<p>I cannot even count the number of times I've had conversation with engineering majors where they would say something bad about people who don't major in it. Is it because their field is harder? Do they think that they can get a 4.0 in other majors? My sister's fiance downright looks down upon non-engineering majors. I'm sorry if I sound like I'm insulting engineering majors, because I'm not. I'm doing something "practical," too, but I don't go insulting my friends who are majoring in Art History, Communication, English, and Journalism.</p>
<p>Ooh, is gonna start a lot of drama, I can already tell. </p>
<p>I think it’s because Math and Science are considered to be really, really difficult, so people that focus on the most challenging aspects of the two subjects get a slightly swelled head.</p>
<p>The important thing to remember is that everyone is in college for a different reason, and some people really are following their passion (and not everybody loves science/math either).</p>
<p>Oh god. You haven’t met a Whartonite. Those are the worst.</p>
<p>Yeah, I apologize if that came out a little rough because I’m not trying to call out Engineering majors. I respect them because they are studying something hard, but I’ve met and know some really obnoxious people who think they are God’s gift.</p>
<p>I know the kinds of people you’re talking about and let me tell you this - with an attitude like that, those guys are not going anywhere. In the real world, it’s really not about how much you know or how quickly you can solve a partial differential equation or how many different ways you can rewrite a formula in. It’s really about communicating well with your colleagues, having an optimistic attitude and collaboratively working with them in teams. A lot of the time, engineers will have to work with people outside their field (designers / economists / finance people / accountants / architects, pretty much anything you can imagine) and if you can’t respect who they are or what they do, you’ll have a REAL hard time getting people to respect your opinions/suggestions - I know this from observations & experience in the two engineering internships I’ve had.</p>
<p>If they can’t respect other people for who they are and what they’re doing, they aren’t going to be liked very much at their jobs. No-one likes someone with a know-it-all, snobby personality who looks down upon others and doesn’t interact with them.</p>
<p>Thankfully, those types of people are very few at my school and all the engineers I know are friendly, social, respectful, polite and very nice people. These are the kinds of engineers who you’ll see as the face of a new technology airing in a commercial, or giving presentations or publishing research papers.
In fact, if you ask most “successful engineers”, you’ll see that most of their interests and hobbies actually lie outside of science & technology, usually in the arts and humanities. Getting a well-rounded, diverse education is part of what made them who they are now.</p>
<p>I’m a junior in engineering now and so far, I’ve taken 4 Art classes, 3 Art History classes, 2 creative writing classes, 1 architecture class, 1 photography class and 2 African Studies classes. I’m not saying this to brag, but to prove a point that I enjoyed them all immensely and got to meet tons of amazing friends in other majors. No judgement. Nothing. Pure bonding.</p>
<p>So, back to the point, yes they do it to show people that they are “smart”, but they really come off as snobbish jerks. If they don’t change their attitude, they’re going nowhere in the long run.</p>
<p>Well said, AxeBack. Thank you for not attacking me and giving me a great, insightful response to my “rant.” I’m double majoring in Information Sciences & Technology and Film and I always get the strangest looks from acquaintances /family members back at home who are majoring in Engineering. I think people who major in “something Studies” are quite smart and you learn so much from them in an abstract way that can help your thinking. Anyway, thank you for your response. Again, I apologize if anyone feels offended by this. It’s not my intention to **** people who are majoring Engineering off.</p>
<p>I agree with axeback for the most part. But most of the time, engineers and science majors pick on others just for fun. Those who really look down on others don’t have friends. That’s a type of personality not exclusive to engineers, they’re everywhere.</p>
<p>axe, That’s a lot of classes outside your basic program and engineering core. were you required to take those classes, or did you simply want to experience them? I’d like to take more classes outside engineering, but I don’t want to overload on classes. I’ll probably do them pass fail.</p>
<p>I will say this: I am a nursing major and sometimes we joke around about Business majors working at McDonald’s or dumb jocks majoring in Communication, all in good heart. But I will say that Engineer majors are the boss. Respect that.</p>
<p>Engineering is hard? I think churning out 30 page papers and reading long research papers is brutal. Critical thinking and subjectively analysing subjective opinions? Omgg I’d so much rather stick with plug n chugging numbers into computers that do the formula calculation for me. Communication… English… Journalism… the engineer’s worst nightmares. Those english and communications majors should be the ones laughing, at engineers who can’t write or speak for crap</p>
<p>Because physics majors make fun of engineering majors. It’s a vicious cycle.</p>
<p>E: rymd, math and science is much more difficult than english, and I won’t even dignify with a response your assertion that communications is harder. I say this as an english/history/rhetoric oriented person.</p>
<p>Sent from my HUAWEI-U9000 using CC App</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Yes, I agree completely. Just talking to people in other majors about different topics makes you realize how varied human thought processing and perception really is. I’ve actually gotten ideas for my engineering design projects (and an idea for a comp sci program) FROM kids in my Art History class, believe it or not. They just spout out ideas like it’s nobody’s business and they’re all actually feasible, implementable ideas. I ended up using their ideas and they worked out pretty well.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Nope, not required at all. The max credits we can take in a semester is 18, and I usually had 15 every semester (all math/science + engg classes). I didn’t wanna overload by taking yet another heavy technical class so I just kept enrolling in at least one humanities/social science/arts electives every semester for giggles (been doing this since first semester freshman year + summer terms, and that’s how I ended up with so many extra classes). </p>
<p>All my professors/advisors actually recommend doing this since it allows for free critical thinking and helps you keep up your writing skills. Plus, it’s a nice change from the usual formula memorizing, doing problem sets, programming, graphing etc (it can get ridiculously frustrating at times).</p>
<p>Tip: You’re not “overloading” on classes if you take classes you like. It’s just like a hobby, except you’re graded on it (my case with all the art/art history classes).
