HE SAID HE'S TIRED OF SCHOOL.

I'm still laughing over it.

4/12/2010 12:04:45 PM

business and comms majors always make me laugh when they complain about school work.

4/12/2010 12:12:43 PM

4/12/2010 12:12:52 PM

interesting...tell us less

4/12/2010 12:50:49 PM

Only aerospace engineers work hard.

4/12/2010 12:53:53 PM

if i had to write that many essays, i'd be tired too

4/12/2010 12:59:21 PM

^^this, but I will give credit to the other engineers out there.

only engineers work hard

I had a semester of nothing but writing classes. 17 of the easiest hours I have ever taken. Glad I saved them for my graduating year.

4/12/2010 1:01:51 PM

Just to throw it out there, maybe the writing classes you took as an engineer weren't quite the same as those taken by an English major.

4/12/2010 1:04:31 PM

I am pretty sure that most of them were English classes. Also it doesn't get much more difficult and time consuming than an engineering lab report

4/12/2010 1:07:41 PM

Quote :

"Just to throw it out there, maybe the writing classes you took as an engineer weren't quite the same as those taken by an English major."

You're probably right. His probably had more practicality to them.

4/12/2010 1:12:26 PM

english majors would rather write essays and not have anonymous engineering majors beat chest

4/12/2010 1:13:52 PM

Quote :

"Only aerospace engineers work hard."

Nuclear?
Chemical?

4/12/2010 1:18:32 PM

Uhhhhh don't forget about us Parks & Rec majors homie

4/12/2010 1:20:10 PM

I picked English as a major because I thought it would be the easiest, fastest way to get a 4-year degree. I was right.

4/12/2010 1:20:42 PM

^^^ Glorified physicists.

4/12/2010 1:21:54 PM

bah we geologists work hard too....just all manual labor. ha, no brain power involved.

4/12/2010 1:29:12 PM

^^They deserve more credit than that.

Not a ton, but more than that. (I was an aero if you couldn't guess)

Because people who major in Physics are glorified physicists. Engineers actually are.

[Edited on April 12, 2010 at 1:32 PM. Reason : .]

4/12/2010 1:29:55 PM

I gotcha. Really, it all comes down to what you've been exposed to, where your interests lie, your level of mental discipline and your financial situation. The people who make six figures with an English degree bust their ass as much as the dudes who major in engineering. And the scope of this thread really only shows the undergrad side of things. How many grads can hack it in med school?

4/12/2010 1:42:49 PM

i would be super tired of school if i were an english major.

coincidentally, i'm relatively tired of engineers acting like they're the only people who do work.

4/12/2010 1:43:56 PM

NCSU Aerospace senior design has and probably always will be the most difficult and tiring project I have ever completed.

4/12/2010 1:45:17 PM

They're like accounting majors. If I had to deal with boring teachers and boring students and boring subject matter all day, I'd be jaded too.

4/12/2010 1:46:05 PM

As someone with an English degree who has looked over plenty of biochem lab reports, writing for science courses is incredibly complicated and tedious, but requires almost no writing talent of any kind.

4/12/2010 1:46:36 PM

Spontaneous

What kind of degree do you have

4/12/2010 1:47:55 PM

It's true. I once submitted a report entitled "lol, isoelectric protein purification" and got an A+.

^ I'm working on a Stats degree. You're CompSci, yes?

4/12/2010 1:48:22 PM

mathematicians work pretty hard...but I can "work" on the bus, on the toilet, lying on my carpet with the lights out...a mathematician's work consists mostly of thought

the hard part is that it can take three days or more of constant thinking before the right idea comes

but once you have the right idea, it's comparatively easy...just a matter of hammering it out

4/12/2010 1:49:39 PM

Math majors are cool.

4/12/2010 1:51:32 PM

yes, as a rule, they are

the proportion of nerds, snobs, tools and even douches is surprisingly low

4/12/2010 1:53:07 PM

Were you excited to see the Poincare conjecture solved?

