<p>I’m not taking it personally. I’m just saying. I don’t even know why it was brought up in the conversation.</p>
<p>I was using it as an extreme example of people having different strengths and weaknesses. I don’t see how that should be offensive.</p>
<p>Oh okay. No, that wasn’t what was offensive. You were explaining how they “exhibit” certain behaviors… lol that’s offensive. Not to me, but I’m sure to someone who had it.</p>
<p>^^^
Thank God somebody is policing the PC nature of comments BEFORE they actually find a target to offend.</p>
<p>Thank God for you, aglages.</p>
<p>For me, I keep thinking about how hard it is for me to run. I run between 20 and 30 miles a week. I do hills, speed training, cross training, etc., etc., etc. I lost 30 pounds through diligent exercise and diet. But I am still SO SLOW!! It takes me 30 minutes to run a 5K race (3.1 miles). Even if I upped my mileage to 50 miles per week, I seriously doubt I could improve my speed that much. But there are people on the running website who insist it’s just a matter of training, and that ANYBODY can be fast.</p>
<p>I think math and engineering are similar. I always just got concepts easily. I didn’t have to study much and got straight A pluses. Some of my friends really struggled with math. Recently, I tried to help an adult friend study for a math test she needs to pass to be accepted into a teacher training program. Oh, my gosh, she didn’t understand the simplest algebra concepts!! She didn’t pass the test, and it was unbelievably easy. Could she ever become an engineer? I really don’t think so.</p>
<p>@MaineLonghorn:</p>
<p>I understand there will be physical limitations to what individuals may be able to accomplish. Certain people will be more genetically inclined to be athletes, scientists, or any other particular career but I do not think genes paint most of the picture.</p>
<p>To me, it seems a significant factor is the perception many Western people have about mathematics and science as being the realm of the “talented few” or “nerds”, whichever you prefer. In contrast, in certain East Asian countries the vast majority of students is expected to learn mathematics and many do, not because of genes, but because the competition is more cutthroat than in the West. In Western society, especially the US, being “bad at math/science” does not carry that many negative connotations, at least not outside of academia.</p>
<p>What worries me is that possessing quantitative skills is slowly becoming the new liberal arts. It says a lot when a business major has less chances of being hired for a business-oriented position than an engineering major (and business majors have quantitative skills, albeit “low”). That has led me to think that, with the exception of law, majoring in a non-technical field automatically makes a person a 2nd-class citizen. How do we fix this problem?</p>
<p>The thing about liberal arts is this: we know the importance of keeping up social relations and studies, it’s for the betterment of society. History helps us immensely, linguistics, anthropology, all the way to even art and literature. To truly excel in these more philosophical studies, I think people can get away with a lot. Every area of study requires smart people in order to make progress, but the learning curve is not steep at all in these subjects. Moreover, something such as literature is based off of something other than conclusive fact, which contributes to the shakiness in the foundations of whether it really is so useful. I don’t know about how many people actually realize these things on a deeper level, but most people don’t really see the point in analyzing Shakespeare. The more thoughtful people will realize that the arts help create critical thinkers in society, and that is always a good thing. But in my opinion, that’s about as far as their usefulness goes. Many others won’t realize this at the fundamental level, but it just so happens that a lot of people don’t like analyzing Shakespeare anyway.</p>
<p>I don’t know if you can ever shake this opinion. The majority of people don’t realize the usefulness of having a society full of critical thinkers (it’s almost a paradox, how do you even get these people to realize this with their lack of critical thought already?) and I think that society will never be that way.</p>
<p>And then I have my generalized stereotypical point of view, and that is that everyone who majors in the arts is either devoutly religious or an existential emo. Then they cry about why they get paid so crappy but all they do is whine.</p>
<p>What, everyone has their own narrow-minded views… right guys…?</p>
<p>If that’s the way we choose to think might as well tell those that are not “mathematically inclined” not to bother and obtain their McDonald’s burger flipper degree instead.</p>
<p>Well if physics were useless I’d still probably want to pursue it, though I would likely not take out a 200 grand loan and I would have the decency to not whine about getting paid more for a useless job.</p>
<p>I mean come on… if you’re going to go into art history or literature or woman’s studies, you’ll have to be prepared to be not taken seriously at all.</p>
