You'll just have to remember to get us up in the morning.
[Disclosure - neither myself, Ollie or my girlfriend smoke, so we're either missing out on the arts lifestyle or the report is just wrong. No doubt the answer is somewhere in between] |
Comments so far: 1
Whoa, okay, so I didn't see this post first time round. I must disagree with two things: firstly, what's with the "[a]rts students"? I hate, abhor, nay despise people who feel this absurd urge to insert two addition pieces of punctuation merely to change the case of a letter. Go on, be a rebel, do it anyway without the square brackets. Watch... 'Arts students' ooh, ooh, ooh, 'arts students', ohhh I feel good... and no I wasn't doing anything obscene when I wrote that.
Secondly, I have to disagree with your entire post regardless of your little grammar fixations, because there are some ridiculous generalisations going on here! Far too much free time? For you maybe, but some of us have so many other concerns outside the academic sphere that we hardly have a spare moment to ourselves. Your failure to sufficiently fill your life with things to be doing, thereby having to resort to going to Filth and conducting naked relays in the early hours of the morning, is not a condemnation of the university but of you. The university cannot be held to blame for your boredom, and nor should other people whose lives are full to bursting be punished with more work simply to ensure that other layabouts don't have to resort to alcoholism!
I quite seriously cannot comprehend anyone who feels the need to smoke or drink to simply 'pass the time'. There's more than enough to do out there without abusing yourself or demanding more work, for crying out loud. If you can get to Oxford University you can damn well apply yourself properly in life and stop whingeing.