4/12/2010 1:59:24 PM

I was a comm major and yeah, I never complained about the workload

Spent more time on Spanish and Finance than anything comm related

4/12/2010 2:01:45 PM

^^
I actually wasn't a math major at that time...and I'm not really a topologist or algebraist, so I don't know too much about it

a friend of mine put up a Facebook status update "A team of mathematicians in Okinawa, Japan claim to have a proof of the Riemann hypothesis"....I was like "Holy shit" until I realized it was 12:30 AM, April 1

4/12/2010 2:04:13 PM

Quote :

"I picked English as a major because I thought it would be the easiest, fastest way to get a 4-year degree. I was right."

Indeed. LOL!

4/12/2010 8:19:45 PM

I knew an English major who took seven years to graduate. He was a super-senior my freshman year.

4/12/2010 8:22:03 PM

^ Damn. I hope he did a few co-ops and study a broads.

[Edited on April 12, 2010 at 8:27 PM. Reason : .]

4/12/2010 8:27:25 PM

I think he was in marching band and never wanted to graduate.

4/12/2010 8:29:53 PM

Quote :

"As someone with an English degree who has looked over plenty of biochem lab reports, writing for science courses is incredibly complicated and tedious, but requires almost no writing talent of any kind."

I'd disagree. It requires no creative writing as it shouldnt.

4/12/2010 8:39:40 PM

Quote :

" edit post I knew an English major who took seven years to graduate. "

4/12/2010 8:42:33 PM

^^
Agreed. It certainly does require writing talent, otherwise the shit is going to be unreadable. There are well-written scientific papers and poorly-written scientific papers, and the poorly-written ones usually don't get published (I've never read a textbook or mathematical paper that wasn't at least decently-written.)

However, the ability to write passably is an almost invariable accompaniment of intelligence, so usually if people are smart enough to do science, they have at least enough writing talent to string together sentences that don't make one cringe.

4/12/2010 8:55:07 PM

I'm currently a business major and right now the workload is pretty lax. I'm planning on double majoring with accounting so I'm preparing myself for the boring ass classes that will come later in my schooling endeavors.

[Edited on April 12, 2010 at 9:35 PM. Reason : catsup]

4/12/2010 9:34:56 PM

^ Why do you hate yourself?

4/12/2010 9:42:51 PM

Quote :

"However, the ability to write passably is an almost invariable accompaniment of intelligence, so usually if people are smart enough to do science, they have at least enough writing talent to string together sentences that don't make one cringe."

As an English tutor, I can tell you this is almost never the case. It's one of the biggest reasons why I hate the majority of the students at our school--they're smart enough to rub their belly and speak at the same time, but they whine at the concept of needing or wanting to learn anything about their language or culture. This weird discrimination on TWW, and in our university, against English majors and anyone who'd be stupid enough not to be an Engineer or Mathematician is the same square, uneducated bullshit that's kept the South and other rural areas in such a bog. "If you're learning about something you can't hold in your hands, it's worthless!"

Then there's awesome people who double major in Astrophysics and Language, Rhetoric & Writing. Godspeed, future leaders of New Earth.

4/12/2010 9:45:45 PM

okay, I can't argue with firsthand experience...there is probably a lot of truth to what you say

but are the people you tutor smart enough to be bona fide engineers and mathematicians...or are they just majoring in those things?

I mean, as a rule, really smart people can, regardless of discipline, write

I'm basing this partly on personal experience, and partly on the fact that I've never read an advanced math textbook or paper that was poorly-written

on the other hand, I haven't read too many papers, and bad writers rarely write textbooks

it could be that I have a largely mistaken impression...I do have a tendency to generalize unduly...thanks for shattering my illusion

Quote :

"Astrophysics and Language, Rhetoric & Writing. "

incidentally, I think StillFuchsia did that, or something similar...and yes, I, too, adore people who double-major in math and philosophy, or physics and political science

4/12/2010 10:05:21 PM

Quote :

"partly on the fact that I've never read an advanced math textbook or paper that was poorly-written "

i certainly have

4/12/2010 10:19:06 PM

^ I have also seen this

4/12/2010 11:26:07 PM

well to clarify, i've read plenty of badly written engineering publications.