<p>Why would anyone invest time and resources in a field where they will not be taken seriously? At that point you are slightly better than a serf.</p>
<p>It hardly matters to someone who’s getting paid to do something they love to do. Why would you want to spend the majority of your life doing something you don’t like?</p>
<p>^People (hopefully) don’t spend their lives doing something they don’t like. They do a job for 50 hours a week that they don’t like. They can enjoy the rest of the 118 hours that week.</p>
<p>Because if doing something one does not like means living decently and doing something one likes means living paycheck-to-paycheck many people would probably choose the former, at the very least to give their offspring a slightly better chance down the road. The opposite is more obvious.</p>
<p>On a basic level, we can teach algebra and trigonometry to the vast majority of people. Those two are more than enough to help people stay on top of things.</p>
<p>More like 48 hrs after work</p>
<p>24<em>7 (hours in a week) -50 (work) -8</em>7 (sleep) -2*7 (hygiene, eating, etc.)</p>
<p>I was going to note what Celeritas said.</p>
<p>To me, I’d rather make the responsible decision to not have children and if my wife decided that she would still like to marry me because I wanted to be a useless physicist then that would be okay. Of course, you always have to find a balance of things, so I’d rather work as a less useless engineer, which is related to what I love the most, but I’d probably be living a bit higher than paycheck to paycheck.</p>
<p>But there are holes in the analogy. I mean, you can practice literature in your free time. I find it difficult to feel bad for people who have a love for literature and choose to pursue it, only to find a dead end. That’s just bad life choices.</p>
<p>I agree with you Enginox for the most part, but if people want to make those decisions they should atleast learn to accept the entire package (that means yes, english majors don’t get paid very well). To use AMT’s favorite phrase, different strokes.</p>
<p>In another lonely post outside the engineering subforum, I actually really open up about the technical vs nontechnical major thing. My conclusion is that I wish all technical majors were in technical schools and universities taught exclusively liberal material (including liberal versions of technical programs, possibly). If you do what you love you’ll never work a day in your life.</p>
<p>English majors don’t get paid well because the supply of English majors is more than enough to cover the demand and/or their skills are not in high demand to begin with. There’s much more that goes into a person’s salary and a salary does not determine the importance of a given profession but society’s perceived need of that profession. Otherwise, we should be paying historians, scientists, and teachers no less than $200k/year.</p>
<p>It’s worth mentioning that prior to the industrial revolution, scientists and engineers were not that high up on the totem pole; the nobility was and the nobility was not generally interested in technical aspects but in matters of governance, culture, religion, and arts. The nobility normally used scientists and engineers in matters of warfare (designing weapons). Up to the 1600s, being a scientist was a health hazard; clerics were far more important. All that changed when it was promptly discovered priests could not design steam engines and mechanical engineers could.</p>
<p>And for all we know, tomorrow a mathematician and an electrical engineer could design an A.I. that puts scientists/engineers out of business. After that, good luck computing Pi; Skynet can do it faster and better than you.</p>
<p>Enginox, I love your latest post. Have you ever read Player Piano? That is what happens. Everyone is replaced by computers and the engineers that design the computers put themselves out of a job. Anyway, I don’t see that coming for a while. </p>
<p>Maine, well I’m sorry that your friend failed her test, but really, you expect one night of your “tutoring” to actually help her ace the test? Come on. Okay my sister, who was in a class that I hadn’t taken didn’t understand any of the concepts. I found them easy, and learned to do them from the text book/internet. I learned that studying with her the night before the test wasn’t going to help her, so we started studying everyday and her test scores increased. She could major in engineering/math if she wanted to, but I don’t think she wants to make the time commitment needed for her (individually) to be able to successfully complete it. If she wanted to she could. That’s all I’m saying. You don’t need to be this talented math student, you just have to want it and do whatever it takes to get there, most aren’t willing to sacrifice.</p>
<p>and Maine, I was a cross country runner, and guess what? I wasn’t the best, the people that were, worked out after our team work outs. I could have been good, and so can you. I’m not a doctor or anything, but I’m sure you could run a faster 5k, there are so many factors that need to be considered… like an iron deficiency? not enough water? not enough rest even. You can’t just say that you run 50 miles and week and eat a healthy diet, so what’s the problem. It’s not that simple. Think like an engineer, there’s not just one solution.</p>