<p>You fail a humanities class the same way you fail any class. You don’t put the work in.</p>
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<p>I was originally a humanities major. Still am, but decided to get my BA in anthropology switched to a BS so I have to take a bunch of natural science classes. They have all been at the 300/400 level and I have 4.0ed them easily. Why? Because they honestly require regurgitation of facts rather than critical thinking. </p>
<p>These threads are such bull. Some people do better in one than the other. Some people do well in both. There is NO hierarchy of majors as though it’s some sort of ranked system. Now people- on both sides- get over yourselves. Humanities and sciences BOTH have their place in our society and we are dependent on BOTH types of people/majors/careers. </p>
<p>/rant</p>
<p>wow that’s a really reasonable idea romani. </p>
<p>now get the **** out of here so we can get back to measuring our *****.</p>
<p>I feel like the fascist word censors on this site are really blunting the impact of my posts.</p>
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Agreed.</p>
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Oops, though Jan was a female name. Good thing I’m averse to pronouns on the internet. (I realize the irony of that statement.)</p>
<p>Oh good, another one of these threads. Just as my passionate, almost animal hate for liberal arts majors was starting to die down. :rolleyes:</p>
<p>The hierarchy begins with engineering, math, and the natural sciences on top.</p>
<p>On the other end is the social sciences: english lit, sociology, communications, etc.</p>
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English Lit, filled with social scientists. :rolleyes:</p>
<p>LOL at this thread, there is no hierarchy</p>
<p>[How</a> has nobody posted this yet?](<a href=“http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/purity.png]How”>http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/purity.png)</p>
![http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/purity.png]How](http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/purity.png%5DHow){kind=link}
<p>TCBH, EXACTLY what came to my mind upon reading the OP. Unfortunately, opted for serious argument instead.</p>
<p>^^ Love that comic</p>
<p>Engineering is obviously going to be on the top.</p>
<p>inb4sexualreference</p>
<p>I’m a Chemistry major and Math minor but I’m terrible at social science classes…</p>
<p>I think you guys are extrapolating from my initial claim too much. I didn’t mention anything about salaries. And the ‘pureness’ of the fields is another matter altogether.</p>
<p>I just mean that natural science students seem better in other fields than students in other fields would be at the natural sciences. Of course there will be exceptions. </p>
<p>Yet I doubt there are many top math/physics majors who can’t handle a basic literature class. The few math majors whom I know to have PhD aspirations are all excellent writers, and write better (i.e. do work in the humanities and social sciences better) than the vast majority of humanities and social science majors.</p>
<p>Turn the situation around, and I know not a single Humanities PhD aspirant who can do upper-level math/physics, let alone excel in them. I know quite a few going on to Harvard and Berkeley for literature or law who needed help with a standard calculus course, and this was to fulfill the natural science requirement.</p>
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<p>Got2BeGreen: You do realize, don’t you?, that the best philosophers all started out as mathematicians or physicists, and are amazingly talented in those fields. It’s philosophy that’s being taught by the natural sciences, not really the other way around.</p>
<p>Even IF all of what you’re saying is true, what’s the point of these threads? Ultimately, they just serve to belittle people who you apparently view as somehow intellectually inferior.</p>
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<p>Tell that to my friend at WashU majoring in biomed engineering (and on a full-tuition scholarship too, just in case you have any doubts about her intelligence). She sent me an essay of hers to look over yesterday, and good lord, I couldn’t even understand the first paragraph. It was all in English, and there were certainly words on the page, but they didn’t make any sense. It was like someone had taken intelligible English, thrown it into a Japanese translator, translated it once again to Spanish, and then back to English.</p>
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<p>One of my professors - I’m in an interdisciplinary field that wobbles between the humanities and social sciences but is far removed from physics - actually published his first paper in a nuclear physics journal, so you can increase your tally by one. </p>
<p>Furthermore, I do believe that most people with at least a “normal” brain (i.e. a brain that isn’t deficient in any way) can learn upper-level math/physics, even if they’re not inclined towards those subjects. IMHO, much of it has to do with motivation and interest. I’m not at all gifted with languages, and yet I’m taking two languages right now and am doing reasonably well in both classes, because I think they’re interesting. On the other hand, my calculus grade is suffering at the moment despite the fact that I have a very math-oriented brain, simply because I don’t care enough about it to put in the time and effort required to learn the concepts. (I write my papers for my humanities classes during calculus lectures, which probably says all you need to know about my level of interest.) The same can certainly be said of chemistry, physics, biology, and almost any other subject out there.</p>
<p>Put it this way: Take a college student, sit hir down, and tell hir that zie has a choice between learning [insert subject here] or getting shot in the head. Now, it may just be me, but I’d be willing to bet that most students can learn the subject given an appropriate amount of time, even if it’s something as notoriously difficult as quantum physics or physical chemistry.</p>
<p>Well no, think Ed Witten. Ed Witten got his bachelor’s in linguistic and then he became a professor at Princeton. He is also the only physicist to win a Field’s Medal</p>
<p>It’s not a hierachy its a patriarchy!</p>
<p>right girls!</p>
<p>girl power!</p>
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That’s such a secret shadow-matriarchy thing to say.</p>