4/12/2010 11:27:14 PM

Concerning the title, non-punny English majors can be hilarious.

4/12/2010 11:34:46 PM

k

4/13/2010 12:37:43 AM

Quote :

"but are the people you tutor smart enough to be bona fide engineers and mathematicians...or are they just majoring in those things? I mean, as a rule, really smart people can, regardless of discipline, write I'm basing this partly on personal experience, and partly on the fact that I've never read an advanced math textbook or paper that was poorly-written on the other hand, I haven't read too many papers, and bad writers rarely write textbooks it could be that I have a largely mistaken impression...I do have a tendency to generalize unduly...thanks for shattering my illusion "

The majority of the people are probably never going to be researchers or anything, but I would say the VAST majority of our graduates get pretty mediocre Engineering jobs--it's not like all of them are off to NASA for research positions. I had a Grad student who was returning from working with Boeing and he didn't know how to cite a source in his thesis proposal.

I just hate this idea that by being in Engineering you are somehow made extremely smart. Newsflash, tons of mediocre people graduate from our Engineering school, just like they do from every college at our university. Going into a field where you're virtually promised to make more money than me doesn't mean your smarter than me, and it doesn't mean you worked harder.

I agree with you that very smart people can at least write passably. There's a hell of a lot more to being an English or Humanities major than just writing passably. If anything, Humanities courses can be harder. A course based entirely on your understanding of the writing process becomes an incredibly subjective thing--your grades are not derived by formulas. You almost never get a "100", you can't get something perfect because your professor often doesn't believe in perfection. There's no safe bet, no assurance of success. And guess what, it works both ways. People don't always major in Humanities because they can't do science or math--I transferred out of Aerospace Engineering to be an English major. Most "smart" people can do a bit of both--and that doesn't mean anything. No one should have to prove that one field is harder than the other, because even suggesting that is ridiculously ignorant.




Though on an unrelated aside, the only people that get my respect without question are Math graduates, but that's completely biased because I think they're some kind of unearthly saints.

4/13/2010 2:59:41 AM

Every major is what you make it.

4/13/2010 3:08:22 AM

Even among English majors we acknowledge that Creative Writing probably isn't your best choice for a stable career field. Hell, it works for some people though.

4/13/2010 3:10:23 AM

Quote :

"If anything, Humanities courses can be harder. A course based entirely on your understanding of the writing process becomes an incredibly subjective thing--your grades are not derived by formulas. You almost never get a "100", you can't get something perfect because your professor often doesn't believe in perfection. There's no safe bet, no assurance of success. And guess what, it works both ways."

The lack of objectivity does not make the field harder. If anything, I feel that it takes value away from the degree. Think about it, a degree based totally on how other people think you are, where these people got their degree and accreditation based on how other people think they are, and so on.

There's going to be some degree of subjectiveness in any program, but a program that is based entirely on it, I just can't see as being very "difficult," or even useful. And I know that there are different focuses within the English department. My roommate is doing creative writing. If I ever hear him bitch about needing a "break" from school, I will slap him.

I'm not doubting the classes are interesting. I'm sure they are, if you are interested in the subject matter. But that alone, is not a qualification for being useful. The way I see it, he's majoring in a hobby. It's not like the piece of paper that he'll get after 4 years will even dictate whether he can write well or not. The degree is almost worthless. All he's paying for is 4 years of practice and classes he doesn't need.

And I really wouldn't have much of a problem with English majors if it wasn't for the bragging. It gets very annoying after a while.

[Edited on April 13, 2010 at 4:24 AM. Reason : for]

4/13/2010 4:22:50 AM