Joint arts-CS and English

Frigating

Hi. So I had a lot of trouble figuring out what to do in university, a course I'd like vs a course that'd lead to a good career. I pretty much narrowed it down to computer science and English. If I do these as a joint honours, I can do English, and then have the cs so I'm not working at McDonald's after. (Instead I'll be answering phones going "Hello, IT, have you tried turning it off and on again?"). Don't get me wrong, I'm interested in robotics and programming, it's just not the most interesting thing in the world, and I feel like it'd be a waste to just focus on that and ignore what I love.

SO what I'm asking here is what would be the best university to do these in? AFAIK I can do this in MU, UCC, NUIG and UL, unless I've missed one. If anyone has done either subject as a joint honours, I'd appreciate any info on it. Is the cs aspect actually worth anything, or just teaching you how to turn a computer on? Is the English going to be interesting or frustratingly dull? Where does the focus lie in each of these courses? Can I do major/minor in either, or is it dictated for me? At the moment my best bet is Digital Humanities and Information Technology at UCC, but I need to flesh out my CAO form. Thanks for reading.

TLDR: I need to do computer science and English as a joint arts but don't know where help please

kaki

I don't know if having anything other than a pure BSc in Computer Science/Applications or Maths would really enable you to work in that area afterwards (unless it required a lesser degree of technical knowledge e.g. tech support or very basic/front end web development). From what I can see on the job market, a large proportion of CS jobs seek people with significant technical knowledge to develop/maintain applications/software (sweeping generalisation, I know).

If it helps, I was somewhat similar to yourself (and a lot of people, I think) in that I didn't have one area I wanted to go into for 3rd level - I loved and was very strong in Art, Languages and Science. I first tried to go down the Art route, but became pretty unhappy having what I later realised was my hobby/passion/escape turn into an academic and commercial grind. Fast forward 5 years and I'm back studying Science and absolutely loving it. I still paint and draw in my spare time.

You mentioned that you are having trouble picking between a course you'd like versus a course that would lead to a good career. I'd recommend turning this viewpoint on it's head - you can probably forge a great career in either discipline. But you make things significantly easier for yourself by selecting a discipline that matches your innate strengths.

What experience do you have of CS? Or what aspects of it interest you the most? CS traditionally has a high dropout rate (at 2010 HEA study indicated around 27%), quite probably linked to the fact that no subject quite like it is taught at second-level (at least last time I checked) that introduces things like coding languages, syntax, the beauty of algorithms, protocols etc. Have you had a look at the Book of Modules for some of the pure CS degrees and gotten a feel for what you'd be studying and the professional skills you'd be developing?

The Digital Humanities and IT course at UCC seems to be quite "soft" from reading the book of modules, in the sense that it's focusing on authoring for web, interactive design, media production - but no coding languages or project management for software development. Not that there's anything wrong with this - could be a great fit for you. But I wouldn't go into that degree expecting to be qualified for software development jobs afterwards - realistically you'd be looking at Digital Marketing, maybe Front End Development, SEO.

Likewise for English - I think a lot of people enjoy Arts and Humanities, but what is it about English that motivates you to potentially dedicate your studies to it. What would you hope to do afterwards - write novels, teach at 2nd level, conduct research and lecture and 3rd level, or work in something unrelated that draws on the general skills you've developed? FWIW there's a very interesting thread over in the Ask Me Anything forum about a 3rd level lecturer in English which gives an insight into that career path: Link

TLDR; It's okay to have more than one skill/area of interest; Maybe you'd be better off committing to either English or Computer Science as a degree (maintaining the other in your spare time) and would come out with better prospects rather than trying to combine both without mastering either. Figure out where your greatest skills lie and what kind of job you'd actually like to do afterward and take it from there.

Hope something in this rambling mess can help you - I realise it's not helpful in the context of "suggest a degree evenly split between English/CS".