Proof that an English degree is harder to get than an engineering degree

[ShawnD1]

A friend and I were talking about certain plays being difficult to read. I thought Shakespeare was hard to read because it contains all these screwy words that haven't been used in hundreds of years such as hark and wherefore. She then sends me a link to this page:
some crappy play

And so bifel whan comen was the tyme
Of Aperil, whan clothed is the mede
With newe grene, of lusty Veer the pryme,
And swote smellen floures white and rede,
In sondry wises shewed, as I rede,
The folk of Troie hire obseruaunces olde,
Palladiones feste forto holde.

Imagine reading an entire play like that. That really is one of her assignments - read this entire piece of shit and write an essay about it. Luckily my report for the semester is as easy as doing sweep frequency analysis on some transformers and giving a powerpoint presentation

 

[mugs]

I've never doubted that an English major would have been harder than my computer science major - my lowest grade in college was for my American Literature gen ed. But that's because I chose a major that matched my strengths. For most English majors a major in the sciences would be much, much harder than their English major.

People pick majors that match their strengths. People who major in the sciences often think they're better than everyone else because their major is so much "harder." They need to get over themselves.

 

[Ruptga]

And yet an English degree and five bucks will get you some coffee at Starbucks, while engineers actually get paid

 

[sdifox]

A friend and I were talking about certain plays being difficult to read. I thought Shakespeare was hard to read because it contains all these screwy words that haven't been used in hundreds of years such as hark and wherefore. She then sends me a link to this page:
some crappy play




Imagine reading an entire play like that. That really is one of her assignments - read this entire piece of shit and write an essay about it. Luckily my report for the semester is as easy as doing sweep frequency analysis on some transformers and giving a powerpoint presentation

Chaucer is pure hell. The Cantebury Tales being his best known work.

<---Major in Comp Sci, Minor in English and Spanish.

 

[szechuanpork]

...And so it happened in the time
of April, when the meadow is clothed
with the new green of lusty Ver, the spring,
and with sweet-smelling flowers white and red,
in various ways the people of Troy made their old observances, as I read in the book, and held the feast of the Palladium...
read more

 

[ShawnD1]

And yet an English degree and five bucks will get you some coffee at Starbucks, while engineers actually get paid

After seeing how unreadable that play is, I think an English grad would do well in law school.

...And so it happened in the time
of April, when the meadow is clothed
with the new green of lusty Ver, the spring,
and with sweet-smelling flowers white and red,
in various ways the people of Troy made their old observances, as I read in the book, and held the feast of the Palladium...
read more

I love it when people translate stuff to modern English. One of my exes had a contemporary English version of the bible

 

[Ronstang]

And yet an English degree and five bucks will get you some coffee at Starbucks, while engineers actually get paid

An English degree would explain that pompous person serving you coffee or that waiter with a bug up his ass that is doing the same job after graduating as he did in college.

 

[z1ggy]

I am an engineer and I think writing papers based on essays and poems is pretty tough, almost impossible for me to do it with ease. Same is probably true for history and english majors that write very well, but can't do hard math like differential equations and all the math that goes along with signals and systems. To each his/her own...

 

[lxskllr]

That's not so hard to read. With a little practice it comes naturally.

 

[szechuanpork]

but wouldn't you rather be an English prof rather than an engineering prof, if you were a sex-crazed heathen?

 

[ShawnD1]

but wouldn't you rather be an English prof rather than an engineering prof, if you were a sex-crazed heathen?

I'll teach engineering but I'll get a part time job at Starbucks and sleep with all of my coworkers :awe:

 

[SunSamurai]

harder but much less useful.

 

[Modular]

And yet an English degree and five bucks will get you some coffee at Starbucks, while engineers actually get paid

Not this again. Let's be frank...are you an engineer?

 

[DrPizza]

I probably couldn't read something written in Eubonics either. That doesn't mean that inner-city ghetto people are smarter than engineers. Also, reading that and understanding that is akin to being fluent in two languages - except that the second language is 80&#37; the same as the first. Wait a second, aren't most children in Europe bilingual, but in two *different* languages? Apparently, 10 year olds are smarter than English majors too.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

Nah. The thing is engineers can write. We can't write beautiful eloquently written pieces of literature, but we sure can write technical papers, and we sure can argue on P&N and we sure can do decent writing. I'm sure most engineers do more than FINE on their general requirements classes.

On the other hand, even the biologists struggle with a simple physics class and struggle with concepts that we learned in high school.

