What's with humanities majors?!!

Hamel · Post by **Hamel** » 2003-03-18 11:10pm

The humanities/communication classes, where I go, are all fluff and no stuff. But holy shit, they got the hottest chick instructors

Business communications is a beeyotch, though. 20 page reports, done completely by the book (MLA). Fuck that.

Trytostaydead · Post by **Trytostaydead** » 2003-03-18 11:11pm

Hameru wrote:The humanities/communication classes, where I go, are all fluff and no stuff. But holy shit, they got the hottest chick instructors

Business communications is a beeyotch, though. 20 page reports, done completely by the book (MLA). Fuck that.

PROFESSORS OR STUDENTS?!!! Holy $hit, in sciences maybe one or two lookers per class.. when I wander down to the humanities section of the campus.. I feel no need for heaven if I could find more reasons to study in that area.

Joe · Post by **Joe** » 2003-03-18 11:12pm

MLA is Nazism.

Hamel · Post by **Hamel** » 2003-03-18 11:14pm

I'll drink ta that!

GrandMasterTerwynn · Post by **GrandMasterTerwynn** » 2003-03-18 11:16pm

RedImperator wrote:
Darth Wong wrote:There's a key difference: in an engineering faculty, if you AREN'T getting it, they flunk you. Mercilessly, without warning, and without reprieve. That's why two thirds of the incoming class is already gone by the end of the first year. In most humanities faculties, you virtually have to punch the professor in the face to get flunked out, and even then, you'd probably get a second chance.
Where is this happening? Here, if your GPA falls below 2.0, they throw your sorry ass on academic probation, and if you don't clean up your act in one semester, it's back to community college for you.

They do that at just about every four-year institution I know of. But, as Wong said, it's very, very hard to flunk a humanities/liberal arts course. You have to do something dumb like never show up to the midterms and call your professor a "right-wing racist jackass." (Calling him or her a "left-wing bleeding-heart tree-hugging PETA-whore' might be construed as a compliment.) Unless, of course, you happen to be a college athlete, but that's an entirely different matter.

Zoink · Post by **Zoink** » 2003-03-18 11:52pm

I'd take a calculus/physics exam over a 20 page report on something I don't really care much about anyday. The stress from the calculus exam was something I became used to. I just hated the feeling of "writers block", banging my head to put together something that was half BS (just to get that 10th/20th page).

Although I take my job over those courses anyday, as having nights to myself without the "homework/studying/stress" is just so sweet.

GrandMasterTerwynn · Post by **GrandMasterTerwynn** » 2003-03-19 12:14am

Trytostaydead wrote:
Hameru wrote:The humanities/communication classes, where I go, are all fluff and no stuff. But holy shit, they got the hottest chick instructors

Business communications is a beeyotch, though. 20 page reports, done completely by the book (MLA). Fuck that.
PROFESSORS OR STUDENTS?!!! Holy $hit, in sciences maybe one or two lookers per class.. when I wander down to the humanities section of the campus.. I feel no need for heaven if I could find more reasons to study in that area.

Yeah, no shit. I was quite female-deprived as an engineering student. All the chicks at my school went for liberal arts degrees. All that was left on our corner of campus were girls who either were Chinese graduate students (who spoke really bad English.) Indian graduate students (who don't believe in bathing,) and girls who weren't much in the looks department.

Durandal · Post by **Durandal** » 2003-03-19 12:16am

All the girls here are psychology or social science majors, so I have to really bite my tongue when I want to rant about psychology being a "wannabe" science.

No seriously, I've never seen a class filled with so many hot, fuckable girls as my sociology class last semester. Though the education program has its share, too.

TrailerParkJawa · Post by **TrailerParkJawa** » 2003-03-19 12:25am

Im just glad college is a memory. My degree was not hard like engineering but I still found it hard to study stuff I had no interest in.

Joe · Post by **Joe** » 2003-03-19 12:38am

Surprisingly, the accounting school at UGA has a LOT of hot girls. Half of the current TAs are hot.

RedImperator · Post by **RedImperator** » 2003-03-19 12:44am

Durandal wrote:All the girls here are psychology or social science majors, so I have to really bite my tongue when I want to rant about psychology being a "wannabe" science.

