Does It Suck To Be An Engineering Student?

Pickens writes "Aaron Rower has an interesting post on Wired with the "Top 5 Reasons it Sucks to be an Engineering Student" that includes awful textbooks, professors who are rarely encouraging, the dearth of quality counseling, and every assignment feels the same. Our favorite is that other disciplines have inflated grades. "Brilliant engineering students may earn surprisingly low grades while slackers in other departments score straight As for writing book reports and throwing together papers about their favorite zombie films," writes Rower. "Many of the brightest students may struggle while mediocre scholars can earn top scores." For many students, earning a degree in engineering is less than enjoyable and far from what they expected. If you want to complain about your education, this is your chance."

Comments

NO IT DOES NOT

[warrior_s]

here is my summary and my thoughts

According to the author of the article... inorder for engineering to not suck, we should have inflated grades and beautiful textbooks (whatever that it). He says that the textbooks are awful because they are thick and black and white and contain long equations (i don't know if i should laugh or what).. His other reasons are more related to the school in which he is studying and not with engineering

Seriously ... I don't think this article is either NEWS FOR NERDS or STUFF THAT MATTERS. Clearly the author should not try to become an engineer and should switch to some other discipline where he gets inflated grades and the incorrect notion that he is bright.

Re:NO IT DOES NOT

[Naughty Bob]

According to the author of the article... in order for engineering to not suck, we should have inflated grades...

A much better solution would be to stop artificially inflating the grades of the weaker subjects.

I got a punch on the nose recently from a media studies lecturer in his fifties (he'd got drunk at a party, I was a bit teasy) for discussing exactly this.

The point where he snapped was where I suggested that the Maths/Science/Engineering students could make films (i.e. write papers about their favourite zombie flicks) many times better than his average student, if they were not busily, y'know, learning how to do hard stuff.

It's just about brain power.

Re:NO IT DOES NOT

[electrictroy]

If you think the books are boring (black and white and contain long equations),

wait until you get on your JOB. Engineering education works perfectly; it prepares you for the boredom ahead of you.

Re:NO IT DOES NOT

[SatanicPuppy]

Typical science snobbery. Truth be told, some liberal arts people are quite accomplished in their fields, and do quality work that would be extremely to duplicate without a similar level of raw talent and time commitment.

The problem is not those people. The problem is that those people are able to coast to an amazing degree because the grading system favors the slackers who take those classes because they don't want to work.

So the real problem is twofold:

One, the truly excellent students aren't getting the sort of challenge that would allow them to hone their abilities to their limits.

Two, the quality of the whole discipline is being diluted by a bunch of crappy students doing mediocre work for a grade.

I witnessed this in liberal arts classes, I also witnessed it in some CS classes, where incompetent coders could pass the class based solely on the curve and their ability to parrot theory on the exams. Literally. I was in a class where a programming assignment's average grade was 7 out of 100.

Re:NO IT DOES NOT

[p0tat03]

The books do tend to suck a lot more than non-engineering subjects. I suspect it's because engineers who are well-versed in their respective fields have trouble breaking down concepts for relative newcomers. It's not surprising for me to find an advanced concept wedged into the introductory chapters, and helpful beginners' explanations stuck curiously near the end of the book.

I cannot even begin to count the number of times where I've been doing my course readings, and completely not understanding a concept... and then running across a neat little paragraph explaining it all in a very concise way... in an unrelated chapter, half a book later.

I've been in school four years now, and I've had maybe 3 textbooks that I felt were truly helpful. The rest were just shameless wastes of my dollars and many trees. In their defense, all the information is in there somewhere, but rarely where you'd expect it to be.

Re:NO IT DOES NOT

[boris111]

As an engineering student that took a film class as an elective I can attest to that! I would write papers that had A's while the students to the left and right of me earned C's. My paper comparing Hidden Fortress to Star Wars scored especially well. Alfred Hitchcock was an Engineering student BTW.

Re:NO IT DOES NOT

[0100010001010011]

Then you're in the wrong job. I love my engineering position. Some of it's a bit try (evaluating new sensors) but I get paid to build 'robots' and code them. (Ok, I do mechatronics controls, but it's just a robot).

I was going to post something along the lines of "Wait until you get your job and they're still looking for theirs." There is a demand for intelligent engineers. How many art history majors have you had help you at Walmart?

$60k after my first year wasn't too bad either. It's not high, and about average. Life isn't easy. How many people during the industrial revolution would have complained that 'it was hard'. Our society expects everything to be handed to them for little or no work.

Re:NO IT DOES NOT

[pvera]

Engineering school was hell (U. of PR. Mayaguez for me). Most of my Circadian rhythm got shot to hell while studying there. Most of our professors spoke English as a second language, which was a hoot because so did we.

There was only one guy teaching intro to engineering materials, he was Indian, educated in England and had been teaching in Puerto Rico for over 20 years. The result? Handouts were written in british english (we were taught American English as a second language) yet he taught all of his classes in very broken Spanish with an Indian accent.

The computer labs were more or less modern, but we only had dot matrix printers (this is 1987-1992) so the only way to be sure we would have a clean printout was to carry our own ribbon. Plotters were in short supply unless you knew the right people, I got lucky because my work-study job was to run one of the two CAD labs.

Scheduling was a mess. On top of the very precious few hours of sleep, there was always one critical engineering course that only started very early in the morning, usually before 8 AM. Tests were always in the evening, usually without a time limit.

Those were some of the best years of my life, but I am glad that is over.

Re:NO IT DOES NOT

[0100010001010011]

As an engineering student that reads the internet I can attest that I (typically) can write posts that actually follow most rules of English. Lose vs loose, break vs brake, etc. I couldn't imagine what grade I'd get on a lab report if I turned in stuff with those mistakes. Then I come to find out that a majority of those posters (Fark, Slashdot, other forums I'm on) ARE collage[sic] educated, it just baffles me that some of these people made it out of middle school not knowing the difference.

We learned to write well as a second nature, we then had to add actual content on top of that. Every elective class I took that required a paper I got a 'Excellent paper' and I didn't even "try". People in the class around me were nitpicking with "Can it be 2 pages double spaced, can I use 14 pt font, etc" to try and get theirs done. By time I had my thoughts on the paper I could easily have twice the 'length' requirements without any additional cheating. And my peers in these courses were people who might one day go on to TEACH this.

Re:NO IT DOES NOT

[Mr Z]

There's surprising variability in text book quality. Some are written for scientific rigor, precision and conciseness at the expense of readability and accessibility. Others give a little on using the precise scientific terms at every turn, focusing instead on being approachable and accurate. For example, consider the following paragraph from my Thermodynamics book, introducing the 2nd law:

An object at an elevated temperature Ti placed in contact with atmospheric air at temprature T0 would eventually cool to the temperature of its much larger surroundings, as illustrated in Fig. 5.1a. In conformity with the conservation of energy principle the decrease in internal energy of the body would appear as an increase in the internal energy of the surroundings. The reverse process would not take place spontaneously, even though energy could be conserved: The internal energy of the surroundigns would not decrease spontaneously while the body warmed from T0 to its initial temperature.

That was from Fundamentals of Engineering Thermodynamics by Moran and Shapiro, 2nd Ed., p 160. I took this as an electrical engineering student many years ago (1995, I believe).

Some years later, my girlfriend at the time was studying toward her mechanical engineering degree. Her textbook (which I don't have handy), introduced the topic in what I thought was a much more approachable manner. Paraphrasing, it went something like this:

Consider, for example, a cup of hot coffee placed in a room at room temperature. As you would expect, the cup of coffee will eventually cool to the temperature of the room. In the process, it will transfer energy to the air in the room and energy is conserved. The reverse process, spontaneously heating the cup of coffee by drawing energy from the cool room would not occur, even though energy would still be conserved.

Both are engineering texts covering the same material, but with completely different treatments. Both cover the same range of topics, the same steam tables, the same cycles... everything. But, which text book is more accessible? Which text book is more effective? All I know is I had a really hard time in Thermo, whereas she picked it up very quickly. (I did manage to eke out a B, but she aced it as I recall.) Some of it's aptitude—we each picked our disciplines for a reason—but a big factor is accessibility. I found myself understanding Thermo much better than I had, just reading portions of her book.

And that's kinda how it goes. Some classes have impenetrable texts, others don't. These days, the wealth of online materials is astonishing compared to what I had when I was in school—1992 - 1996—and so that helps a lot.

The main thing is to have fun. If you're not having fun doing engineering, then maybe another line of work is better for you. Sure, the projects are challenging, the homework is difficult and often draining, but it's all worth it when you get to the other end and see things come to life. If that doesn't make it worth it to you, then perhaps it's not your field.

--Joe

Re:NO IT DOES NOT

[Anonymous Coward]

Bullshit. I did graduate work in the humanities when I was younger, I'm doing graduate work in CS now, at the same institution (and the CS department there is stronger than the humanities departments). My GPA in the humanities classes was about 3.5. My GPA in CS is 4.0. Doing quality work in either field is just as hard.

You have a serious case disciplinary provincialism there (as do many, many engineering and science students). Keep in mind that most of the humanities classes you took in college were designed for non-majors. You're judging student quality in those fields the way a colleague in the humanities departments would judge CS based upon the difficulty of an Introduction to General Computing Systems course (where any programming never goes past HelloWorld). To me, you sound exactly like someone in say an MBA program who complains that "making a web browser isn't hard! You just type in an address and show a page?"

Re:NO IT DOES NOT

[bkr1_2k]

No respectable engineering professor grades on a curve.

That is the most ridiculous thing I've read on slashdot in a long time. There are good engineering professors at every respectable university grading on a curve. Proving people can fail accomplishes nothing, while teaching them something accomplishes the task; training them to double check their work, learn from their mistakes, and pay attention to what they're doing.

No one remembers everything, and expecting the majority of the population (hate to say it but not all engineering students can be above average intelligence) to be above average is futile.

Re:NO IT DOES NOT

[pyite]

No respectable engineering professor grades on a curve.

Are you nuts? If you're correct, does that mean I should throw out my degree from the Rutgers University School of Engineering? I spent a significant amount of time in both the Mechanical and Electrical Engineering departments and close to 100% of my professors used a curve. The concept of using the median grade in a class as a "C" or so and using standard deviations as incremental grade levels is pretty standard. It also means that when the median is high, it's very hard to get an A. For instance, in one of my classes, the median and distribution necessitated that an "A" grade mean that the score for the class was 95/100 or better. This is an unpopular thing to do, but also the fair thing. Saying no good professors use a curve is a blanket and misinformed statement.

