As the old saying goes, opposites attract. Positives and negatives come together due to the laws of science or the irony of fate. But what happens when you unite two people of different majors? What happens when you bring together people learning two things that are as contradictory to one another as it gets? Say, Humanities and engineering? What kind of relationship do you get when you combine two minds filled with such different things? As an English Major dating a Chemical Engineering Major, I can tell you 5 things that will result from this attraction of opposites.
1. You don't understand what each other are talking about 50% of the time.
When it comes to school, especially if you're passionate about what you're learning, your conversations with one another slowly rise higher and higher above each other's heads. He starts taking classes like "Thermodynamics" or "Materials and Energy Balancing" while you're taking things like "Interpreting Discourse" or "British Literature." He comes back from class all excited and inspired, going off about the meaning of Gibb's Free Energy Rule or something or other while you can only sit and try your best to make sense of the gibberish coming from his mouth. Sometimes you may spend an hour or so letting him try to earnestly explain it to you, but other times you will just resort to the smile and nod. Later when you are crying over Tennyson or at the brink of some major philosophical realization, his reaction will often be equally futile.
2. Most of the time you spend together will be studying.
This is something that you will have to get comfortable with really fast. With two totally different majors, I wouldn't say that one is necessarily more difficult than the other, but I would say that engineering majors certainly have far more homework in general than a humanities major, or at least homework that takes more time. Humanities is a great deal of papers and reading and research, but to succeed, engineering majors must practice and do constant homework that is due after almost every class. And it often takes hours. Your opportunities for date nights, or nights just hanging out will suddenly be very limited. You soon learn that the most efficient time to spend any time together at all is to have study nights, lots and lots of study nights. Efficient...that brings us to the next point.
3. They will suddenly start trying to teach you to do everything "more efficiently".
4. Homework Hangovers over Tigerland Hangovers
5. You become their personal proofreader and they become your personal scientist/ math-lete.
Opposites are complementary. Because you are both developing your knowledge of different things, together you are the perfect team. Whenever they need a paper written, or a speech prepared, you're their go-to. And whenever you have to take your gen ed sciences and maths, or whenever you have a general question about how things work, chances are they can answer it, or can find out how.
Some might think two entirely different people could never work out as a couple. However, I would say that differences in scholarly interest, if anything, only make each person in the relationship that much more versatile. It exposes us each to things we would otherwise have no reason to even try to know about. We make an effort to understand each other's interests because we care about the other, and as a result we learn something new about the world. We also never have to compete for anything and can only support each other in our efforts. Sure there are sacrifices to be made dating an engineering major. It would be nice to spend more time together doing funner things than homework, but then the nights we do have time to do something special are that much more memorable and special.
In the end, it doesn't matter so much what your interests are. What matters is your willingness to accept and support another person's interests as you support and accept the other person. Teamwork is the key to a relationship of opposites when they do, in fact, attract.
