<p>What would you rather have, a natural birth or a baby being born in a pile of garbage? ~ Schaden</p>
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<p>Would you like to clarify that statement?</p>
<p>Because, I don’t want to job to conclusions, so how about you explain that better.</p>
<p>It sounds like you are calling nurses and doctors garbage.</p>
<p>I’m saying one job is not better than the other.</p>
<p>A state of the art fighter jet made by 1000 engineers is scrap metal without a good pilot. Or without a multi-billion dollar aircraft carrier to go with it. Or thousands of personnel to operate that aircraft carrier (including chefs, garbage men, janitors), and thousands of families to support those personnel. Or a government to give that fighter jet a purpose.</p>
<p>It’s really not as black and white as you’re making it out to be.</p>
<p>No, answer the question.</p>
<p>What did you mean by your comment about having a natural birth V. being born into a pile of garbage?</p>
<p>Obviously, you are calling nurses and medical workers garbage.</p>
<p>Ignorant ■■■■■.</p>
<p>BTW: I was never placing more value on an individual, just the value of the profession. Which I’ve stated.</p>
<p>So answer the question.</p>
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<p>You’re obviously not listening to what I’m saying.</p>
<p>Because there is no way to compare professions. A twig is not more important than a branch, which in turn is not more important than the trunk, which in turn is not more important than the roots.</p>
<p>Stop looking at what is meaningful to you and start looking at the big picture.</p>
<p>At people attacking me for Liberal Arts and Sciences (Seriously, ATTACKING, *** IS THIS THREAD!?)</p>
<p>Swarthmore, a lib arts school, has the MOST (5) Nobel Lauretes of ANY school. Most are science-oriented.</p>
<p>More science Lauretes than MIT, CalTech, etc etc.</p>
<p>And I’m referring to liberal arts AND sciences, so I guess that puts me on a different page than some of the other Lib Arts people here.</p>
<p>But seriously, *** is with the flaming? Aren’t you guys ADULTS? I’m 17…and it’s really bothering me.</p>
<p>Stop dodging, answer my question.</p>
<p>What did you mean by “having a baby in a pile of garbage?”</p>
<p>BIG…can you please stop. Please. And everyone else acting like 5 year olds…</p>
<p>Wait…a poster implies that nurses and doctors are “piles of garbage”, yet I’m the one who is told to stop?</p>
<p>Give me a break, bunch of moon-bats.</p>
<p>Sounds like you’re another one of those catty college girls.</p>
<p>Ahem. I’m back. And I’m tired of people reframing my arguments and then blasting them.</p>
<p>Noimagination, heh, what an apt name.</p>
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<p>You’re right. You should go to Harvard, Yale, Princeton — go to the Big Ten, go to the top state schools. Tell them to shut their humanities programs down. Honestly.</p>
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<p>You missed my point. I’m saying non-engineering degrees can be just as difficult and rigorous as engineering degrees. Roger Dooley said he would pick engineers because he thought the degree was more “rigorous,” not because he was hiring for an engineering job. Clearly, if that were the case, yes an engineering degree would be superior. Yeesh.</p>
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<p>The study I mentioned referred to people obsessed with money. This doesn’t pit engineers vs. ‘the rest.’ Talk about insecure. Many engineers are passionate about what they do. Many liberal arts majors become lawyers or businessmen obsessed with money. I guess the transparent message of passion/interest > money as a primary motivator didn’t get through. I say this because one of the major points in this thread is should just ‘suck it up’ and become an engineer, regardless of your interest, because it has a greater guarantee of money and/or job in the short term.</p>
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<p>It is relevant – you can’t see the forest for the trees. I know the kind of people obsessed with this thread; the people always wanting to leave as many doors open as possible. Guess what? You only have one life, one shot. Ultimately, there is only one door you will go through. You have more options in college, but EVERY action you take, INCLUDING your major, CLOSES DOORS. Oh no! Get over it! That’s life! When you graduate, you can go to med school, or go to law school, or go to grad school, or be an artist, or work in marketing, or be a teacher, or be a translator, or work as a speech pathologist, or be a journalist---- more often than not, you CANNOT do it all! The one thing you can do is gravitate towards what you like to do.</p>
<p>By the way, your entire post is irrelevant! It adds no points of its own, you only try to cut down my arguments in some vain attempt to appear intelligent.</p>
<p>My point about the consulting hiring was that econ majors got picked over engineers – suggesting that your chances at working there may go down being an engineer. Or maybe not. None of the anecdotes in this thread are scientific at all.</p>
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Every water tower looks the same to me buddy. But seriously, I have no problem with engineers. If you like it, great. I’m just shoveling a little back because of the slew of arrows and insults fired at liberal arts majors.</p>