Re:NO IT DOES NOT

[rucs_hack]

Hint: Your engineering professor who wrote the book slept through is English Lit. class.

That's interesting, a girl I knew got through a second year english lit course by sleeping with her lecturer.

Re:NO IT DOES NOT

[ChrisA90278]

It does help to pick the "right " school. There is nothing to stop a prospective student from talking with teachers and students and even sitting in o a class or skiming over the required text books in the student bookstore.

The real problem is that high school students are not realt qualitied or well enough informed to pick a school. I know I was not. I always thought that I wanted to go to UCLA. I don't know why I thought that but from the 8th grade on I did. Well I finally got there and reallt did not like it. Some very good insturctors and I did learn a lot but I didn't like the big campus and huge size of some of the classes. I transfered out to a small private school. Picking a school is hard.

I was a double major. Enginerring and Pihilosophy. With enginerring, what makes it hard is that you have to be correct so for example your computer program either works or it does not. but with other subjects it is mostly opinion and as long as you have references and some reasoning you can write anything

hate to break it to ya

[techpawn]

"Many of the brightest students may struggle while mediocre scholars can earn top scores." For many students, earning a degree in engineering is less than enjoyable and far from what they expected. If you want to complain about your education, this is your chance."

That's true in school and real life kid. I'd like to tell you life is fair... But then I'd be lying and in a management position.

Re:hate to break it to ya

[toddbu]

Then you're looking at the wrong kinds of companies. A good engineering company will hire smart engineers, not people who are good at marketing themselves. I'd never want to work somewhere where engineers are selected by their marketing talents.

Re:hate to break it to ya

[stuporglue]

Every resume you send out is you marketing yourself.

The way you dress, speak, and present yourself at the interview is you marketing yourself.

Of those applying for a job, the ones that do a good enough job marketing themselves are the ones who will be looked at for their technical skills.

Re:hate to break it to ya

[oatworm]

Sure, but how do you figure out which engineers are smart and which ones aren't? The answer is usually one of the following:

1. Their CV/resume and interviews - self-marketing
2. Hearing about their work from somewhere else - getting someone else to market you

The entire point of marketing is to show people that you have a product to sell - it's up to them to determine whether or not it's worth buying. No product, no sale. Crappy product, initial sale, but quickly thrown out of the company.

We need to learn that marketing is not a four-letter word.

Re:hate to break it to ya

[techpawn]

We need to learn that marketing is not a four-letter word.

marketing? I count 9 letters... not 4

at least you're learning

[spiffmastercow]

that's more than i can say for my CS degree. All I learned was in spite of my education, not because of it.

Re:at least you're learning

[SQLGuru]

What I got from my CS degree is an understanding of how it all works......I already knew HOW to program (years of BASIC and PASCAL before college) and I didn't learn anything about real world projects, but because of my CS degree, I understood why languages are written the way they are (good old BNF's) and the different levels of the OSI model and algorithms (was I the only one who corrolated the O-face from Office Space with the face someone makes as they try to grasp Big-O notation during their first Algorithms class?) and, etc. None of it applies directly to what I do today, but because of that understanding, I solve problems quicker and I can communicate to the groups that I need to interact with (DBA's, Network Ops, etc.) in their own terms.

Layne

Re:at least you're learning

[Rukie]

I'm in a mechanical engineering degree. In the past 10 years, fewer than 10 people have recieved 4.0 gpas. It is ridiculously difficult. The classes are ridiculously difficult. However, by the time I graduate RIT I'll know this stuff so well.. I spent all weekend on 3 problems. what the heck! lol It takes me two hours to write a decent 10 page paper, it takes me 10 hours to answer 1 math problem. I definitely agree, other fields have inflated gpas, but you know what, I know a hell of a lot more than someone with an inflated grade, and that makes me proud.

Re:at least you're learning

[GreggBz]

I came into college being pretty good at C++, VB, and having installed Linux a few times, but I didn't know a thing. Let me stand up for the typical CS degree.

Computer org was a fantastic class. So was Physics I and II. So were my software engineering classes. And, I'd say the same for numerical methods.

They all taught me something. Computer org inspired me to seek the root of a problem. It gave a view of how computers actually work, something I lacked before the class despite knowing how plow around an OS and assemble the latest PC. It taught me logic, and the difference between a megabit and a megabyte; skills that I've used in every tech job, weather it's development or Unix administration.

Physics I and II taught me the scientific method. This was my most important lesson. That it takes a long time, and lots of hard work to really KNOW something. That if you can't repeat something with relative certainty, it's meaningless.. it's not the real problem. That in order to solve hard things, you need patience, a variety of knowledge to draw from, and resolve. It taught me to RTFM also. It was the first class where I learned the real value of reference material.

Software engineering taught me to draw a damn flowchart and understand the problem and my planned solution before I start coding. 2nd most valuable lesson from college. So many self taught CS people, they stunningly still don't get this.

Numerical methods taught me that across all languages, the tools are largely the same. I learned how to translate a math problem into procedural code. I've seen people that can't devise the code to draw a window in the middle of the screen. It's not something we went over in the FORTRAN, but I'm sure I know how to instantly solve it thanks to the style of thinking instilled in me by that class.

So lets see...

[clonan]

People take a hard major to be challenged and then they are upset when it is challenging!

I wonder what the incomes of the soft majors that got all A's will look like compared to a good chemical/electrical/mechanical engineer.

Re:So lets see...

[jandrese]

It all depends on if they have some family in with a business somewhere that would let them get dumped into management or if they're going to be asking "do you want fries with that"? Life is unfair like that. The good thing about an engineering degree is that you're almost guaranteed to be able to find a job somewhere. Engineers have useful skills that companies are looking for. Someone who majors in Women's studies and gets all As is going to have a tough time finding work unless they have a network already in place.

One gets the impression that the author of the article doesn't particularly like math though. I've gotta say he should probably consider switching majors now, because it's not going to be any better after he graduates if he continues on with the engineering degree. There is a lot of math in his classes because there will be a lot of math in his job in the real world with that degree.

Also, he has a point about the textbooks sucking. A lot of them are written by engineers and really do suck. I recommend not missing any classes and try to correlate what the professor teaches with the book as much as possible. A lot of the time those seemingly incomprehensible sections will actually be fairly simple once the professor explains it, but be warned that some professors are not above pulling test material straight from the book, so you better understand how the author thinks too.

Re:So lets see...

[jandrese]

Wow, that is some violent agreement there. I think I still have the bruises.

I thought it was due to the lack of women?

[ksheff]

I mean the "Sex Kills! Go To Tech and Live Forever!" bumper stickers weren't created just because they were catchy.

Re:I thought it was due to the lack of women?

[thatskinnyguy]

I kid you not, an engineering student said the following quote that absolutely dumbfounded me and all who heard it. It was not a shock to anyone that he flunked-out.

"You know why we need more women in engineering? Because women are hot. The End."

He now flips burgers for a living.

Re:I thought it was due to the lack of women?

[Stranger4U]

Depends on which "Tech" you're referring to. Students at every "Tech" seem to forget that there are others.

Re:I thought it was due to the lack of women?

[garett_spencley]

That's something that most of my (intelligent and well educated) male friends would say in the company of other males to sound funny.

I'm sure if we knew the guy personally it might be "no shock to anyone that he flunked out", but just reading that sentence didn't dumbfound me or cause me to assume that the guy is an idiot. I could picture just about any male saying that in the right context. I mean, what ... if we're geeks we're not allowed to think that women are attractive and want to see more of them around us ? At worst it's sexist if said in the wrong context. Certainly does not automatically denote lack of intelligence.

hmm

[nomadic]

"Brilliant engineering students may earn surprisingly low grades while slackers in other departments score straight As for writing book reports and throwing together papers about their favorite zombie films," writes Rower. "Many of the brightest students may struggle while mediocre scholars can earn top scores."

Who cares? You're not competing against film majors for fellowships, scholarships, graduate programs and jobs. You're competing against other engineering majors. And honestly, the vast majority of engineering majors seem to have greatly exaggerated notions of their own brilliance; engineering profs do give out As, if you're not making them maybe you're not quite as smart as you think you are.

I think the only majors with a higher general opinion of themselves are philosophy majors.

Re:hmm

[realisticradical]

I think the only majors with a higher general opinion of themselves are philosophy majors.

Now that all depends on how we define one's ability to form a general opinion. For more information read my paper for Philosophy 416, "Our ability to form opinions, real or not." It's clearly an excellent paper, I got an A++++. I'm right because I'm smarter than you are, I have a 4.83 GPA.

Re:hmm

[tppublic]

And the point is?

I suspect the point is: Are you happy with where you are, are you pleased with what you've accomplished and would you do it over again?

People spend far too much time comparing themselves to other people rather than looking after their own happiness. Keeping up with the Joneses isn't worth it.

Re:hmm

[SatanicPuppy]

The point is that grades are effectively meaningless; if you base your happiness around an arbitrary letter (like the subby apparently did) then you're going to end up envying people whose arbitrary letter is higher, rather than experiencing envy for any sort of rational reason.

I honestly never gave a damn about my grades. You can waste time cramming trivia and useless knowledge to ace the tests, but the true measure of your skills is in the mastery of the material, and the ability to put it to work in the real world.

That being said, I almost always experienced more satisfaction from a difficult C than an easy A. Where is the triumph when victory is but a foregone conclusion?

Re:hmm

[nomadic]

Also, one writes "book reports" in fifth grade, not in any semi-respectable university. One gets the impression Aaron Rowe never actually took a humanities class beyond perhaps the most ludicrous one he could find to satisfy a requirement. Does he think English majors make dioramas, also?

There is a general impression on Slashdot among the more ignorant that humanities classes are a joke. I think a lot of it is based on the fact that, yes, introductory humanities classes, aimed at people just out of high school, tend to not be especially difficult. It's more likely that a science or engineering major will take these classes than the upper level ones. Taking an upper level philosophy or linguistics or history course (or even a low-level classics course) would probably disabuse them of the notion.

Also, a lot of the science/engineering types base their opinion of humanities classes not on any firsthand knowledge but rather on third-hand accounts of what humanities classes may be, filtered through jokes, anecdotes, and misinterpretations of what some humanities professor might have said. A lot of it is alien to the engineering major; a humanities class structure is not about being told what is true and retaining it, it's about being given a lot of (oftentimes conflicting) information and synthesizing it.

But I look forward to a day when engineering, science, and humanities majors can put aside their differences, come together in a spirit of unity, and make fun of business majors.

Re:hmm

[Breakfast Cereal]

Actually, a lot of engineering majors wrote book reports for the "fluff course" I used to teach in grad school. They were very confused about the Ds they got on them.

