The Observer, April 11, 2008
Volume XL, Issue 24
Malignant Majors
The year is drawing to a close, along with my life of irresponsibility, and now I look forward to holding that coveted $180,000 piece of parchment paper in my cold broken hand. There are a number of times over the past four years that I asked myself if it was worth it to go through it all. Fortunately, I was not the only one.
I constantly heard people complaining about how hard their engineering class is, or how some physics test did not-so-appropriate things to some private parts of people's bodies. This in itself is not such a bad thing, because complaining is truly what this campus does best. It serves some purpose, I suppose. It makes people feel like their inordinate amount of slacking is not the cause of a poor grade, but the exam itself, even though the logic in this progression is about as sound as the roads in Cleveland.
But that's OK. If it keeps people going from day to day, then it works for me. When things get as hairy as Bigfoot's rump, however, is when people start insulting other majors. Accusations are constantly thrown about campus (as well as other places) regarding the ease of a management degree or unfairness of the BME curriculum. Students seem to have this idea that fairness should rule all like a vicious dictator and guarantee that all majors should have a communist workload.
Now there are two independent variables to be graphed on the workload grid of this discussion: time and difficulty. Workload can be enveloped into time-consuming tedious work, crazy difficult tree-killing graphite-depleting calculations, both, or neither. The general consensus, from what I can tell, is that students are convinced that things like management and English are super easy, engineering and physics are run by Beelzebub, and the social sciences are off somewhere riding ponies and such.
Now when I ponder this for more than, say four seconds, the little scientific method beacon that was implanted in my head by my sixth grade science teacher blares its little horn. I am not sure at all how you would evaluate this assumption. It is a well known idea that people are not, in fact, good at everything. This idea lends itself to the fact that some people will find different speed and difficulty with various class work.
More importantly, if you do think that one course of study is particularly easier than your own and then get upset about it, I would recommend removing your head from your posterior region and moving on with your life. The idea of higher level schooling, such as college, is to prepare you for work in the real world. It doesn't matter that someone is having an easier time than you; that is just the price you have to pay. If you want to be an engineer, you must sit through the classes that train you to be an engineer. Same thing goes for management majors, psychology majors, and doctors. So, stop complaining about how hard/easy your work is and either suck it up, or sacrifice your end goal for the equivalent experience of a bad whore: easy and short.