No seriously, I've never seen a class filled with so many hot, fuckable girls as my sociology class last semester. Though the education program has its share, too.

Education is a fucking gold mine (pun not intended, but it works anyway). The grad program I'm looking at is 75% female. So what if it costs $25,000 a year? It's 75% female!

Trytostaydead · Post by **Trytostaydead** » 2003-03-19 12:50am

RedImperator wrote:
Durandal wrote:All the girls here are psychology or social science majors, so I have to really bite my tongue when I want to rant about psychology being a "wannabe" science.

No seriously, I've never seen a class filled with so many hot, fuckable girls as my sociology class last semester. Though the education program has its share, too.
Education is a fucking gold mine (pun not intended, but it works anyway). The grad program I'm looking at is 75% female. So what if it costs $25,000 a year? It's 75% female!

Females are rapidly outpacing males in education.

Master of Ossus · Post by **Master of Ossus** » 2003-03-19 12:51am

Trytostaydead wrote:Prideful arrogant little beasts they are (no offense to you humanities majors out there). I just go through arguing with an International-Relations major about current events and she went off angry as hell.

As a humanities major (with a Masters in English Literature and another in English Composition) I can safely say that International-Relations tends to be a joke. Where I went to college, you were looked down on for even taking one of those classes.

It seems to be a common misconception that because you're a science major you have no idea what happens around you, or current events and they think they can roughshod over you with some "IR" terminology or their propoganda bullshit. But as soon as you show that you DO know about current events, history, or politics they get beligirent. Then they try talking about how one of their professors got invited to mediate some "secret" conference (if it's so secret why are they telling their students about it you dip-dunk) and go, "see? I have SOURCES!" Yeah, good for you.. wanna hear my sources? And I quickly shut them up.. then they call you an asshole and stop talking to you.

I don't think I'm qualified to report on that. There are doubtless elitist people who believe others are unqualified simply because they don't have a degree in a particular subject area.

Oh, and let's not get started on those "intellects" you hear at Starbucks (okay, I like their caramel.. sue me!) or in the library trying to impress a girl. Funny shit.

Ah, yes. I remember a couple of jackasses I met at grad school who did that. The best thing I found to do to those people while they were picking up chicks was to walk by and tell them that I had just seen their parole officers. Of course, at Pomona it usually didn't work very well, but in grad school....

The other really funny thing I did to someone like that was when me and my girlfriend (at the time) were coming home from a hockey game, and saw him waiting out a red light. We pulled up next to him at about 2 am, and intimated that we wanted to race. When the light turned green, we didn't even accelerate and left him shooting off into the distance--with a police car right behind him. That was good times.

TheDarkOne · Post by **TheDarkOne** » 2003-03-19 02:31am

Silly artsies

, ERTW.

InnerBrat · Post by **InnerBrat** » 2003-03-19 03:16am

Best bit of toilet graffitti ever, written on the toilet roll holder:

BAs dispensed here!

The_Nice_Guy · Post by **The_Nice_Guy** » 2003-03-19 04:55am

Trytostaydead wrote:Hell no, with that generous curve.. I would've LIKED O. Chem. It's a neuro class, basically the physics involved in neuroscience. Thank God it's not equation heavy, but it's still a complete bitch.

O.Chem doesn't have much in way of equations. Mostly it's about reaction mechanisms and pathways.

Strange that I see three types of chemists, the type that prefers numbers(physical, analytical), the type that prefers not to deal with them(organic, inorganic), and the rare wunderkid who can do both.

In fact, I prefer equations myself. But even then, I'm dying for my quantum chemistry and stat thermodynamics module...

The Nice Guy

Stuart Mackey · Post by **Stuart Mackey** » 2003-03-19 06:27am

RedImperator wrote:Frankly, there's a significant minority of humanities students who aren't well informed about...well, anything. They spend their academic careers absorbing pop-liberal tripe where facts aren't as important as feelings. I'm sure Ando is as familiar with them as I am, and would probably agree that the humanities would be better off if they, and the professors who espouse that touchy-feely nonsense, be tossed uncerimoniously out into the real world. It would immensely raise the value of the degrees of those of us who feel objective facts must take precedence over theory. Wong's post absolutely infuriated me because he basically said my degree isn't worth the paper it's printed on, but I'm not going to argue with him because he's got a fucking point. The humanities badly need the stables to be mucked out.