Language barrier

[zerofoo]

It's been a few years since college, but what I loathed was having to almost learn Mandarin, or Hindi to understand my math teachers.

-ted

Re:Language barrier

[eggoeater]

I had a similar problem with several of my CS professors (I was a CS major.)
I complained to my adviser I couldn't understand them, but he said that I should basically be more sympathetic since they probably
had a tough time understanding me as well. I was shocked by this; I'm the student... if I don't
understand what the prof is saying, I fail. Plus, I'm PAYING FOR THIS CLASS. A LOT!!

One of the things that always pissed me off about academia is the sense of entitlement the professors have.

in my experience...

[chillax137]

The trick to staying happy is to mingle with the women on the other side of campus

Re:in my experience...

[megaditto]

What's to explain? Just go Yeah, bring out the hot chicks 'cause I am a hot stud.

Let me fix that for you

[DJ Jones]

#6: It doesn't get you laid.

You're in college to learn. Get over it.

Re:Let me fix that for you

[Rebel_lord]

Lemme fix that for you

#6: It doesn't get you laid yet. Money might not buy you love but it sure can sex :)

Re:Let me fix that for you

[Rebel_lord]

Maybe it doesn't get you laid. My mojo had a better uptime than my workstation... Either you use Viagra or Windows ME. I don't think I want to know ...

It was

[joeflies]

the best of times, and it was the worst of times.

In my experience, engineering school isn't geared specifically for content. It's designed to teach you some basics (electronics, math, logic, assembly language in my case), and everything done above and beyond that was designed to teach you how to solve problems. I may not know how to build an amplifier anymore, but I do know how to build a circuit, simulate it, how to adjust properties, and develop an answer.

I think the same thing goes with Calculus - Everything you did in math was done to give you the 'aha' moment that occurs when you learn derrivatives. You suffered endlessly computing deltas manually, but then you learned what a derivative is, and all of a sudden your world changed. There are other ways to solve problems. And when you realized that, then your approach to math suddenly changed - it's not about slogging through a procedure to get the answer, but to look at problems and see new ways of solving them.

The importance of college isn't what you learn there. It's whether you learn HOW to learn.

Re:It was

[wass]

I agree. Even within college this became quite apparent.

Going along with your calculus example, I did well enough in the calculus courses I took, but I still didn't get the big picture. Until I got to more advanced physics courses (I was a physics major), where I had to actually apply calculus as a tool to do the physics. Then calculus suddenly made sense.

Same with linear algebra, the whole concept of an eigenvalue, or why diagonalization is useful, didn't make any sense to me, and just seemed to be arbitrary manipulation. Until I took quantum mechanics and learned about eigenstates. (And yes, for those physicists reading this,I should have realized this a year earlier when studying coupled oscillations of classical mechanics, but I didn't fully 'get it' back then).

Whatever

[EMeta]

We designed and built Potato Guns, for credit, in an upper level engineering class. In another we designed and built autonomous Lego robots. Engineering classes==awesome. I just wish I could afford to go back and take more now.

Lack of theory

[xRelisH]

I have a lot of friends who were in Engineering when I was an undergrad. The biggest complaint that they seemed to have was that they felt like they were just being fed equations and not taught to think for themselves. The second they came across a problem that was a slight deviation from the questions mentioned in class or from the textbook, they had some trouble, because the underlying theory was lacking. I suppose it's no surprise that the students who do the best in math or programming competitions like Putnam or ACM are typically under the math faculty. Don't get me wrong, I know lots of brilliant engineering graduates, but they often feel a little cheated.

It's for this reason why I chose Computer Science, which is a math-based program at the University of Waterloo in Canada. Although I can't recite as many equations from memory as my engineering colleagues, I know how derive them, and am able to handle curveballs that come by way because I developed logical thinking. As a plus, I was able to get a minor in physics with a specialization in quantum mechanics with the extra freedom in courses I had.

I'd really like to see real math and theory return to engineering. Some formula-feeding might need to be dropped, but a lot of that stuff isn't useful in the workplace anyway.

Re:Lack of theory

[nomadic]

I have a lot of friends who were in Engineering when I was an undergrad. The biggest complaint that they seemed to have was that they felt like they were just being fed equations and not taught to think for themselves. The second they came across a problem that was a slight deviation from the questions mentioned in class or from the textbook, they had some trouble, because the underlying theory was lacking. I suppose it's no surprise that the students who do the best in math or programming competitions like Putnam or ACM are typically under the math faculty. Don't get me wrong, I know lots of brilliant engineering graduates, but they often feel a little cheated.

I know someone who teaches math at the university level, and she does not have a very high opinion of engineering students; she finds them arrogant, underprepared, and either unable or unwilling to apply themselves to actually learning the mathematical theory.

Spent a few years in Engineering..

[zboy]

I'd agree with all the points, but in the end, most of them should be expected. After leaving engineering for art (or maybe while leaving.. since a had a couple year transition), I realized one of the things I hated so much about it was how "strict" engineering is. In the sense that, if you're given a problem to solve, there's only one correct answer, and only one (or maybe 2) correct ways to arrive at that answer. If you take an art class (or a writing class, as they use the example of writing papers), when you're given a problem to solve, there's a nearly infinite number of correct answers. You can do some of your own thinking. Even an answer that one person feels is completely wrong could actually be correct and get a good grade.. it's much more subjective. The freedom to break the rules and think outside the box is one of the reasons I left engineering. That, and I didn't want some little mistake in a calculation to cause a catastrophic structural failure of some sorts that led to the death of innocent civilians...

Re:Spent a few years in Engineering..

[boris111]

if you're given a problem to solve, there's only one correct answer
There is room for art and different innovative ways to implement a solution to a problem. You just don't get that when learning the basics of engineering. Outside of college as well as some of the advanced classes in engineering give you the opportunity to flex your creative muscles. My goal as an engineer is to design that eloquent solution.

Man, are you in for a suprise!

[eln]

If you think being an engineering student sucks, wait until you graduate and have to actually get an engineering job!

Meh

[MBCook]

1. Every Assignment Feels the Same

   Write a short story. Write a slightly longer story. Write the story in rhyming verse. Write a non-fictional story. Write this story. Write that story. Writing assignments look boring to me. However, I saw challenges and differences in the engineering stuff I did. Maybe this guy is just ignorant of the necessary knowledge to see those differences.

2. Other Disciplines Have Inflated Grades

   Why chose a major you have to work for where you can find correct answers, when you can have one where you just have to BS enough that the teacher can't tell the difference between BS and insight? Clearly, you should just chose you major based on your possible GPA. I know they hire CEOs based on what their GPA was 30+ years ago.

3. Dearth of Quality Counseling

   Really? I had some wicked smart professors who could help with this. And I heard plenty from other students who thought this kind of thing about their non-engineering courses. I smell an anecdote.

4. Professors are Rarely Encouraging

   I had encouraging professors. I had interesting professors. I also had boring professors. Why is that every Engineering professor is a stodgy old bore, while the Lit students get class after class of Dead Poet's Society teachers? Oh, that's right, they don't. Besides, maybe if you were interested in the material instead of in it for the $$$, you wouldn't have this problem. You've never seen a teacher engage some students who are interested in the subject, while called terrible by the students who didn't care about the subject? I've seen that since at least middle school.

5. Awful Textbooks

   My Literature textbooks weren't very good at all. I've seen history books that were a joke. There were almost no good textbooks. Blame the publishers, blame the teachers requiring their own text book, blame the difficulty of writing a good one. Again, Engineering shouldn't be singled out

I call blog spam on this. You notice it's just a blog entry, not a real story at Wired.

I'm on the fence, but there are good points

[krog]

Bad professors were a big problem for me. I attended MIT and a state school. Most courses, especially on the bottom rungs, were taught much better at the state school. MIT, like many engineering schools, focuses on its professors' research more than their teaching skills. I failed MIT's differential equations course three times, yet earned an A at the state school. Did diff eq change sometime in the three intervening years, or the 35 miles from one school to the next?

Bad textbooks often follow from bad professors. Beware especially the profs who insist upon using their self-written textbook. That goes double for the ones which can't get the book published, and in turn force you to buy a crappy GBC-bound xerox from the campus duplication center.

I never had a good counselor. Good counselors can give you career advice. My counselors were already-overworked professors clamoring for tenure; not only did they lack the insight a good counselor could provide, but they also lacked much time.

I would not have the non-inflated grades any other way. I also don't trust grades to be a very good diagnostic figure for a student's effort, aptitude, or potential.

And as for homework... engineering is ingenuity (same root word), rooted in math and reality (which we usually call "physics"). The math bears repetition. It's not that I liked doing math exercises all the time, but now that I am on the other side, I fully appreciate its necessity. There were math concepts which I did not totally grasp until I had hammered on them for years.

Re:I'm on the fence, but there are good points

[JohnFluxx]

I speak to a retired professor every week. He said that one of his biggest makes was trying to be a good teacher. He put a lot of time and effort into teaching and as a result he didn't manage to publish many papers. After almost losing his job because of this (cutbacks target those with the least number of papers first), he learnt that students come last.

Re:The worst of all... I never learned to READ!

[Fulcrum of Evil]

5 years ago called. Apparently you left your jacket at their house.

It sucks to be an engineering student

[Z00L00K]

Because...

• ... every teacher thinks that his students may be able to improve the Navier-Stokes equations.
• ... the dude that didn't start to study engineering now is the dude that has five years of work experience and is hiring you when you have finished.
• ... all the beautiful girls (boys) are studying something else that doesn't require that you run your head full of formulas.
• ... all the math involved makes you an introvert nerd.
• ... you have a perfect understanding of what Isambard Kingdom Brunel did but can't fill in your tax form.
• ... that you fail to understand why energy-efficient technology is taxed harder than technology that wastes energy.
• ... you can calculate the distance to a star but fails to understand the astrological terms that the girl of your life is talking about.
• ... you see the flawed thinking of intelligent design and find out how many jerks you are surrounded with.
• ... people don't know what the Coanda effect and the Trench effect are.
• ... you know why a matter changes state from warm and fluid to solid and icy but not why your girlfriend does.
• ... you still haven't understood why not the whole world has gone metric yet.
• ... you understand the futility of software patents.
• ... you know how a Katana is made and why it's so good and still with all that understanding your car breaks down too often for no apparent reason.
• ... things that you encounter that breaks down due to bad design and you see that "I could have made that better"
• ... the guy that looked doped-up in the grammar school that got low grades in everything now is a famous artist earning millions.
• ... you don't have a clue regarding the behavior of the stock market but you have full control over your wallet.
• ... for a party you calculate the "bang for the bucks" party when buying the alcohol and forget about the taste.

