Majoring in a STEM field is not always an easy choice to make. It's certainly a risky move for your GPA, as STEM majors are some of the hardest out there. Students with a knack for organizing and memorizing complicated material will have an easier time; others, equally fascinated but less adept at managing a demanding course load, will undoubtedly struggle. Bumbling through our lengthy problem sets and many pages of diagrammed course notes, we sometimes wonder if we'll ever gain any practical life skills from our STEM major. It doesn't always seem so, but we have learned a lot of important lessons that have shaped our perspective. Here's a few that come to mind:
STEM majors are patient.
Any STEM major who has completed a research project knows the meaning of patience. No matter how much we plan, our experiments rarely turn out the way we would like them to. As our projects evolve, we evolve, too. We learn to take failures in stride and to salvage whatever we can from them so we can move on. We do the same test over and over, no matter how long it takes us, until we get consistent results. Our patience keeps us curious in the face of monotony. Summers in the lab spent gazing at the beautiful warm weather from 9-5 would be unbearable without it.
STEM majors are unafraid of the unknown.
The bulk of what we learn can easily be disproved, so we must confront the unknown every day. In research, we make guesses all the time about what we think is going to happen. Our knowledge base is in constant flux, but we have learned to embrace it, and embrace the flux in other aspects of our lives. We watch the people we've know for years grow and change, and their changes make us curious to learn about them. We know that we have basic things in common, so change becomes exciting instead of scary. STEM majors accept realities that are difficult to accept, of the tiniest and hugest proportions, and they're content and keep searching to learn more and more.
STEM majors know how to communicate difficult ideas to just about everyone.
When people ask us to explain our research, we erupt in descriptions of our latest discovery, but it's not until explaining several key concepts that our listener has any idea what we're saying. Scientific research is complex and it's hard to talk about within STEM majors, let alone with our friends majoring in the humanities. We've learned to use fun metaphors, like comparing our device to a many layered sandwich, to get others to understand. After talking about our research to enough people, we've realized that we can explain just about anything, and our friends like to ask us questions because we give such concise answers. Or our answers aren't concise at all, but we work really hard to get them to understand.