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<p>Boy, I’m really starting to get annoyed now. Take some time to read the thread.</p>
<p>I was responding to Roger Dooley’s point about engineering majors being more “rigorous” because “one can’t bluff one’s way through differential equations.” I’m just saying, diffEQ and multivar were also part of my education, as well as hordes of other classes I didn’t “bluff my way through,” as is one interpretation of social science or liberal arts majors. Got it now?</p>
<p>The fact that I was at the top of the class doesn’t mean my majors mystically made me better than everyone else. I was at the top because I am very intelligent, and was extremely capable in math before even entering college. I’m trying to point out that certain stereotypes concerning majors are not appreciated.</p>
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<p>Hahaha. They mean sociology and psychology MAs. But yeah, you can also get into Harvard without a good GPA or good SAT scores. You better be pretty d@mn amazing though. And have psychology research experience somehow. And there are minimum requirements for psych courses, even if you don’t have the major.</p>
<p>And by the way, everyone, you can’t lump medicine and the natural science in with engineering undergrad degrees. “Pre-med” can be anything, but is usually chemistry or biology, hardly any degree considered “technical.” The other natural science majors are also non-technical. They are clearly non-vocational.</p>
<p>But listen, engineering degrees are not the ticket to big money. They are the ticket to a comfortable middle – upper middle class lifestyle. If that works for you, great. You’ll make more money than most in this country.</p>
<p>But the booko bucks are always for the creatives and the business people. It is most often for the people who take risks, something people who are scared into engineering seldom want to take.</p>
<p>Hell, an English professor at Rice University just got a $3.8 million book deal (yesterday) and over $1 million movie rights for his vampire novel (the Passage) he began writing in 2007, before the Twilight craze. Lucky as hell? Yes. But he is wealthier than any engineer I know will ever be.</p>
<p>But let’s get down to the main point here.</p>
<p>No one is trying to “help” the OP here.</p>
<p>All the engineers are trying to assert how “superior” their intellect and intelligence is… you see it all the time among insecure people on a college campus.</p>
<p>Get this: we don’t care. If you want to be an engineer (or related field), then major in engineering!! In fact, major in anything you want, for whatever reason you want! It’s your life – Jesus. You will prove how intelligent and capable you are soon enough.</p>
<p>Just one final jab----- I think a lot of engineers get huffy sometimes because they feel they missed the “real” college experience.</p>
<p>Many engineers have had that experience. Others, clearly no…</p>
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<p>I didn’t really think that was your point, no. But I was even less willing to believe that you think everyone gets their purpose in life from their humanities courses.</p>
<p>OP, nursing is not a technical field, so the question is mute on that level.</p>
<p>As for nursing vs a humanities degree – that is harder. Ask yourself what your strengths are, what humanities study you might consider, and what kind of job you want. If you were a mediocre HS student then choose nursing without a second thought.</p>
<p>p.s., mediocre is <em>so</em> not PC. Read “average.” Also read less than 90th percentile in stats. OTOH, if you are bright (98th+ percentile rankings), you have a good chance to rise to the top of the nursing hierarchy in a hospital. Actually wanting that job deserves another thread.</p>
<p>Some nursing is very technical, however the major itself would realy be considered a science based curriculum (bio, chem, anatomy). Which may be even more difficult, at least for many people.</p>
<p>I was surprised about how technical nursing is. Man, it’s nothing like the TV shows where the doctors do all the work and the nurses just hand them scalpels. The nurses draw blood, perform tests, monitor equipment, apply emergency medicine, and use many different medical devices.</p>
<p>I’d say it’s a pretty clean blend of science & technical abilities - and customer service.</p>
<p>Also there are lots of other avenues you can get into after you start working. For example, my wife works in labor and delivery, but she is the units “lactation consultant.” </p>
<p>Sounds funny, I know - but she’s a certified Lactation Consultant. Basically she teaches new mothers how to breast feed, which is a very difficult process for some women, some can never do it. It’s not a technical skill, but it’s a unique one. </p>
<p>But Eric, why would you say that “if you were a mediocre HS student, choose nursing without a second thought.”</p>
<p>A nursing curriculum is very demanding. More so than Liberal Arts majors. It’s mostly all science based, which is alot harder than LA curriculum.</p>
<p>For example, here is the University of Pittsburgh Nursing Curriculum</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.nursing.pitt.edu/academics/undergraduate_curriculum.jsp[/url]”>http://www.nursing.pitt.edu/academics/undergraduate_curriculum.jsp</a></p>