How about hiring them?

[glueball]

New Topic:
Top 5 reasons it sucks to hire the new crop of engineering students:
5.) They expect the Statement of work you're asking for completion to be colorful, fun, and well written.
4.) They can relate how their professor who cave them a B- is soooo much better at solving problems than you.
3.) They are convinced working as a TA is real work.
2.) Untraining the bad habits. I block instant messaging for a reason.
1.) They want me to vote for Obama and incessantly drone on about how horrible life is in the US.

Re:How about hiring them?

[realisticradical]

by glueball (232492) Alter Relationship on Monday March 24, @01:04PM

2.) Untraining the bad habits. I block instant messaging for a reason.

Do you block Slashdot too?

It has ALWAYS sucked...

[coolmoose25]

This is nothing new. I got a ME degree from UCONN in the early 80's. My first class had a professor who barely spoke English. His first quote was "I teach you Engineering, You teach me Engrish". His second line (in broken English) was the classic "Look to your left, look to your right. Neither will be with you when you graduate" We assumed he meant ONE of them won't be there, but he turned out to be correct. 2/3 of the entry class flunked out or transferred to PolySci or some other squishy humanity degree. I graduated with a 2.7 cumulative - with a 3.5 cumulative in my non-engineering classes. My roommate was a ChemE who went to PolySci - he graduated with a 3.5... studied about half as much as I did. I ended up going to graduate school because the smarmy recruiters didn't think a B- average was good enough to be a real engineer... Got an MBA in IT and Finance... never looked back. It's too bad because I would have made a pretty good engineer - actually am a "Software Engineer" now... Bottom line is that the grade inflation that took hold of all the other disciplines never translated to the engineering schools... So even though my degree was probably 4 times harder to get, it didn't count for squat due to the costs of inflation. And now America is SCREAMING for more engineers...

You are Freaken Arrogant!

[SerpentMage]

That's freaken arrogant and spoken from somebody who has no clue about reality. Sorry, but I am an ME (fourth generation) and studied at one of the better universities. Though I also have an artistic background (mother is an artist, father is an engineer).

You really think Math, Science and Engineering students can make better films? BS! Try it, please I dare you to. I paint and let me tell you that to get inspiration for a painting is hard. And please don't get me started on "how I could do that in five minutes." If you think like that then you actually don't understand art.

I graduated 15 years ago, and if there is one thing I have learned is that I wish engineering/math/science students were not so dammed arrogant!

Re:You are Freaken Arrogant!

[Anonymous Coward]

How's that hangover?

Re:You are Freaken Arrogant!

[Naughty Bob]

I was careful to talk about 'his average student'. I've no doubt that there are true, budding auteur-geniuses among the media studies students. But the majority, in my experience, are not destined to make great art.

They will, however, get better grades with less native ability. Perhaps the arrogance you feel is more often than not resentment?

Re:You are Freaken Arrogant!

[Man On Pink Corner]

You really think Math, Science and Engineering students can make better films?

It depends on the definition of "better." Some of Hollywood's most influential directors, from Stanley Kubrick to Jim Cameron, were/are hardcore engineering geeks. But most movies made by geeks end up being made for geeks... more like Primer, in other words, than The Terminator.

It would suck if nerdhood was the only point of view represented in the film industry.

Re:You are Freaken Arrogant!

[Charcharodon]

I graduated 15 years ago, and if there is one thing I have learned is that I wish engineering/math/science students were not so dammed arrogant!

That is pretty funny, and accurate, but then again it was hard not to be at times.

When I was studying ChemE I had a journalism student as a room mate. When he wasn't stoned (which wasn't often) he'd talk alot of shit about how superior they were, in their core subjects and in the grand scheme of things, of course when it came time for the assessment exams he'd eat alot of crow when the Engineering school would spank the Journalism school on all portions of the test.

In the end it all doesn't really matter, just being smart has little to do with being good at something.

Re:You are Freaken Arrogant!

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

True, but your reply is also arrogant. People can be talented in a variety of areas, and may choose what to study based upon which one they think will lead to a better career. At my college they had to restrict a certain number of plays per year to just drama students, otherwise none of them would be cast in any of the student plays. The other majors contained a fair number of dramatically talented people, who were the leads in their school plays/musicals, but decided there was a better chance at making a living in another discipline.

Every discipline also has a fair number of students hat aren't talented in the discipline, but really really like it.

Re:You are Freaken Arrogant!

[Beardo the Bearded]

Hear, hear.

I'm an EE. (EIT)

The students I went to school with were, for the most part, arrogant, stuck-up, and useless. One guy said, "It's nice that there are stupid people - otherwise we'd have to scrub toilets."

I pointed out that the janitor worked part-time, was a union employee, and probably got paid about 50k a year. (For part-time, remember?) The janitor was a nice guy, actually, and he was aware that most people thought of him as a "non-entity."

I've always felt that the other subjects are just as hard as Engineering to complete - they just require a different mindset. Yes, some people can game the system to get a bunch of slacktastic courses. That's true for 1st year, for certain. It's not true for later years. Sure, second year math has a 70% failure rate. I'm sure that there's some musical course or art appreciation course that's just as tricky. What about Ethical matrices for solving very difficult situations? Or something else that I'm not aware of because I didn't take 4th year A&S electives? University and College are hard, no matter what degree you try to attain. Engineering isn't some elite cadre of the Brainiacs.

Other students despised me because I invented things and didn't bother going for the 9.0 average. (I realized that I could do half the work and get a nice B average.) One of my friends said "they hate you because you don't give a FUCK. Not at all. It's all they care about, and you're still here, and you don't give a FUCK. It's hilarious."

I also realized that what we learn at school has NOTHING TO DO WITH ENGINEERING. IEEE taught me that with a phrase akin to, "It's hard for people who have entered the workforce to pursue a Master's Degree, because they haven't used the theories or mathematics since graduation."

I don't paint. I can't think of what I'd make. (Although I can put a fresh coat of latex on a wall with the best of them. ;) ) I can play a musical instrument quite well (20 years) and I can sing (8 years in a classical choir).

Re:You are Freaken Arrogant!

[Sax Maniac]

I was a music major before I went into Comp Sci, and wound up with degrees in both.

The music major was far more time-intensive. Music majors regularly took 21-24 credits while the "libbies" would complain at 16. And, those credits were not "dense" time-wise, I'd frequently have 3 or 4 different performance groups for 3 hours a week each, yet only get one credit for each. You'd have to practice 2 or 3 hours a day to acheive your instrumental proficiency, and I wasn't even a performance major.

When I finished the music and was working F/T on CS, I had a whole lot more drinking time, yet my average was a lot higher in CS.

In art, you have to make a metric ton of garbage before you're capable making anything good. And everything that comes out good looks easy and obvious, until you try to actually do it.

Re:You are Freaken Arrogant!

[russotto]

I still don't understand why you're so convinced the average CS major could be making great art. The only argument anyone seems to be making for that claim is that James Cameron has an engineering degree (which isn't even true) and that therefore every Java-mangling halfwit could also make Titanic.

The average CS major probably couldn't be making great art. But neither can the average film student. IMO, the average CS major could get through an undergraduate film curriculum a lot easier than the average film student could get through an undergraduate CS curriculum (and forget about EE).

Disclaimer: I only took one film class in college. And yes, it was an easy A.

Re:You are Freaken Arrogant!

[Naughty Bob]

I still don't understand why you're so convinced the average CS major could be making great art.

But, dearest Otter, I never said that.

My comparison was between the capacity for making (or even appreciating) art between yer average Maths/Science/Engineering student and the average media studies one.

Re:You are Freaken Arrogant!

[Atzanteol]

If you like it, it's good art. If you don't like it, it's bad art.

Anyone who tells you otherwise is an elitist asshole.

Re:You are Freaken Arrogant!

[Naughty Bob]

There is no such thing as "native ability".

Well, that's something for a different debate. But regardless, I wasn't talking about genetics.

Surely you have witnessed the phenomenon of some people being 'more capable' than others, before any learning (of whatever) has begun? We are not only a product of the lessons we've sat through, surely?

Re:You are Freaken Arrogant!

[el americano]

...every Java-mangling halfwit could also make Titanic.

They probably couldn't make great art, but I think they could certainly make Titanic.

Re:You are Freaken Arrogant!

[JoeDuncan]

There is no such thing as "native ability".

Well, that's something for a different debate. But regardless, I wasn't talking about genetics.

What else can "native ability" refer to if not genetics? (Ok - there are a limited number of biological developmental factors, such as exposure to toxins in the womb, genetic mutations, chromosomal aberrations etc... which can also affect "native ability", but if you were including such in the meaning, I did not receive that impression from your usage.)

Surely you have witnessed the phenomenon of some people being 'more capable' than others, before any learning (of whatever) has begun? We are not only a product of the lessons we've sat through, surely? I understand what you mean, but it is not really possible to observe people "before any learning (of whatever) has begun". We begin learning the moment we are born (and perhaps earlier if you believe some studies - the debate is still on in that respect).

What you mean (correct me if I am wrong), is for example the phenomenon of one child in grade 1 being better (and quicker at picking up) math than another child in grade 1 - the very first time they attempt it, neither of which has ever received any formal mathematical training. However, if you were to examine these respective children's histories, you would most likely discover that the one had early childhood experiences and environments which had stimulated their visual-spatial abilities, whereas the other had not (or at least to a lesser degree).

I assure you, I am not saying we are solely the product of the lessons we have sat through, but, other than some gross biological and anatomical features, in terms of the skills and abilities we learn, we are the product of our experiences.

Re:You are Freaken Arrogant!

[Naughty Bob]

This debate is called nature vs. nurture, and has raged for centuries. Greater minds than ours are unable to figure out how either of them can usefully be quantified, or which is the more significant. The science just isn't there yet. >gross biological and anatomical features... I can guess which way you lean.

Re:You are Freaken Arrogant!

[rir]

I definitely agree with your post, and having graduated from EE 3 years ago, I don't think I would do it again if I had the chance. I think I would have been served better by taking a few years off to screw around and chase girls, then grab a 2 year technical diploma in a hands-on field that really interests me. It would have been way cheaper and have saved me from wasting the best years of my life closeted up in a dorm room or electronics lab studying.

Re:You are Freaken Arrogant!

[JoeDuncan]

I've seen enough people with talent to know that it is more than just learned skill. Hey. Wow. Anecdotal evidence is _really_ good science. Your insight into the _entire_ backgrounds and experiences of _everyone_ you meet is simply astounding! You've convinced me.