I have to agree here. Humanities can be valuble, but the gross distortion of History I have seen, put me off university {I did Two years at Otago Uni}, the political corectness made me ill. These days if you want to know history, get a librery card.

Admiral Valdemar · Post by **Admiral Valdemar** » 2003-03-19 07:16am

Classics is a humanities course, right?

That would explain the friend I talk to (the girl in that convo I posted the other day) having such a liberal attitude, yet she seemed totally out-of-touch with reality, not me.

Odd.

Wicked Pilot · Post by **Wicked Pilot** » 2003-03-19 09:45am

Try Professional Aviation as a degree. You fuck up and you don't just fail, you die.

The Dark · Post by **The Dark** » 2003-03-19 10:30am

RedImperator wrote:
Durandal wrote:All the girls here are psychology or social science majors, so I have to really bite my tongue when I want to rant about psychology being a "wannabe" science.

No seriously, I've never seen a class filled with so many hot, fuckable girls as my sociology class last semester. Though the education program has its share, too.
Education is a fucking gold mine (pun not intended, but it works anyway). The grad program I'm looking at is 75% female. So what if it costs $25,000 a year? It's 75% female!

My college is 69% female. The program for my primary major has four males out of ~twenty majors. We're also known for having the highest rate of students go on to pass the Board of Ministry (which has a roughly ~50% passing rate for people with their Master's in Divinity last I heard). In my opinion, working on both a BA and a BS, they're roughly equal in overall difficulty. The BS is hard since it's dealing with numbers and (in my case) multiple mutually exclusive theories that have neither been proven nor disproven (economics is hard to get a country to agree to experiment with

). The BA also deals with multiple exclusive theories, and also the fact that the theories are testable only through questionable means (text analysis, which still hasn't been proven to my satisfaction). Are students necessarily more informed in their major? No way. I may know the theoretical of economics, and I'll make predictions based on what I know of past history and current trends, but I don't have the experience to be certain. I may be a religion major, but since I don't know Hebrew or Greek, I can't really address some questions since I'll know verses are translated wrong but not know the proper translation (although I do know most verses that read "forever" should read "until the end of the age"). If we're properly taught, students do know more than the average person about their major. That doesn't mean we can assume everyone is average. Having been on this board for a while, I probably understand more about science and the scientific method than the average person. Other people have similar hobbies that help them learn. Any discussion should be understood as being between individuals who may or may not have knowledge of a topic; if they demonstrate knowledge, all the better. They can be reasoned with and provide points and counterpoints to ideas.

The Dark · Post by **The Dark** » 2003-03-19 10:35am

RedImperator wrote:
Durandal wrote:All the girls here are psychology or social science majors, so I have to really bite my tongue when I want to rant about psychology being a "wannabe" science.

No seriously, I've never seen a class filled with so many hot, fuckable girls as my sociology class last semester. Though the education program has its share, too.
Education is a fucking gold mine (pun not intended, but it works anyway). The grad program I'm looking at is 75% female. So what if it costs $25,000 a year? It's 75% female!

My college is 69% female. The program for my primary major has four males out of ~twenty majors. We're also known for having the highest rate of students go on to pass the Board of Ministry (which has a roughly ~50% passing rate for people with their Master's in Divinity last I heard). In my opinion, working on both a BA and a BS, they're roughly equal in overall difficulty. The BS is hard since it's dealing with numbers and (in my case) multiple mutually exclusive theories that have neither been proven nor disproven (economics is hard to get a country to agree to experiment with

). The BA also deals with multiple exclusive theories, and also the fact that the theories are testable only through questionable means (text analysis, which still hasn't been proven to my satisfaction). Are students necessarily more informed in their major? No way. I may know the theoretical of economics, and I'll make predictions based on what I know of past history and current trends, but I don't have the experience to be certain. I may be a religion major, but since I don't know Hebrew or Greek, I can't really address some questions since I'll know verses are translated wrong but not know the proper translation (although I do know most verses that read "forever" should read "until the end of the age"). If we're properly taught, students do know more than the average person about their major. That doesn't mean we can assume everyone is average. Having been on this board for a while, I probably understand more about science and the scientific method than the average person. Other people have similar hobbies that help them learn. Any discussion should be understood as being between individuals who may or may not have knowledge of a topic; if they demonstrate knowledge, all the better. They can be reasoned with and provide points and counterpoints to ideas.

