Top 5 Reasons it Sucks to be an Engineering Student | Wired Science from Wired.com

http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/03/top-5-reasons-i.html

by iamelgringo • 18 years ago

7 6 18 years ago

blog.wired.com

tim2• 18 years ago

But the chicks are AWESOME.

ovi256• 18 years ago

What chicks? Any chicks!

PS: spent 5 years in an engineering school = a campus with ONLY engineering students.

iamwil• 18 years ago

Of course they're math problems. I'm not sure I'd like the idea of working with Elec. Engineers or Civil engineers that don't know the math they need and just guess at everything.

comatose_kid• 18 years ago

As someone with a computer engineering degree, I think this article is totally lame. I'm just going to have to address each point:

Point #5: Some textbooks are indeed awful. This is probably the most reasonable point here. But I don't think this is specific to engineering. And it's possible to learn the material in different ways, thanks to the net.

Point #4: I don't think it is a professor's job to 'create excitement'. I'm happy with a professor when they do a great job explaining things, not when they sound like a Pontiac ("we build excitement") ad.

Point #3: This stands out as particularly awful. Engineering programs don't exist to hold students' hands while they search for work.

Point #2: This point manages to be arrogant and incorrect at the same time. In my experience, the brightest students are often the ones with the best grades. Yes, some obviously talented students will slack, but the author is totally over-generalizing.

Point #1: Every assignment feels the same. He makes this statement, and then fails to back it up. Yes, many assignments were based on math. This does not make them the same. I don't think many engineers would agree that deriving the Nyquist theorem is the same as solving an RLC circuit network. Engineering is totally about creativity - but like anything, first you need to learn the basics.

notauser• 18 years ago

My degrees are in systems engineering, but I have to agree about point 3. University is not vocational training, if you want that there are plenty of (much cheaper!) places that offer career focused qualifications.

As for engineering being harder than other subjects... well, it certainly doesn't hurt me if people have that perception :)

amohr• 18 years ago

Well as long as we're throwing around rash generalizations, Engineers don't get involved on campus, except occasionally with engineering groups. That is why they don't realize that there are other majors out there that work their asses off. I know a couple of theater majors who, while my engineering roommates and I are tailgating, are spending the entire morning working on a show or are actually in class on a saturday morning.

In response to point 2, it seems like a lot of engineering grades are basically arbitrary. Usually the average ends up being between 55-70, so the professor just has to set some sort of curve, which they can put wherever - they are, however, generally less forgiving when doing so.

To point #1 Last semester, I had to make up an idea and design an interface from scratch. Right now, one of my roommates is working on hypothesis testing for a tetris AI system, one is working on creating his own just in time compiler, and there's a number of other projects going on at any given time. This article seriously sounds like it was written by a 19 year old sophomore that hasn't yet gotten over the bitterness/arrogance of being in a really challenging field and hasn't even tried to find something to do in college other than his homework. You can be an engineer and enjoy yourself, both academically and socially, it just takes a little bit of |oh no| creativity.

Top 5 Reasons it Sucks to be an Engineering Student | Wired Science from Wired.com

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