I notice you completely ignored my challenge to prove your earlier claims. I'm still waiting for the logical argument demonstrating the equivalence of "anyone can be" and "everyone is". However, I have the impression I will be waiting for quite a while...

I think it's funny that you to claim that the debate over nature vs. nurture has already been decided in your favor, Please, show me where I made this claim. You will find that equally hard as well, because this is just another straw man argument of yours. I never once claimed that. As I said in other posts in this thread, no one seriously considers the "nature vs. nurture" debate an actual debate any more. It has been adequately demonstrated that who we are as a whole is determined by a mixture of the two, and that they are not mutually exclusive. We are not forced to pick one or the other, the answer is both. It's a false dichotomy.

Many reputable studies support the concept of fluid intelligence: "on-the-spot reasoning ability, a skill not basically dependent on our experience." (Belsky, 1990, p. 125) Hey, great, I agree with you completely on this. But there's nothing in the concept of fluid intelligence itself that contradicts anything I have said. I never denied the existence of fluid intelligence or that people have differences in that respect. However, those differences account for very little of the variability on learned task/skill performance (e.g. music, engineering...) - so much so that the colloquial notion of "natural ability" is simply false. The majority of said variability is accounted for by experience/practice. This has been very well documented.

I suppose it won't hurt you to believe this way It's not a matter of belief my friend. I am merely reporting to you the facts that are supported by the weight of evidence and scientific consensus. It is your choice whether or not you wish to remain ignorant of this. I suggest you familiarize yourself with the relevant literature before making such certain proclamations on a subject with which you are so woefully ill-informed. The reference I have already given you should serve as a good starting point. It will most likely address any further questions you may have, I know it addresses the issue of "fluid intelligence" you have already brought up much better than I can here.

It's been fun! Cheers!

This isn't high school

[keineobachtubersie]

"A much better solution would be to stop artificially inflating the grades of the weaker subjects."

No, that's not any kind of solution at all.

No one who has an opinion worth a damn will ever look at a Liberal Arts major with a 3.8 and think it's equivalent to a 3.8 in chemical engineering.

They're not the same, it's not high school, and you're not competing against the entire student body anymore.

Re:This isn't high school

[ATMAvatar]

No one who has an opinion worth a damn will ever look at a Liberal Arts major with a 3.8 and think it's equivalent to a 3.8 in chemical engineering.

The clerks handling academic scholarships do.

There are states that offer scholarships that require one maintains their GPA above a certain level. While the types of students who would earn an academic scholarship aren't the types that would switch to a relatively easy Liberal Arts major to maintain the scholarship, it is commonplace to see students taking LA classes to pad their grades and maintain scholarships. This incentive to take irrelevant (but easy!) classes should not exist.

Re:This isn't high school

[Anonymous Coward]

This happened to me - I graduated #2 in Electrical Engineering, beating everyone else but one person on GPA. I lost my scholarship in my second year of school, because my GPA (second highest in the engineering school) was lower than the English school's average GPA.

So ALL of the scholarships went to the English school (and other departments, presumably) after the second year - not a single engineer got a GPA based scholarship...

Engineering school dichotomy

[oddaddresstrap]

Freshman & sophomore years: pain in the butt!
Junior & senior years: kicks ass!

Re:Employement, post graduation?

[p0tat03]

Until you realize that, historically anyways, higher education is *not* vocational training. Higher education is meant to do exactly that - educate, in any subject that might tickle the learner's interests. Vocational training belongs in trade school - and I bet most engineers have too big of an ego to go to the same school as the mechanics and the plumbers.

Disclaimer: I am an engineer, but I'm routinely frustrated with how our kind tend to think we're better than everyone else, simply because we have a starting salary higher than most other degrees (note that I said starting, this relationship doesn't hold as time goes on).

Engineering salaries and disposable employees

[athloi]

From what I've seen lately, the hype over web technologies and our service-based economy has degraded the salaries of engineers relative to other professions, and the inflation of our currency.

This is why companies seem to like mediocre scholars, because they can buy them cheaper, throw a bunch of them at a problem and solve it more cheaply than having superstars. They like disposable employees because they never get slowed down when someone quits, leaves, goes into rehab or dies.

Colleges know this, and so they're relaxing standards and caring less about who makes it through, because they're more interested in churning out the inventors of the next FaceBook(tm).

#1 Reason

[stronggate]

No girls... Please do not mod this funny, because it's not :(

Bullcrap!

[Weaselmancer]

It does NOT suck to be an engineering student. If - and here's the big part - if you like engineering. If you're in this because you parents told you to do it, or because you think there's big money in it - there's the door and don't let it hit you in the ass.

Complaining about how engineering is hard work is like someone studying to be a proctologist and coming home from the first day at work and complaining about all the assholes. How could you possibly be surprised by this? Anything that requires you to learn differential equations is going to be a little taxing.

As for myself, I loved being an engineering student. Having a building full of PhDs that would explain anything, absolutely anything to me ROCKED. I miss college.

In fact, you only needed about 8 credit hours of extra engineering classes to graduate out of the electives. I graduated with over 35. Took extra classes in antenna design, digital number theory, non-linear controls...you name it. I loved it all and dearly miss college.

On the flip side, you know what actually does suck? A mortgage. That's what.

Re:Bullcrap!

[Cro Magnon]

Complaining about how engineering is hard work is like someone studying to be a proctologist and coming home from the first day at work and complaining about all the assholes

What REALLY sucks is when you're complaining about all the assholes and you're NOT a proctologist!

Re:The worst of all... I never learned to READ!

[Iffy Bonzoolie]

The jerk store called, they're running out of YOU!

-If

Slackers don't succeed forever

[192939495969798999]

While slackers may be able to skate by in certain courses, they will not get A's forever and despite what our country's leadership might suggest, slackers generally are not that successful in their careers. Bright students, on the other hand, generally end up extremely well after the dust settles. So hang in there, my bright bretheren!

It used to pay better

[Animats]

The trouble with studying engineering today is that it used to pay better. In 1970, the IEEE reported that electrical engineers and lawyers were making about the same salaries.

I had a quite good undergraduate engineering education. What sucked was going through Stanford CS for a Master's in the mid-1980s. I went through just as it was becoming clear that expert systems weren't going to lead to strong AI, but many on the faculty didn't want to admit it. Yet the expert systems people were still in charge. This was just as the "AI Winter" was starting, and the first-round AI startups were going bust. The whole experience was disappointing. I was fed way too much bullshit, and I knew it at the time. I have the Stanford diploma, but as an educational experience, it sucked.

Stanford finally had to transfer computer science from Arts and Sciences to Engineering and put in adult supervision. It's much improved now.

Top five questions to new engineering student

[fermion]

With suggested answers, for those who do not wish to think.

1. Do you want to be engineer? If the answer is not hell yes, with all my heart and soul, and I know that is more work than any other major, and I have building robots since I was 5, and I love basements, then run away, quickly. College is not high school where the students smell fear on a teacher and then bully grades out of them. Professor smell fear on freshmen, then fail them before the first week is out. This is reality. In general there are many more qualified engineering students than are needed, and no prof wants to waste time with a dumkompf. Especially those students who think that engineering to too hard should choose another major.
2. Did you get in a state school with automatic admission? If you did not get into the school though a competitive process, if you are not at the to 20% of the exams, if you think that you are hot stuff just because you managed to eek at the top 10% of you little pond does not mean you are qualified for the privilege of engineering school, or at least not a real one.
3. Do you like to read and do math? Again, if the answer is not yes, with all my heart, that is all I ever do, then run away fast. This does not mean that you can't drink and party and be a college kid. Some one the highest educational areas also sell the greatest amount of alcohol. But there must be a balance. I recall our class complaining to an engineering teacher who came into our midterm wearing a t-shirt from a concert held the previous night. We all complained why he got to go and we had to study. He said we could have gone if we had not waited to the last minute to study.
4. Can you do work without supervision? This is not high school. No one is going to beg you to do work. No one wants to hear your excuses that you use to not do work. The prof is not going to do all the work for you. You might need to do all the learning yourself if you get a bad prof. That is life. Class time is at most 20% of the time you will spend learning the subject, so the prof is at most a guide to the important bits. The textbook is one resource. Motivated students who will become engineers are able to find other resources, and copy each others homework to help understand important topics.
5. Are you, or have you ever been, a whiner. No engineering firm wants a whiner. No intelligent person who has a choice of where to work wants to work with whiners. Nearly every other social malady is acceptable. Be arrogant, rude, or even borderline psychotic. Be a managed druggy. By if you are whiner, don't waste you time in engineering. No one cares.

6. And one more thing. A Ti Silver Edition is not a real calculator. It is a toy given to kids who can't do math to keep them busy during math class. I know the 'plus' makes it seem like a real calculator, but it is not. It is most useful for passing notes. Get and HP.

Re:Top five questions to new engineering student

[fishbowl]

>A Ti Silver Edition is not a real calculator.

Mine's pretty good, but I actually prefer and use the previous generation TI-89.
If you obsess on things like having an antique calculator, you might have attention
issues that are incompatible with engineering school.

I love my RPN, stack based calculators - I have quite a collection. I also recognize
the fairly amazing power of my TI-89, considering its battery usage and its cost.

Are All Whining Student Engineers Lousy Students?

[lancejjj]

Hmmm, maybe this guy simply isn't cut out to be an engineer.

I remember my engineering program in college. It was loaded with a bunch of student that often complained about the instructors, the program, and the lack of leniency. In every case I can recall, the whiners were the lousy students.

The short of it is that not everyone who gets into a great engineering program is really cut out to be an engineer. [Also note that many who once failed to get into a great engineering program are great engineers now]

The fact is that engineering requires a lot of hard work. Complaining about how other majors have it "so easy" is just ignoring the fact that you're a lousy student that gets a deservedly poor grade. If you aren't getting excellent grades in your courses, my wager is that you either (1) don't have what it takes, or (2) aren't studying enough, or (3) have too many other obligations to study enough.

Yes, some instructors are lousy; some are fabulous. Most institutions let you pick your courses. Choose wisely. If there aren't enough good options, you picked the wrong institution - find a new one. And unless you're currently a top notch student, stop whining about your own failings.

By the way, I don't hire whiners.

