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The term 'Arts' is somewhat a broad one, and can, in St. Andrews' academic world at least, mean anything that's not science...This strict distinction is something that has intrigued me since my very first semester at St. Andrews, back in Autumn 2006. As someone who is equally interested in both science and 'the arts', and decided at the last moment not to apply for Neuroscience, but for English, I can often not believe that people consider these subjects so incredibly separately. It also seems that all arts students, at some point in their lives, find themselves in the position whereby science-student friends are revered by non-student friends for being clever enough to pursue a science degree, where their exclamations of studying Philosophy, or English or Classics are met with 'oh...' or 'what are you going to do with that then?'. I can tell you, even if you don't feel envious of the reverence  with which your fellow students' professions of science are met, this can get tiring, especially when explaining for the 10,000th time that no, doing an English degree does not automatically mean you are going to be an English teacher. 

Similarly, arts students can often be accused of becoming 'snobby' about their subject matter, dismissing all other subjects as lacking in substance, or 'feeling', and are want to imagine themselves in tweed suits, drinking black, unsweetened coffee and smoking a pipe, all the while professing such amusing lines as 'oh... I only read the classics you know'. So, from an English student that in her spare time likes to read science fiction and – shock horror- can often be found reading a copy of 'The New Scientist', there needn't be such a void placed between the science and arts departments, and I think each can be considered as important to the world as the other- we can view science as a quest for knowledge of the world we live in, how it was created and how it continues, and we can see the arts as productions of the human mind in relation to this world that science allows us. Where science allows us to be alive, the arts allow us to live.  So then, readers, welcome to the arts section. We hope to keep you thinking, to keep you interested, and of course entertained. So sit back, relax and see what our contributors have to say.