This all started on a Thursday night when one of my closest friends asked me if I wanted to participate in Thirsty Thursday. I told her that as a civil engineering major, I’d feel like a ‘thot’ if I did. It wasn’t my intention to insinuate that those who do Thirsty Thursday are thots, but my friend felt very hurt by my comment. We started arguing and she brought up the point that all engineering majors think they are better than everyone else. I personally I hate to think that I am better than anyone else, and I have always thought that hard work is relative. But when she said that, I was aggravated because I strongly believe that engineers have it hardest, especially at Howard. Though we hashed out our differences that night, the same conversation continued to emerge between my engineering and non-engineering friends. So, I took the time to interview some of my engineer peers to see if I'm not the only one who thinks we have it hardest.
(Conversations have been edited for length and clarity.)
What constitutes something as being hard?
“In regards to life and goals, whether academically, socially, or personally, hard is measured by two things, and those two things are (1) lack of resources, and (2) lack direction.”
“If I have to think about it over and over again, if It consumes me, or if it's something that’s new.”
“Nothing is impossible, but when the time its takes to do it correctly is longer than something else, I consider it hard. Like anybody can compute 2x2, but to do a triple integral is harder because it take more time to understand. But it’s not impossible, there are millions of people that can do triple integrals. So I guess it’s harder when it’s tedious.”
Do you think engineers have the hardest major?
“I mean it’s all relative, like Biology majors deal with the same sh*t ass teachers that we deal with. I guess what makes it different for us is the content of the material… we learn all lot of conceptual things that are intangible. We also lack direction; most of us don’t know how to create good studying habits. As an engineer, we can’t just take the textbooks and go home and be OK, you cant just go to class and be OK. It’s not enough. I guess, compared to everyone else, our work doesn’t really guarantee results.”
“Yes, we have to choose between our social lives and academics more than any other discipline.”
“I do…because of the level of the course work. Even our easiest classes are tedious. They require more things to get them done correctly. But I’m not gonna chastise someone else’s major, though.”
What has been one of your pivotal experiences as a Howard engineering major?
“When I failed calculus three. I’ve never failed a class before. I was never a top grade n*gga, I would get my 65. When I failed I was like, I’m really f*cked. My other classes were straight, so it made me low-key depressed. I was never good at math so it made me realize I gotta study harder.”
“I be battling this sh*t everyday, but was last semester blew me; I learned a lot about myself. I understood the real meaning of trial and error. You can soak and be sorry, but you really have too get up and try again. Sometimes you may succeed, others times you wont, and at the end of the day that doesn’t speak anything on your character. The class I did the worst in was MATAB, but that's because I didn’t get enough opportunities to practice my trial and errors so my grade suffered. But it’s safe to say that I know MATLAB sufficiently because I learned to use it to make money. I have classmates who got A's but can't produce the same quality of work I can. Sometimes you lose, it’s not always about a grade. But I generally like engineering because I can grasp concepts and apply them, that’s really cool to me. It amazes what I can do three weeks from now or three days from now. Like you can really see how anything in this world works and no one can take that away from you.“
“After one of our physics test, when I realized the mechanical engineers cheated on the test. This is after I had blessed them with the tests I had. From then on I said f*ck the MEs. That let me know what CEACS was on.”
How do you think Howard could better equip CEACS students?
“Better courses that focus on our major, a lot of classes are cross over. Instructors should focus more on how to apply it to the real world. We also need to do more sh*t together like homework, studying, and chill. A lot of us don’t have good social skills, all we think about is schoolwork. A lot more of us would make it if we had each other as a support.“
“Give us the same benefit that SOB has. SOB accommodates their students. They have multiple professors for their courses and better time slots. Also change the scheme; the amount of math we take is an inconvenience. If you come in not taking calculus one, you’re on a five-year scheme. We take Autocad our freshman year but we use it junior year.”
“We need to assess Faculty members to make sure students understand concepts; if you have a 25 point curve that’s clearly not good. I don’t care how much tenure you have, you have to be re-assed. There needs to be better communication between administration, faculty, and students because nothing is cohesive. Our scheme lacks clarity and is very unorganized. How do you have us taking 10 credits one semester to 17 credits of pure engineering the next semester and then wonder why we're not grasping or succeeding with this sh*t?We should also have mentorships throughout CEACS, especially for the transition from freshman to sophomore because we all struggle with hanging on to all of our social aspects.”
After these answers I realized that I was definitely wrong in my word choice, but my point was still valid. As engineering majors we lack direction, so in order to make sure we're on the right path we must not diverge to any fun opportunity that comes to us. At Howard we are at a disadvantage with our resources, and so must work hard to stay focused. That is very hard because Howard's culture is very energetic. So our work is not hard, anyone can do it. But it’s just harder to achieve, because it requires continual focus. That is why our retention rate is lower. Lastly, if we had a better support system we wouldn’t feel like we’re going through it all on our own. We would be able to enjoy more of our college years and we wouldn’t feel like something like Thirsty Thursday is such a forbidden delight.