Good luck.

it's been done

[circletimessquare]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Cameron

Cameron was born in Kapuskasing, Ontario, Canada, the son of Shirley, an artist and nurse, and Phillip Cameron, an electrical engineer.[2] He grew up in Chippawa, Ontario and graduated from Stamford Collegiate in Niagara falls , and in 1971 his family moved to Brea, California. There he studied physics and English at California State University, Fullerton, but his passion for filmmaking would draw him to the film archive of UCLA at every opportunity. After dropping out of university, he spent time writing while working several jobs, including truck driving[3]. After seeing the film Star Wars, Cameron quit his job as a truck driver to enter the film industry.[4] During this time, he made a short twelve minute science fiction film with his friends entitled Xenogenesis.

can i get an amen from those reading this comment who think that groundbreaking films like terminator, aliens, terminator ii, titantic, abyss, etc., would be totally different and totally worse if not made by a man with a solid physics/ engineering background?

is terminator ii possible without someone with an awareness of shape memory alloys?

Bologna.

[Weaselmancer]

I paint and let me tell you that to get inspiration for a painting is hard. And please don't get me started on "how I could do that in five minutes." If you think like that then you actually don't understand art.

If you're talking about the "looks like 5 minute art" being the modern variety, then I must call shenanigans on you. Modern art is bollocks.

Disclaimer: I'm not an artist. What I know about art you could fit in a thimble. But, I'm an engineer and scientist, and I have tested this. Albeit accidentally.

Over a dozen years ago I went to the Met in NYC with a girlfriend. At the time I had long hair, was only slightly balding, and wore military clothing with lots of pins all over it. I looked eccentric. I looked...like what you'd think of when you think "artist".

So we're at the Met. And to make my SO laugh, I start doing my best "LA Story" impression on the modern art display. I was a little louder than I should have been (I blame the extra-fun Manhattan bars for this). Other people could hear me - I didn't know this. I began spouting nonsense.

"It says a lot by saying a little. It's artistic without being artsy."
"It's amazing how much of a conversation you can have with just green, isn't it?"
"You can see the effort but not the grace. Yellow can be so unforgiving."

And so on.

What I didn't realize was that other art people were looking over my shoulder and nodding at every single thing I was saying. I had the weird hair and the odd jacket. And nothing I was saying was making sense. Since it was all zooming over their heads, they erred on the side of caution and assumed I was a genius. And I had improved their day with my "insight", which was nothing more than half-drunken babbling. When I turned around and saw a half a dozen people following me around, I knew I had learned something important:

Art, modern art anyways - is a load of rubbish.

It's the emperor's new clothes.

Re:Bologna.

[Naughty Bob]

The number of times I walk into a restaurant/office/wherever and see a Rothko hanging upside down.

Re:Bologna.

[techpawn]

knew I had learned something important:
Art, modern art anyways - is a load of rubbish.

No, what you learned was that a lot of people who wander around who look at modern art are pretentious and know nothing about art and just want to impress their girlfriends who took them to the met by following and agreeing with the artsy looking people.

Re:Bologna.

[Weaselmancer]

No, what you learned was that a lot of people who wander around who look at modern art are pretentious and know nothing about art and just want to impress their girlfriends who took them to the met by following and agreeing with the artsy looking people.

I'm sure there's a kind of hipster peer-pressure thing going on. That's kind of my point.

As for the event in question, here's how it went down.

My girlfriend was by my side when I started my routine. We were alone at the time. Other people wandered in...maybe 5 or 6. They wanted to see what I was talking about. I did my bit on 3 or 4 paintings, thinking my girlfriend was beside me. What she did was take two steps back and watch.

I turned around. There was a lady who was maybe in her 50's with white hair leading the pack. I made eye contact with her and was surprised. I thought I was alone with my SO. The lady smiled and nodded in an encouraging manner that suggested, "Please, do go on!" I apologized, explaining I thought I was alone and didn't wish to disturb their viewing. Wandered back to my SO who was doing her very very best to not laugh. We exited the room. Later on she told me about my miniature fan club and how impressed they were with my insight.

Yeah, it's a small sample and I'm sure it doesn't speak for the whole crowd. But it did teach me a small something about modern art.

Re:Bologna.

[russotto]

Assuming you're an engineer, you've probably proven one of the article's points -- despite a lack of any art education you managed to produce a quite acceptable piece of extemporaneous performance art. At a famous NY museum, no less. Most artists go their entire career without a NY museum show -- maybe you picked the wrong career :-)

Re:Bologna.

[Minwee]

What I didn't realize was that other art people were looking over my shoulder and nodding at every single thing I was saying. I had the weird hair and the odd jacket. And nothing I was saying was making sense. Since it was all zooming over their heads, they erred on the side of caution and assumed I was a genius. And I had improved their day with my "insight", which was nothing more than half-drunken babbling.

Your mind reading abilities are impressive.

Did I ever tell you about the time that I went out to the Met and saw some guy doing his best Steve Martin impression in front of the modern art display? He was clearly babbling about nothing in particular but I was entertained by his display of street theatre. I smiled and nodded when he quoted a line from 'LA Story' and made no effort to move away when I saw that we were taking the same path through the museum. The funny thing is that I never did figure out whether he was trying to make some sort of wry criticism of artists who try to make a virtue out of inaccessibility or if he really was just a drunken lout who had no idea what he was looking at and wanted to be funny for his girlfriend.

But I was reminded of something important:

Just because you don't understand something doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Lots of people have no idea how gravitation works but that doesn't keep them from sticking to the ground.

Re:Bologna.

[Oligonicella]

Have to agree with techpawn. You only learned something about those people, not modern art itself. There are a number of "schools" of MA; some are drek, some are quite deep and friggin' hard to accomplish.

You could have done exactly the same thing with Renaissance art.

Re:Bologna.

[popmaker]

No it's not. The real artists aren't hanging around bars. These guys we're probably just like you: Pretending. The real artists are AT HOME doing something useful. But you did make a good point. There are a lot of people who like pretending. I see them all the time and GOOD GOD I would have hated your guts - no offense - if I had seen you at that bar.

That is also the reason I don't use the word "artist" and that I use the word "art" sparingly. It just conjures up an image of those phoney people with army jackets and pins on them. I actually think the modern self-taught computer-geek has more to do with art than those people. There is probably less difference that you think in being a geek sitting in front of his computer hout after hour chasing after a buffer overflow, trying to get a tetris-piece to move or god-knows what and thet geek in the 16th century who spent hour after hour trying to get that smile to look just right. And there certainly is less difference between both the computer geek and the real artist than those phoney hanging-out-in-bars supposedly breathing in "culture" types.

An arist is a person who creates art. Show me the results, not the clothes. I agree with you on about a thousand levels, but I don't agree that you should accuse "art" of BEING this phoney - even modern art.

Re:Bologna.

[Weaselmancer]

No it's not. The real artists aren't hanging around bars. These guys we're probably just like you: Pretending. The real artists are AT HOME doing something useful. But you did make a good point. There are a lot of people who like pretending. I see them all the time and GOOD GOD I would have hated your guts - no offense - if I had seen you at that bar.

None taken. But I must clarify one point. I was not pretending to be anything. I was mistaken for something, but that was hardly my fault. I've always been me. Even though I did have a vaguely-trendy-at-one-time army jacket with junk on it. A closer inspection of the jacket would have revealed that most of the stuff was Battletech patches anyways. I did it as a nod to my being an engineer and basically decked myself out as a house Steiner mech technician. It did somewhat look like what other people were doing, but it wasn't.

Well, what can I say - it amused me at the time. Ah, youth.

Re:Bologna.

[Naughty Bob]

The 'great' painters I mentioned can do everything a Rothko can, and can do it while displaying a level of draftsmanship that takes your breath away.

Apples and oranges

More like apples and green spheres.

Or Apples and Dells....

When I was Math Grad Teaching Assistant

[DaveAtFraud]

My first joke when I walked into a new class was, "You're in luck. I speak English." Lots of people laughed but not because what I said was funny.

Cheers,
Dave

Re:Engineers are whiners

[nomadic]

I studied both Physics and E.E., and IMO, Physics was harder.

You know what they say, engineering is for people who weren't good enough at math to be physics majors. And physics is for people who weren't good enough at math to be mathematics majors.

So what?

[raehl]

They will, however, get better grades with less native ability

Why does that matter? They're getting better grades in film classes. Being mad that students in film classes have an easier time getting high marks than students in engineering classes makes about as much sense as being mad that students in 2nd grade have an easier time getting high marks than students in engineering classes.

This disparity is corrected for in the real world - try getting a job with a 4.0 film degree vs. a 3.0 engineering degree. You'll get any job the film degree candidate can get, with the possible exception of jobs where the film degree's GPA doesn't matter (actual film jobs, where they are evaluated primarily on their portfolio of work, an area where anyone who actually has any talent in film is going to kick your (or my) sorry engineering ass.)

More generally, if you really feel that someone else is getting a better deal than you, stop bitching about it and go do what they're doing! Enroll in the film program, get your easy A's, finish college with a 4.0 in your major, and enjoy your years of paying off your student loans while working as a car salesman/insurance agent/whatever else Liberal Arts majors do to actually feed themselves when you could have gotten that same job not going to school at all!

You have to understand what a Liberal Arts major is. For a very select few people, it's a stepping stone to being a professor, or research, or something else at the top of the field. For the vast majority however, a liberal arts degree is an opportunity to do some partying, find a mate, and prove that you're able to show up on time. So yeah, you can get a 4.0 liberal arts degree much easier than you can get an engineering degree, but you won't be able to be an engineer with one!

Re:So what?

[MrMarket]

I agree. So what? No one hires a director, artist, or writer based on their GPA (I challenge you to find one director's undergrad GPA on IMDB or wikipedia). The quality of their portfolio of work determines their success or failure - not their GPA.

Re:So what?

[eh2o]

A significant portion of education is taxpayer funded. Why should we spend money to support liberal arts programs with low standards? All degree programs should require approximately the same amount of effort. I'd rather have education be more affordable and more difficult.

Re:So what?

[a whoabot]

You have to understand what a Liberal Arts major is. For a very select few people, it's a stepping stone to being a professor, or research, or something else at the top of the field. For the vast majority however, a liberal arts degree is an opportunity to do some partying, find a mate, and prove that you're able to show up on time. For a long time, and for many still today, an arts major (not just liberal arts, some of the above posters were talking about making art which is much more associated with fine arts degree) was "a rich person's education." Not too many rich people get engineering degrees, because, for most, designing circuits or something isn't as fun as discussing philosophy or poetry.

As an aside, I hope making money isn't the only reason people choose to go into an engineering program. If that's the case, you would probably be much better off getting a business degree, or furthering your education to medical or law school, and I'm sure anyone who can get an engineering degree is sharp enough to pass medical school. You must expect to derive pleasure from doing engineering itself. [For a good number of girls in university, they'd probably maximise their income by forgetting about education and be prostitutes and pornographic actors (what was that Eliot Spitzer prostitute making, $5000/hour? There's some number of girls just as good-looking as her in every university), but I don't think maximising their income is their only interest -- that's an argument against people who say that money is everything, or nearly everything -- would they suggest the same to their daughters?]

