The Hoarchive

It’s that time of year when every humanities student dusts off its copies of Long Words: A Guide to Hiding what You Actually Mean (Oxford, 2001) and Pretentious Wanking: An Undergraduate Handbook To Getting A 2:1 (Cambridge, 2003). Here’s a step-by-step guide for those worried about securing a 2:1 in Pretentious Wanking.

Step 1: attend roughly 62-64% of your term one and two lectures

Learn from the best. Your lecturer — whose children recently disowned him because he talks about post-colonialism too much — knows exactly how to help you piss off your friends. “Globalisation is a post-modernist fallacy, and this is evident from public recitals of sixteenth century French poetry in indigenous villages in Haiti.” These were the words of Scmeüot Bubin, professor of history, who was lecturing budding first years in HI109, The Historiography of Pretentious Wanking. “Consequently, we don’t hand out 2:1s willy-nilly, thus it is important as a result that you use at least three conjunctives per sentence”, Bubin added.

Step 2: purchase a copy of Long Words: A Guide To Hiding What You Actually Mean

RRP £12 — A cost-effective way to learning all the words. “I couldn’t have written my 5,000 word essay without using ‘thus’ 28 times,” one second year English student told the Hoar. ‘Thus’ is defined as “a really fucking fancy word for ‘so’ that can be used interchangeably with ‘therefore’”. The English Department encourages all students to cite ‘long words’ in order to help them not answer the question. However, a leaked memorandum stated, “Christ, if the students figure out some actual answers the department might get some fucking funding. We wouldn’t want that”.

Step 3: learn your ‘isms’

Whether its anthropomorphism, sectarianism, or Eurocentric conceptualisations of no-one-gives-a-toss nationalism, securing a 2:1 requires at least 3 ‘isms’ per essay. A mark scheme for the EC280 — Keynesianism and other irrelevant ‘isms’ stated, “students who can correctly spell irrelevant “isms”, but have no understanding of what they mean, merit a 2:1 grading”

Step 4: never shut up about your dissertation, essay, or revision

“As previously discussed, the evidence suggests the Renaissance is a modernist construct perpetuated by nineteenth century scholars,” one history finalist told a Leamington local in Kelsey’s at 2:45am last Saturday.

“Yes, but have you ever caught a weasel with your bare hands, licked it, and hurled it into the canal?”, the local replied. The student was left bemused by the comment, since the claim lacked a single conjunctive.

Step 5: graduate with a 2:1 in Pretentious Wanking

“Employers want to know that you are capable of lying, hiding the truth, and pretending to have a clue what you’re talking about”, careers advice website MyBoiledEgg states. “Thus it is therefore ultimately a worthy exercise in aformentioning the available evidence in a synthesised claim towards a noteworthy conclusion”, an English Lit graduate told the Hoar. He received a First Class Degree, took a Gap Year, and got ‘therefore’ tattooed in Korean across his left butt-cheek, whilst browsing protentiouswankinggraduates.net.