 

[Anonemous]

So that's why alot of the med school applicants are English majors... oh wait... :|

 

[Born2bwire]

Just read it out loud, not too difficult.

 

[JohnCU]

Nah. The thing is engineers can write. We can't write beautiful eloquently written pieces of literature, but we sure can write technical papers, and we sure can argue on P&N and we sure can do decent writing. I'm sure most engineers do more than FINE on their general requirements classes.

On the other hand, even the biologists struggle with a simple physics class and struggle with concepts that we learned in high school.

word.

 

[ConstipatedVigilante]

You think that's hard to read? It's middle english - it's the same as what we speak today, except that the written stuff is based more on the phonetics of the language than today. Just say it in your head as you read it, it will make a lot more sense.

Science majors scoff at liberal arts degrees, but most of them can't write a proper sentence. People tend to major in what they're interested in - a science major might find an english degree very difficult in practice, and vice versa.

<---Chinese major; I find learning to write characters and speaking the language to be child's play compared to simple arithmetic.

 

[Turin39789]

harder but much less useful.

I use mine every day. Matrix Algebra seemed like it was going to be useful but I've never gotten around to applying it.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

So that's why alot of the med school applicants are English majors... oh wait... :|

Well first of all, let's gauge interests. English majors usually dont' give a crap about science. They struggle with it, it's like English to us engineers/science people. We don't care about that. Med school is viewed as something respectable I suppose because it's draining, competitive, and all the Asians are cutthroat, making it difficult and seems like a reach for many. But just because English majors aren't there doesn't mean they're any worse. It's just not the right fit in terms of interest. So if they aren't interested, why are they study their asses off for chem midterms and struggle in labs with the cutthroat bio majors who demand a 4.0 for all their classes and fight to get into a top notch med school? No way.

I mean yeah, I think that English is a notch below engineering which is why they will struggle with things like med school. I do think that many engineers are capable of med school which is why you DO see engineers try for med school. It's very difficult though because med school requires a high GPA which engineers tend to struggle with. So while your bio majors take easyass clases for that 4.0 so they can look good for med school, engineers struggle with their tough upper div tech classes. While a some do well, it's not always the case they want to drop their excellence in engineering and jump into bio/chem/medicine. I've seen it though with bioengineering. Those guys are crazy.

You think that's hard to read? It's middle english - it's the same as what we speak today, except that the written stuff is based more on the phonetics of the language than today. Just say it in your head as you read it, it will make a lot more sense.

Science majors scoff at liberal arts degrees, but most of them can't write a proper sentence. People tend to major in what they're interested in - a science major might find an english degree very difficult in practice, and vice versa.

<---Chinese major; I find learning to write characters and speaking the language to be child's play compared to simple arithmetic.

Oh come on. We can write sentences. It's not that bad. Most humanities majors can't even figure out velocity and acceleration for a car--something we learn in high school physics. Most of them threw a hissy fit in chemistry in high school and decided that they would take biology instead of physics to continue. Did we engineers do that bad in high school english? I took both the English AP exams, and took honors classes. I didn't duck away from Spanish AP and History AP like the humanities majors avoided Calc AP and Physics AP. I did it all. Sure my high scores were physics and calc, but it's not like I suck that bad at English.

 

[Jeff7]

Just watch, in 500 years, the only surviving remnants of the Internet will be bits of the LOLCat version of the Bible. Literature student droids will puzzle over our odd linguistic patterns, while scholars go on and on about the brilliance of the prose. Historians will argue over whether or not cats actually were capable of consuming cheeseburgers.


"We're whalers on the Moon...."

I probably couldn't read something written in Eubonics either. That doesn't mean that inner-city ghetto people are smarter than engineers.
...

Fo'shizzle, mah Pizzle.

but wouldn't you rather be an English prof rather than an engineering prof, if you were a sex-crazed heathen?

Well just think, you could be the lucky guy to date your college's member of the Society of Woman Engineer.

 

[ShawnD1]

On the other hand, even the biologists struggle with a simple physics class and struggle with concepts that we learned in high school.

Even engineers forget high school stuff. We had to learn, for probably the third time now, how to calculate conversions between AC and DC voltages and people totally lost their shit. RMS from pi/6 to 5pi/6? oh mah gawd, the world just ended.
(basic trig integration is from grade 12).

 

[gorcorps]

It's not that it isn't difficult, it's that it's not USEFUL in any way shape or form for anything other than teaching other people the same useless bullshit.

 

[surfsatwerk]

Anything my lazy ex-wife was able to get a Masters in, cant be that hard.