4 myths about doing an Art History degree: true or false?

Yesterday I handed in my final piece of assessed work to the department office, thus ending my travails in the academic world. I'd been desperately yearning for that day to come all month. What motivated me through dissertation pain and revision strife was the feeling that I assumed I would experience on May 30th, my final deadline: triumph, over the vanquishing of the three-headed monster that was my degree.

But that feeling was a dream, nothing more. It turns out that no matter how much you celebrate, finishing your degree is actually a little bit of an anti-climax, until you know your results. In the meantime, you have to find distractions to stop yourself freaking out about results, jobs, the future, money, aaaaargh stop stop make it stop!!!!!

So here's my distraction for today. I thought I'd help clear up some rumours about the Art History degree that people used to spout at me when I first told them I was doing it.

The social network: a word of warning

For those of you that don't know, when I graduate in July I will (hopefully) have a degree in History of Art.*  To be completely honest, I prefer the 'history' bit; I love the thrill of piecing together evidence to form an understanding of the past, however meagre it may be.

I also find myself thinking a lot about how the future will judge our generation, the millennials. What evidence will they use to build a picture of us in their historical consciousness? What accessible resource do many of us pour fragments of ourselves into, like sand into an empty bucket? Yep. The good ol' social network.

Emmeline Pankhurst on our banknotes?

You may have heard a couple of weeks ago about the Bank of England's decision to replace Elizabeth Fry on the £5 note with Winston Churchill. As with every item of news, this caused an absolute furore on Twitter. Why was the only woman on our banknotes being replaced by a man? What was the Bank of England thinking, taking such a backwards step for women's rights? Don't get me wrong, I don't entirely disagree with the validity of these questions (although we'll get to my slight qualms about them later). I was, on the other hand, alarmed at the enormous amount of people blithely advocating Emmeline Pankhurst as a better substitute.

A day at Castle Howard

On Monday I escaped the miry bog of dissertation drear and hopped on a bus to Castle Howard with Alex. It's not actually a castle in the medieval sense; rather, it's a stately home built on the site of the original castle. If you're ever in the York area, I can't recommend this place enough, it's gorgeous!