Re:So what?

[innerweb]

I have worked at/with both sides of that fence. Medicine is a heck of a lot harder than engineering. The complexity of biological systems is typically orders higher than most engineering projects, and those are the simple biological components. In engineering, you typically (not always) pick your tools, materials, etc to design your solution. In medicine, you have to discover your materials and then find the tools that match the materials you know about (and hope there is no problem with the materials you do not know about).

There is a reason that the FDA has such rigorous standards for food additives and medicine (thought less so than before Bush Jr). People (or pets) are very complicated bio-chemical sets. And, they are not identical. Each one tends to be rather unique. What works for group X does not work for groups A, D or G and vice versa. There are so many things in engineering we get to simply not focus on, but in biological sciences, they bite us if we ignore them.

I fully encourage every engineer to start learning biochemical engineering. It is the engineering of the future, as it holds the promise of so many cure, preventions and solutions to most of what troubles us (world citizens). But, get ready for some very complicated sets of rules and get ready to spend a much larger chunk of time memorizing the basics.

For me, it is great fun. It is cutting edge and I am going after a Masters and Doctorates in the fields starting this summer.

Just imagine learning how to write a program using genes and bio-chemicals to manipulate bio-processes. Now, talk about side effects, heck Perl is child's play compared to that! If you have not spent much time in it, try taking 40 hours per week for the next year to learn the basics. You might cram it all in, ut most won't, and you will have scratched the surface.

InnerWeb

Re:So what?

[thegrassyknowl]

I have to agree with that; what pisses me right off is the fact that engineering and medical degrees are the most expensive to get (mine cost 5x what the same arts degree would have cost over the same amount study units) yet a lot of arts students just bum around on the dole or low income jobs and never earn enough to have to pay back their debts.

Making education more affordable and making people pay up front is a good start. Making the coursework harder in the "arts" degrees might discourage those who just want to continue to get the extra education allowance in their unemployment packet each week.

If I may recall an anecdote from my days studying engineering some 12 years ago (wow I feel old). I recall sitting on a bus waiting for it to depart the uni when two pretty young arts students climbed on and sat directly behind me. They were talking about how hard their course was and how they had to study for all these hours in the week and it was just impossible to find the time. One asked the other what the worst thing was and she said "I have four hours of lectures in a week and need to do about 4 hours of work at home. One day I even have to get here by 11AM.". She was actually baffled how anyone could seriously do 8 hours of work in a week and still fit in the other things like having a life.

Conversely most engineering students do around 30-40 hours at the school. The good ones use the dead time between classes to keep up with the workload but even they probably do another 10 hours out of school to keep up. Most of us had to fit in part time jobs to pay the bills; those engineering books aren't cheap and the library doesn't carry hundreds of copies like they do with a lot of the artsy books. Add into that a partner and some recreation time to keep you sane and you can imagine the workload.

Engineers are supposed to be creative people. Engineering is the point where theoretical science crosses into practical reality. You're meant to be finding new and practical ways to do things. Your uni days lay the groundwork. The reason lecturers seem to be not very helpful is they are trying to teach you the Engineer-think; try now, get a feel for it, ask for help when I know what I need help with. I found surprising help with lecturers when I'd first tried a problem and got some way into it before asking for help. Others would walk in and say "but it's different from the examples in the book" and they would be met with a very agitated professor.

Engineering isn't an easy field to get into. As others have said it's damn boring when you get here unless you are really into it too. Grades are low because the work is hard. Want better grades? Work hard and understand the material! Rote learning doesn't cut it with engineers. We don't like parrots because parrots make a lot of noise without actually contributing anything useful.

It doesn't matter what grade a liberal arts student gets. If his/her book/movie/poem is shit, what do I care? If the Civil Engineer that designed some bridge barely passed uni (or had good grades because the work was easy) then all sorts of bad things could happen.

One more thing that bothers me about engineering in general is that there aren't as many (good) jobs as there are course places. Sure, there are places who are looking for an engineer but usually they want shit kickers rather than engineers. A lot of real engineering work is being outsourced to places like India where there are a lot of very talented people (I met a few Indian engineers one time and was surprisingly impressed with their skills) willing to work for practically peanuts.

I'm personally not working in my trained field. I'm an electronic engineer who now spends most of his days writing (mostly embedded) software. I've picked up what I need to through a combination of mentors, classes and generally just doing it and I could have done that without time and costs of a four year degree hanging over me. That bothers me a little because I'd love to be doing my preferred line of work; there's just no money in it because a lot of it is outsourced now except for the defence industry.

Re:So what?

[hjf]

Engineers are the ones who make the machines you use at work. But I guess you're so good you could roll out something on VHDL and implement it on a FPGA and it will crunch your numbers faster than a 8-core Xeon. No wait -- you still use big clusters of computers made by engineers! And comparing Perl to biochemical engineering, I can see you have no idea.

Re:So what?

[innerweb]

And comparing Perl to biochemical engineering, I can see you have no idea.

Sorry, I forgot the humor tags.

Your response was such that I decided to go back and look at your other posts. You seem to not normally snap at people, but you did that time. I think what you missed is the common complaint that Perl is a language riddled with side effects. I code in Perl as well and I use them myself. Add a chemical to a body, that has a specific target receptor you are aiming for (or a target effect), and we normally find many receptors and/or many effects. That is why so many promising drugs fail. They have too many side effects. From a simple persons perspective, caffeine makes you feel more awake, more energized, but starts a ruthless cycle of actually making you less energetic (similar to sugars). Same thing for Meth. How about NSAID pain killers. Their task is to block pain. But, they have some very nasty side effects. Not necessarily common, but present and enough of a problem to be wary of their existence. That is what I mean by side-effects. Perl is a great example from a programming side (especially on /.) as most people here tend to undertand a few things about Perl. Ease of writing unreadable code (Which I believe is universal in all languages) and the gotchas Perl presents for side-effects (DWIM-isms). Yeah, Mr Obvious could tell there is no comparison between Perl as a language and biochemical activities, but the side-effects because of DWIM and the mess of obfuscated Perl seem to paint the right picture from what I have touched.

There are no programming languages that can be compared to anything in biochemical engineering that I am aware of.

Yep, engineers are the ones that make the machines, but most of them still can not use them themselves to solve medical problems. Kind of like the guy who makes hammers but can't get the nails in. I want my hammer from him, but he is not building my house. I want my MRI from the best engineers, but I still want a good doc for what ails me. I have used Perl in gene analysis in the past. Better tools exist today, but Perl is still great for some things. We have used (and still do use) BioPerl to get things done amongst other tools as well.

InnerWeb

For the record

[edalytical]

For the record my girlfriend is an advertising major. Her classes require her to do the insanely difficult tasks of glueing gummy bears onto paper and cutting up magazines to make ransom notes. Her classes grade on curves and she's usually allowed to redo assignments for higher grades. She does everything the night before it's due.

On the other hand I'm a CS major, my professors usually start the semester off with the statement "I don't believe in grading on a curve." That's often followed by "late work is not accepted." I usually have a non trivial project do every week. I have to start early or I wont have time to finish the projects. I have to try to balance my time between math, science and computer science classes. My girlfriend has told me an innumerable number of times that I work too much and my major is difficult, she's right. But I don't care because I love the work and I love my major.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

You're missing the point

[xRelisH]

It says a lot by saying a little. It's artistic without being artsy.
It's amazing how much of a conversation you can have with just green, isn't it?
You can see the effort but not the grace. Yellow can be so unforgiving. I think you're missing the fundamental point of modern art. Modern art is technically more accessible because there are no boundaries. Right - a modern painting can take considerably less time than a photo-realistic or impressionistic piece of art, but that's part of the beauty of it.

Modern art doesn't mean the artist had to spend days or months on a painting, and that it could've been done with ease and joy, and not frustration. In essence, it's the freest form of expression and just exploring very basic aspects of vision (color, shapes, etc.).

I think one just needs to open their mind a little, and with modern art, you tend to appreciate beauty of things you take for granted.

Re:You're missing the point

[Chris Mattern]

A kid smearing finger-paint has no boundaries (literally--ask any mother about all the places the paint gets to), works quickly, and does it with ease and joy, exploring very basic aspects of vision. I propose we populate modern art galleries with children's finger paintings instead of having to pay ridiculous sums to all these grown-ups doing finger painting.

On Modern Art

[geoffrobinson]

Rule of Thumb: if you have to be convinced by group-think or educated into believing something is good art, it isn't.

Upside down?

[iknownuttin]

The number of times I walk into a restaurant/office/wherever and see a Rothko hanging upside down.

You can hang a Rothko upside down?

Picture looks like Finance class

[Rhys]

Or maybe accounting? Looks like some sort of depreciation calculation run against a "lock box". C'mon Wired, you think you could have at least found a picture of engineering homework...

My museum story

[Anonymous Coward]

About 2 years ago, I was in London and everybody told me that I simply *must* visit the Tate Modern (http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/) to see the Kandinsky exhibit (http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/kandinsky/). Being an American in London, the dollar wasn't worth anything, and so when I went to see this exhibit it was 10 pounds. A fair chunk of money for what was about 4 rooms of paintings. But hey, it was London, and of course everybody said you had to go to see the Kandinsky exhibit.

Well, from a historic standpoint, Kandinsky is interesting. He "invented" abstract art. But he was nuts. Crazy. Bonkers. No two ways around it. He has what I'd charitably describe as a handful of interesting and challenging pieces. The rest is just a painting by a crazy person. And after you look at a wall of it, you're tired of it. You're tired of the guy. And you're mostly sorry that you paid all that money to look at the splatterings of a madman.

Well, I finally looked around and said very loudly "This stuff is crap. And everybody pretending to like this stuff is only doing it because you're *supposed* to say everything this guy did was genius. It's just the ravings of a madman". Everyone turned around and gave me an evil eye.

Except the guards. They all started clapping.

I quickly high-tailed it out of there before I got pelted with wine and brie, but it's true.

And yes, I'm a computer guy, but I'm also an artist (musical). But you don't have to be an artist to call B.S. on this sort of nonsense. And most art... modern or not, really *is* crap.

And?

[HappyEngineer]

I'm not sure what your point is. I loved Primer.

The Greats are very few.

[droopycom]

Nor are the majority of Engineering students destined to make Great Engineers.
Nor are the majority of Computer Science students destined to make Great Computer Scientist.

The Greats are very few.