I’d highly recommend enrolling in some humanities/arts classes along with your core engineering classes, it keeps you from going insane with all the math and formulas.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Maybe it’s because you’re an english/history/rhetoric oriented person that you feel like english is harder? I’ve taken a bunch of math/computer science classes, and for the most part, I found that getting an A was doable, and in many cases, I didn’t really work hard for my A’s. On the other hand, of the 3 classes I took that were heavy on essays, I got B’s and C’s, and this is even after spending loads of time on these classes, going to office hours, etc. So for me, writing essays is much harder than math or science.</p>
<p>I’ve done a lot more writing for my lab classes than for any of the classes I took that were supposedly “writing-intensive.” In the hardest one, generally an 8-10 page report (no mandated page requirement, but the level of detail required meant it usually ended up that way) was due every other week and was graded on the basis that it should be good enough quality writing that it could be published in a journal. One person in the class got an A.</p>
<p>Are most writing classes comm/English/etc. majors take and only get 1 credit hour for that intense? Because none of the essay-based writing classes I’ve taken were that intense, and they were all worth 3 credit hours.</p>
<p>That said, I’m a chemistry major, not an engineering major.</p>
<p>I hate finance students who complain about their accounting exams when thermodynamics is so much harder (in fact, modern quantitative analysis basically stole from Mr Gibbs and Mr Maxwell), yet pooh pooh the study of science. </p>
<p>As a scientist I embrace all fields (and I do spoken word and poetry at the Nuyorican). </p>
<p>Even though I think I’ll get a really good job, I hate smug finance students with a passion. The worst is that they smugly know they’re going to get some soulless banking job, getting huge bonuses for coming up with unproductive schemes like HFT or credit default swap speculating that builds huge bubbles and causes misery to everyone. Meanwhile, engineering students who actually do something productive for society are overlooked.</p>
<h1>OccupyWallStreet</h1>
<p>(and yes I understand the importance of the finance industry. but it’s simply too big to be sustainable)</p>
<p>The perception that STEM is harder than H/SS/B likely comes from the fact that STEM majors frequently do take advanced H/SS/B courses, but H/SS/B majors rarely take advanced STEM courses, and often use “physics for poets” and “rocks for jocks” type of courses to fulfill science breadth requirements.</p>
<p>Of course, this does not mean the H/SS/B majors have to be joke majors or that the H/SS/B courses for majors have to be non-rigorous (in some schools, they can be extremely rigorous). But it seems too common for H/SS/B courses to have low rigor and high grade inflation.</p>
<p>The H/SS students are okay.</p>
<p>The smug arrogance of finance students are the worst. They don’t even deserve any semblance of pride.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>not necessarily. this semester, I took intro to proofs to finish my math minor, and intro to the bible for elective. I though both would be a breeze, but man they’re kicking my butt right now. I’m taking the relig class p/f, and I’m having my fingers crossed that I’ll get the C- I’m hoping for. It’s almost like a history class, except with a textbook that was translated from Hebrew, lol… I really don’t like history</p>
<p>And the math class sucks because the professor is a cranky old lady who can’t teach a fish how to swim. And her grader has zero leniency with his grading.</p>
<p>I don’t know if it’s just my luck, or if I’m just really not cut out for these classes I’m taking. So far I never liked any class outside chem e other than o-chem, which was a required course. Actually, I didn’t really like o-chem, it was just really easy to get an A.</p>
<p>Engineers also try to do this with physics and math majors, but are easily put in place. Most engineering problems can easily be reduced to plug-n-chug or use a computer to solve. Most engineers can go throughout their entire undergrad without ever learning how to do a trivial proof. Many math majors look down and even despise the work of engineers, mostly due to the fact that they cannot appreciate the elegance of the trivial math they use in their day-to-day work and view math as a means to an end.</p>
<p>Well, one of my roommates is a communication major, the other is engineering and I’m a STEM major as well. The latter one and I always make fun of the communication major, but she asks for it. She’s bragged before about how she was on the Dean’s List as a comm major when her hardest class was Speech 101. I mean, really? She’s also a comm major that can’t string together a cohesive thought without peppering in a ton of “umm’s” and “like” and “uh” when she’s speaking and who says she hates writing. Again, really?! A comm major that “doesn’t like to” (i.e. can’t) write and who can’t speak properly. Yeah, I’m gonna make fun of that because it’s hilarious. A lot of people at this school do make fun of Comm majors as a whole, though. Apparently, it’s what all the jocks major in to keep their GPAs high enough to stay eligible to play (or so I’ve been told). </p>
<p>But I also laugh at the would-be engineer who brags about how difficult her classes are (Chem II, Calc II, physics etc.) but literally hasn’t gotten higher than a D on a single exam in any of her classes and has four math tutors but brags about her math ability to anyone that’ll listen. I don’t understand it at all. She jokes about it all the time, too. </p>
<p>And I’m a STEM major that has this complete love/hate relationship with all of my science classes and not-so-secretly dream about what my life would have been like if I was an English major while getting my butt kicked by Gen Chem II because I hate it so freaking much. Go figure.</p>
<p>Most of my group of friends is made up of engineers. There’s two of them (sort of friends of friends) who are stuck up and arrogant about their majors. I’m a psychology major with a chemistry minor and they poke fun at me for not doing science (then what is chemistry I wonder).
They also mentioned to my boyfriend (chemical engineer) that I shouldn’t be helping with his papers because I’m not an engineer so I don’t know what I’m doing. All I do is clean up his figures (he draws them out, I scan them in and make them cleaner), and proof read.
Those two really annoy me.
However that’s 2 out of the 20 or so engineers I know, so I’d say most of them are pretty cool.</p>