
Top 5 Reasons it Sucks to be an Engineering Student | Wired Science from Wired.com - iamelgringo
http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/03/top-5-reasons-i.html
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amohr
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_.

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comatose_kid
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.

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notauser
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 :)

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iamwil
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.

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tim2
But the chicks are AWESOME.

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ovi256
What chicks? Any chicks!

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