I'm not one of them, neither are you.

Engineering and Grades

[alexhmit01]

A professor once told me...

      Engineers that earn partial credit build bridges that fall down.

Engineering is a hard discipline. For scholarship students (where GPA matters and is compared against everyone), you can only do engineering with a 3.0/3.5 or whatever GPA, you only get to be an engineer if you can be a top engineer, not a mediocre one, while you can get a scholarship and be a mediocre film student. It's an odd set of priorities, but oh well. We don't need more engineers that build bridges that fall down, we need engineers that can design good ones.

Otherwise, yeah, your GPA is relative to those in your field. Take liberal arts courses, they'll lift your GPA if you are in trouble, not take a HUGE amount of work, and make you a more well rounded person.

One small problem with your statement - It's BS

[Xaedalus]

ALL of the heads of state in the world today are, or can be considered Liberal Arts majors. MOST of the governments of the world are filled to the brim with liberal arts students (mostly specializing in language. Many CEO's have liberal arts degrees and NOT business degrees. So your statement that the Liberal Arts Major is a four-year stamp for dead-end jobs is not even remotely accurate. People who major in Liberal Arts run the world you live in, because most people who major in Engineering or other hard sciences would do an absolutely horrible job doing so. That's not where your skillsets or strengths lie. In order to run the world, you have to be able to account for other people's opinions, personalities, agendas, and desires. Most engineers/programmers/scientists I've met are very intolerant of opinions and beliefs other than their own (as often evidenced on Slashdot). They cannot deal with the political complexities required, nor would they be successful in a job that required them to do so. Furthermore, I'd be more inclined to believe that if put into power, engineers and other hard scientists would probably institute forms of fascism into the government, because they would be more interested in fixing the problem than in actually running the system. And there's a vast difference between the two goals when you're considering political systems.

Re:One small problem with your statement - It's BS

[shaka999]

Ahhh, someone who failed statistics I take it?

I'm sure you've heard that "Even a blind squirrel finds a nut sometimes...". Well with 1 bazillion liberal arts major's around there are sure to be a few good ones. The vast majority of LA students do not get to work in the field they studied. There are so many LA grads that half the people flipping burgers have one.

So, can you get a good job with Liberal Arts? Of course. Many have and will, but your odds aren't good.

Re:One small problem with your statement - It's BS

[Kilraven]

Many CEO's have liberal arts degrees and NOT business degrees. Really? I could've swore most of the CEOs I've read of have a Business or Science degree. Nardelli, Skilling, Prince, O'Neal, Lay, Mozila, Zander...err...

Many CEO's that have yet to drive their company into the ground have liberal arts degrees and NOT business degrees. There! Fixed it for you.

Re:Employement, post graduation?

[blogrdoc]

I completely agree with the parent. I've been enjoying a 6 figure income since age 27 as a chemical engineer, but that's probably going to max out (totally random guess here) in the 130-150(if I'm lucky). In the movie "Rendition", the engineer's salary was $200k. I don't know *any* engineer (not a manager) making that kind of income. For that kind of figure, there is likely little correlation between education and income. I remember reading once that most millionaires haven't even finished college.

As for what it's like to be a *student*.... you get to take classes. To be able to have a time in your life set aside *solely* for you to learn is an incredible privilege: do yourself a favor and make the most out of it. Here's a warning: if you just get a diploma, that's one thing. If you are good enough to get an education, that's entirely different and the choice is up to you. I suspect I was more of the former than the later. I enjoyed my classes, but I partied a lot, too. Let's just say I don't sit back and say, "Boy - I wish I partied more."

As for what it's like to be an engineer - I love it. Moreover, I'm a chemical engineer. One of the fun things about being a chemical engineer is looking at the faces of people when you tell them you are a chemical engineer. More often than not - they sort of grimace as if to say "Yikes - are you sick or something?

I was talking to an ophthalmologist friend of mine who will be making triple my salary. But when I was telling him what I get to do and the toys I get to play with (Scanning electron microsocpes, x-ray dispersive spectrocope, crystalline semiconductors, database hacking, instrument automation/programming, list goes on and on), he was drooling.

Most importantly: Engineering can be a very rewarding career to those who enjoy this kind of stuff. Stick with it, and it will be worth it!

Clue from other side of hiring desk.

[dbc]

As an engineering manager, I've hired a lot (and fired a few) engineers and tech writers.

I don't give a rat's behind what your grades are. I care if you can think. Yes, I've rejected 4.0 "homework machines" and hired lesser GPA candidates who showed me that they could problem-solve, not just answer homework. And major doesn't matter much either, if you can show you can do the work. One of the best programmers I know has degrees in linguistics, not engineering.

So, here's some advice to all you still in school: 1) Don't confuse getting good grades with getting a good education. 2) Hiring managers are looking for people that solve problems, not cause problems.

We live in a world of PR flacks

[zazenation]

According to your definition, the world is run by the "Peoples Skills" set, which, in fact, it is. This is evidenced (expecially in politics) by the tepid, vacillating, "bend with the breeze" politicians. Maybe we need leaders who have a set of balls and believe in their convictions rather than "Playing to the poll numbers". I think engineers would make great politicians. So they're a tad stubborn in their convictions, but that is what's lacking with crowd pleaser sycophants in office today.

Re:We live in a world of PR flacks

[innerweb]

Bush believes in his convictions. To the point that he admitted God told him to do what he did. I kind of like the willing to change their mind when presented with evidence to the contrary scientific type. Forget the bullheaded charging I am going to get this done my way type.

What might be truly refreshing though is to have a politician who simply looks at the American People and the future of the American People and does what is right by those terms. I would love to learn how it feels to have a President like that.

InnerWeb

You must be a liberal arts major...

[raehl]

Given the ease with which you made up and propagated that bullshit, there's a good chance you have or are on your way to having a BA.

But lets try getting you to provide some real information.

List for us World Leaders and CEOs who only have a Bachelor of Arts degree. I'm sure there are a couple. Now figure out (if you ever learned how to do this) the percentage of CEOs and World Leaders (or even members of congress) who just have Bachelor of Arts degrees. To keep the problem manageable, you might consider only looking at Fortune-50, -100, or -500 companies.

Here, let me help you:

Fortune Top 10:

- Wal Mart: Lee Scott, Business degree
- Exxon: Rex Tillerson, B.S. in Civil Engineering
- General Motors: B.A. in Economics, MBA Harvard
- Chevron: David O'Reilly, B.S. Chemical Engineering
- Conoco Phillips: JAmes Mulva, BA in Business and MBA
- General Electric: BA Applied Mathematics, MBA
- Ford: Alan Mulally, BS and MS Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering
- Citigroup: Vikram Pandit, BS and MS in Engineering, PhD in finance
- Bank of America: Ba Finance
- American Intl. Group: MArtin J Sullivan, degree unknown (he's british)

So out of the top 10, you have four engineers, four business/finance, and one applied math guy.

*ZERO* Liberal Arts majors. Maybe we can give you one out of 10 with credit for the math guy, even though it was APPLIED math.

So for CEOs, looks like engineers kick liberal arts major ass. For Heads of State, I think you'll find that the vast majority of Heads of State have MBAs or JDs (or BLs) in developed nations, or are the children of political families in lesser-developed nations, or are former warlords in even less developed nations.

But, with a statement as stupid as "ALL of the heads of state in the world today are, or can be considered Liberal Arts majors", (ALL? Really? Don't make it hard to be proven wrong or anything...) I doubt you're going to have much to say here, even if you did use your Liberal Arts training to insert your 'cover my don't know anything ass' statement of "or can be considered". Can be considered? Either they have liberal arts degrees or they don't!

It must really gall you how you just got trounced by an engineer though.

textbooks are awful

[John Sokol]

>> textbooks are awful because they are thick and black and white and contain long equations (i don't know if i should laugh or what)..

No that is not the reason.

I am autodidactic also know as self-taught, I have never had the luxury to attend college.
  I spend much of my time collecting, reading and struggling to understand master and Ph.D Level texts with out the benefit of a professor around to answer questions. Often I must get 5 or more book on a subject and read them all before I can get a complete picture because so much is left out.

Black and White, thick and full of long equations is great. My problem is the simplest of math and concepts becomes an unsolvable riddle when your missing a few simple things like the context or what A, B, and C mean in an equation when a book failed to explain this. By using several books each leaving out different things the combination allow me to find in one book things left out in another.

Unless you happen to be there when the professor explains it, it's not only non-obvious but it is unsolvable using just the text alone.
So when I finally find someone who understands it, one or two simple questions can allow me to move past it.

I almost feel the authors are deliberately leaving out key pieces of information so that without the oral tradition of a professors lectures the text is a dead end. Those students that fail to pay attention they are SOL if with just there text books alone.

I am not sure if this is deliberate or they are just so used to being in circles that understand this, that take it for granted that things like Lambda are obviously the conductance of an electrolyte or represents a wavelength. Gee that one must have taken me about a month to chase down.

One blurb on something like this can really save a lot of time and effort.

  Assuming that the reader is versed in things like Galois fields when talking about elliptical curves is a bad assumption, especially when one page could cover the basics and allow the reader to proceed without a large tangent into yet more text books.

This is why Richard Feynman is so loved, because he was able to break things down and explain seemingly complex concepts in a complete yet understandable manner while not being dumbed down.

There's more to a job than money....

[raehl]

For a good number of girls in university, they'd probably maximise their income by forgetting about education and be prostitutes and pornographic actors (what was that Eliot Spitzer prostitute making, $5000/hour?

Upside: $5,000/hr.

Downside: Have to screw Eliot Spitzer

Challenge: Have to convince Eliot Spitzer that you enjoyed it.

My comment got deleted for some reason?

[electrictroy]

Oh well. I'll just repeat it: "If you think engineering textbooks are boring (black and white and contain long equations) then you should take heart, because the Engineering Job is going to be just as boring."

That was a genuine comment from a genuine engineer... not offensive enough to deserve deleting? If anything, my time at Penn State was MORE exciting than my actual 10-year career as an electrical engineer. Every day I come to the same tiny cubicle and stare at the same flickering CRT moving around the same circuits I've seen a thousand times. At least at Penn State I got to flirt with biology coeds (points to wife), but that's not the case on the job. I'm not even sure we have any women here. ;-) Oh well; that's life. The reason I stay on the job is because they pay me $55 an hour, else I'd go do something more fun. I theorize that the more boring the job, the more they pay, because that's the only way for them to fill the seat.

Anyway, back on topic:

If you think college is boring, maybe you ought to go on an Internship and discover the boredom of an actual engineering job.

You may find yourself changing careers.