<p>I’d like to be a lactation consultant!! I can only imagine the hands-on training :D</p>
<p>Believe it or not, she works with a male lactation consultant.</p>
<p>If I was a lactation consultant I would be constantly in fear of being sued for sexual harassment.</p>
<p>Oooh, yay, finally a thread where I can vent.</p>
<p>Let me preface all of this by saying that I was a CS/Physics double major and will be attending graduate school in the Fall for CS.</p>
<p>I have always resented the way in which technical curricula have been made to serve the needs of industry. I do not feel that engineering or CS or business (at least in their current incarnations) have any place at a university. I think that they are important and should be represented at technical or trade schools.</p>
<p>To make a long story short, when I signed up for CS I was really looking forward to what I now know would have been a much more liberal (as opposed to technical) education. Rather than focusing on the theory and development of computing, most of the time was spent covering the production of software artifacts, or understanding certain languages or design patterns, or using certain systems or pieces of software. Why teach me this here? This should be the kind of thing I learn on my own, or at an internship, or at my first job. Not at school. What a waste.</p>
<p>Most other students knew exactly what they were getting themselves into, however, and seemed to have genuinely little academic interest at all in the theoretical, historical, or socially/culturally relevant aspects of, well, anything, computer science being no exception. I can’t help but feel cheated, and not by my institution - I have reason to suspect that CS programs across the board suffer similarly - but by academia in general. I feel that academia in this country has sold out to commercial interests. There will be no tears from me on that happy day when people realize that making universities about job training was the biggest mistake our country ever made.</p>
<p>When the majority of graduating classes of CS majors across the country count the study of formal languages and theoretical computer science among the least useful and least interesting courses required for the major, and things like “C++ programming” among the most useful and most interesting, there is a really major problem with the culture of students and the academicians that allowed this situation to arise.</p>
<p>After a great deal of thought my only conclusion is that liberal arts majors really are technical majors’ intellectual and cultural superiors. If a harder time making ends meet is the only punishment they should receive for such a sincere honor, they really aren’t so bad off at all. That’s what I really believe, and maybe it’s just because I have become so jaded with the state of CS.</p>
<p>In conclusion, if you want to major in the liberal arts, give everybody who tells you not to the finger and go do it. It’ll be the best decision of your entire life.</p>
<p>BIGeastBEAST,</p>
<p>Look at that curriculum you linked to: no Calculus, No Physics. One HS Chemistry course. It is a rare nurse who has inate technical aptitude greater than an average person. In terms of most compensation for least required education, intelligence and aptitude, NOTHING beats nursing. Today, at any rate. I suspect that nursing will get swamped by low paid aides when the healthcare cost crisis peaks in the not so distant future.</p>
<p>Nothing prevents a brilliant person from becoming a nurse, but the bar to enter and complete a nursing degree is very, very low. The training is commensurate.</p>
<p>AuburnMathTutor – I <em>loved</em> your post! Is Knuth read at Auburn ? I find his clarity of thought awe-inspiring – the little I understand anyway ;)</p>
<p>Truth about CS, is like many fields it has a natural history that early on is <em>very</em> intellectual, and then later in life matures into application. Renaissances happen though, so do not give up hope! My father wrote a couple of the early papers on AI in the 50s and 60s, and told me a couple of decades later that relatively little theoretical progress had been made since. It made me realize that ideas sometimes are like geysers, often from one person, that fertilize a field for generations.</p>
<p>Just think what the fundamental theory of calculus provoked over the next 150 years. Mind boggling.</p>
<p>Okay, just a quick thought from a student.</p>
<p>I was originally planning on majoring in psychology. However, I grew up in a single-parent household that lived paycheck-to-paycheck (and occasionally on government hand-outs). Quite frankly, I’m tired of being poor. Oh, so very tired of it. Now, i’m considering switching in to a Business/Information Systems degree in order to finally make a decent dime. (Plus, I have somewhat of a “knack” for computers and communication, so it fits pretty well.) Now, could I major in psychology and go on to grad school? Sure. Do I love psychology? Absolutely. However, I’m not sure if I’m willing to go in to more debt in order to get that psych. grad degree. And someday, I hope to own the home that my struggling single mother could never provide. I’m not so sure an undergrad psychology degree could get me there (and the debt that comes a long with it).</p>
<p>Just my 2 cents on the matter.</p>