Perinquus · Post by **Perinquus** » 2003-03-19 11:07am

RedImperator wrote:
Darth Wong wrote:There's a key difference: in an engineering faculty, if you AREN'T getting it, they flunk you. Mercilessly, without warning, and without reprieve. That's why two thirds of the incoming class is already gone by the end of the first year. In most humanities faculties, you virtually have to punch the professor in the face to get flunked out, and even then, you'd probably get a second chance.
Where is this happening? Here, if your GPA falls below 2.0, they throw your sorry ass on academic probation, and if you don't clean up your act in one semester, it's back to community college for you.

The problem with the humanities is twofold. First, as others have said, if you just appear dilligent and show up to class, it's hard to fail in some courses, because there are no hard and fast criteria which you must meet, period. In many courses (take philosophy for example), everything is subjective. If you are articulate, and a reasonably good bullshitter, you can pass most arts courses without much difficulty. The second problem also stems from the subjectivity of the material. The pet theories or ideologies of your professor may influence whether you pass or fail. Take economics for example. You may incline toward the Chicago or the Austrian school, only to find that your Marxist or Keynesian professor has failed you because of your "lack of understanding of basic economic theory".

Contrast this with engineering, where you can either design a bridge that won't fall down or you can't; or with medicine, where you can either show yourself competent to diagnose and treat real illnesses in real patients or you can't.

Marcus · Post by **Marcus** » 2003-03-19 11:20am

I was lucky enough to study Psychology and Theatre at a small, southern Liberal Arts college that has pretty much rejected the whole warm-fuzzy post modernism influences in education. My Philosophy prof flunked people without remorse for poorly supported arguements (disagreeing with her was fine, agreeing with her was fine, but being unable to support the above was death). Freud was pimarily a factor in the History of Psychology course, and as for that Theatre degree... the Theatre majors lived inside the department building, as far as I could tell. I have every respect for the Enginnering students who fail if they cant build a bridge. I request only the same respect for the Theatre students who fail if the play sucks.

That said, the things ive heard about changes in education policy, even at major ivy-league schools, quite literally turned my stoumach, even as a student who sometimes might wish he had more time for girls and less time for studies. Alas, even my alma mater is not immune, as several of the required entrance-level Western-Civ type classes (which I found intellectually stimulating, but primarily because I went beyond the subject material and engaged the professor, the course material as presented was rather unchallenging) have, since my time, been either watered-down or replaced with easier versions. Quite dissapointing.

Trytostaydead · Post by **Trytostaydead** » 2003-03-19 11:25am

Wicked Pilot wrote:Try Professional Aviation as a degree. You fuck up and you don't just fail, you die.

Most of my family do that and some have become quite famous at it, pioneering aviation both here and abroad. I would've loved to become a professional aviator, most of my instructors thought I was a fairly natural pilot.. but we ran out of $$$ to support me and my brother, and since I was the one with the bad eye it was decided I should go do medicine or something :-\

Trytostaydead · Post by **Trytostaydead** » 2003-03-19 11:29am

Marcus wrote: That said, the things ive heard about changes in education policy, even at major ivy-league schools, quite literally turned my stoumach, even as a student who sometimes might wish he had more time for girls and less time for studies. .

Ivy leagues are funny stuff. Not ONE Ivy league accepted my friend. She was ranked in the TOP FIVE for National AP boards, excellent concert pianist, track, and did lots of volunteer works. Funny stuff.

StarDestroyer.Net BBS

What's with humanities majors?!!

Re: What's with humanities majors?!!