<p>I think it’s pretty obvious that if you’re a terrible artist, being a fine art major might be very, very difficult for you. If you’re a self-proclaimed math ■■■■■■, then yes, any engineering discipline will be next to impossible. But does that mean the difficulty of a subject solely depends on the perception and aptitude of the student? I seriously doubt it. </p>
<p>As a former art major myself, there were certainly times where I was faced with an immense amount of work, requiring hours of carefully planning and timely execution. All that pales in comparison to being a CS major, as not only has the workload generally increased, but the manner of thought/execution required is a lot more rigorous and taxing. Trying to figure out what color scheme to use on a pseudo-impressionist acrylic painting isn’t quite the same as putting together a hefty program where one stupid mistake could lead to hours of chasing seg faults and wondering which algorithm you screwed up. If your painting of the nude woman in soft orange lighting looks more like a dude, you might get a B+ for effort. If you used partial fraction decomposition on all the trig substitution problems on your calc midterm, you’re probably screwed.</p>
<p>I’m certainly not implying that arts majors are vacuous and inferior, but certainly not as “difficult” as STEM.</p>