On the Trent University website there is a page called “Trent by the Numbers” which, apart from listing various statistically grounded tidbits about the institution in question, also lists what administration considers to be its most renowned and respectable departments under the subheading “Schools of Prestigious Study”. Should you Google “what is Trent University known for?”, chances are one of these programs might come up. Read one of these descriptors to any student though, and they’ll likely scoff or ask how much Trent Communications is paying you.

The truth is, the reality of many programs is different from the way they’re advertised, and that can make it hard for prospective students (or third years changing their major for the fifth time) to decide which program they want to make their primary personality trait for the next four years. With that in mind, I offer you an excerpt of Arthur’s famed Trent English Dictionary (or “TED” as we like to call him) to better define the purpose of these prestigious programs. So, for future Trent students of years to come, consider this a guide to help decide which department to dedicate the best years of your life to, and for any current students looking for a change, let these words guide you. Without further ado, here is Arthur’s TED’s (Revised) Programs of Prestigious Study!

School of Business. n. 1. A department whose only success stories are guys with trust funds who dress in suits and Ray Bans and were already driving their purple Dodge Charger with RGB under-chassis lights to school from Toronto everyday. 2. Top of the list of reasons why the 18-24 range on Peterborough Tinder is so atrociously bad.

“Sometimes on campus you accidentally walk by a business class and the professor is writing like “profit = revenue – costs” and everyone is taking notes like it’s actual school”

School of the Environment n. 1. Trent’s favourite department to trot out on a leash when they announce that in Phase 4 of the Lands Plan they plan on cutting down all the trees on campus and infilling the Otonabee river with concrete. 2. The highest concentration of lesbians and stoners you’ll find within a hundred square kilometres. Environmental Studies Major n. 1. Your best friend who works at The Seasoned Spoon. 2. (derogatory) Your roommate who times your showers and makes you turn off the light when you leave the kitchen for thirty seconds to put out the garbage.

“One-hundred corporations are responsible for seventy percent of global carbon emissions anon!”

School of Education n. 1. Living proof that just as the city of Peterborough desperately wants to be Kingston, so too does Trent want to be Queen’s University. Teacher Education Student n. 1. Someone who seemingly does not have a distinct major of their own, but instead keeps showing up in your electives citing it as one of their “teachables”.

Student 1: “Hey man why’s Kylie in this class, isn’t she an education major?”

Student 2: “I don’t know man, she told me she’s doing this class as a teachable.”

Student 1: “How the fuck is she going to teach Forensic Science to sixth graders?”

Chanie Wenjack School for Indigenous Studies n. 1. A tax write-off. I’m dead serious. Don’t believe me? Watch the excellent documentary Whose University is It? (a.k.a. the New Testament of Arthur).

Trent/Fleming School of Nursing. n. 1. A factory which procedurally generates identical twenty-something white women like in the music video for “The Real Slim Shady,” only unlike Eminem they’ll be taking care of your parents and grandparents some ten or twenty years down the line. 2. The largest producer of petty criminals and property damage around HOCO weekend. 3. The department from which is derived the unspeakably-vile contemporary slur “N*rsing St*dent”.

“Do you go to Trent?”
“I go to Trent!”

“What program are you in?”

“Nursing!”

(Trent Annual Super-Spreader Event, HOCO ’21)

School for the Study of Canada n. 1. A group of (mostly) middle-aged white men with an uncomfortable bro-crush for Trent’s favourite colonizer Samuel de Champlain.

“Despite the prominent ties certain faculty members of certain departments at a certain university maintain to certain far-right groups, we are not legally allowed to call them Nazis!”

School of Graduate Studies n. 1. Limbo, a.k.a. the First Circle of Hell from Inferno, part one of Dante Alighieri’s opus The Divine Comedy. 2. The closest your TA can come to “classmates,” because regardless of their different areas of study, they’re all in the trenches together, brother. 3. Producer of tired, impoverished students. At least that graduate degree will afford them a strong application to work off their student debt at McDonald’s!

“That Sebastian Johnston-Lindsay guy wrote nineteen Arthur articles and he’s a grad student??? Does he even sleep???”

And there you have it! The only five programs Trent is known for! Forensics? Never heard of it! Cultural Studies? I’m sorry, who? Trent-Swansea Law? Uh “Wales”? Are you sure that’s a real country? OBVIOUSLY, Trent is only known for these five programs, and this has nothing to do with the university industrial complex and the shift towards ‘working’ degrees or the fact that the Cultural Studies department sued Trent in 2003—

[Editor’s Note: Oh whoops! What’s this? Looks like Evan hit her word limit! And just when she was getting to the point! Anyway, tune into the next edition of Arthur☺]