It Sucks To Be An Engineering Student

I read an article today on Wired.com title “Why It Sucks To Be An Engineering Student”. As one who was an engineering student for many years, the article definitely resonated with me. I thought would go through each of the 5 reasons and comment on how I got through them. So here they are.

5. Awful Textbooks
Thick, dry, black and white manuscripts are rarely a source of inspiration and sometimes can cause loads of confusion. Often, the text is poorly written and interrupted by lengthy equations with symbols that are different from those used by the professor during lectures.

Engineers essentially exist to solve problems. The problem here: text book are boring. My solution: don’t use them. Generally I got all the information I needed in the lectures. Ditch the textbooks, save a few buck and some trees I guess.

4. Professors are Rarely Encouraging
During each class, a professor that would rather be tending to his research will waltz up to a blackboard or overhead projector and scribble out equations for an hour without uttering a single sentence to create some excitement.

Fortunately here I didn’t go to a large state university. Professors were pretty dedicated to the students and didn’t let their research take away from quality teaching time.

3. Dearth of Quality Counseling
College students may not have a sense for how to build their resume and they might be clueless about the variety of career opportunities that await them. Unfortunately, some academic advisers do little more than post fliers about internships and hand out a checklist of classes to take. They should make some projections about the future job market, learn about the interests of each young scholar, and offer them tailored advice for how to best prepare themselves.

I didn’t really have a problem with this one, but then again I didn’t really need the help. My first internship came easy and I was able to fit in just fine. I used my academic advisor as little as possible because I pretty much knew all the classes I needed and had no reason to waste the time talking about it.

2. 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.

Some professors view undergraduate education as a type of natural selection, but their analogy is flawed. Many of the brightest students may struggle while mediocre scholars can earn top scores because they have a larger group of supportive friends to or more time to dedicate to studying.

I found this to definitely be true. I think I graduated with just over a 3.0 and it was hard work all the way through. A 4.0 sociology major, whoop-dee-doo. My dog could be a 4.0 sociology student.

1. Every Assignment Feels the Same
Nearly every homework assignment and test question is a math problem. Only a few courses require creativity or offer hands-on experience.

Very true. Everything is a math problem. My method was to do the ones I had to and if I couldn’t get it, I stopped. Don’t get me wrong, I worked my ass off to get through school but I was also married in college and was working 2 jobs, so I didn’t have time to struggle through a problem for 2 hours just to end up where I started. But I guess that’s why I graduated with a 3.0 and not a 4.0. 3.0 is fine with me.

If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.