I went to an Engineering lecture as a Psych major

Engineering will melt your brain

I’m not an Engineering major, but at one time in high school, I was sure it was what I wanted to do.

A lot of my friends are Engineering majors, and they constantly harp about how “Engineering is death” and how “Statics class made me question my place in the world”.

When I asked my friends why they chose their particular majors, each said the same thing: “money”. As a Psychology major I know that the only way I’ll be making money is by spending money on grad school, so in a last ditch effort to change my life, I went to sit-in on a Mechanical Engineering Design lecture to see if maybe, just maybe, I had caught the wrong train.

I sat in the back, so as to not be noticed. The class had started at around 3.30, it was 3.40, but people were still coming in. As I looked to my left, I noticed a fellow “classmate” watching soccer. “This class must be a joke” I muttered to myself. I looked at the board, the instructor was using a blurry document camera, along with a pen and paper, to present information to the class.

Immediately the instructor began to babble on about “cyclic loads” and “R-ratios”, clearly one does not simply walk into a Mechanical Engineering class and understand the material. Hell, I got a 36 on the science section of the ACT, and I literally had no clue what was going on.

Alright, “fluctuating stresses”, I’m aware of what stress is. I have a paper due in like three hours as I’m writing this, I might be the regional expert on stress. Weirdly enough, this part of the class was probably the only thing I could intuitively understand. Everything else included too much terminology for me to tackle.

My classmate did not seem to be enthralled with the material either. From Google searching “memory foam costs” to engaging in some casual meme-watching, this kid clearly already knew what was going on, or just like me, his brain had been rendered into a stew.

Alright, back to things I can comprehend. Like stress, fatigue is something I’m very well-acquainted with (that’s what happens when you sleep for four hours each night! Learn from me!), and “infinite life” sounded too cool to be a term associated with engineering. The immortal smooth bar, being constantly bent, never breaking. An engineer’s dream.

At this point, about 45 minutes into the class, I turned to my left to see that my “classmate” had decided that this class was no longer important to him, so I followed suit. I like to think he went home to continue his meme adventure, care-free and jubilantly, but I fear that may not have been the case.

Although we only spoke once during the course, what he said to me was deeply moving. I asked him “What class is this? I’m writing an article” to which he replied, “Mechanical engineering design, I hate this shit.”

I hated it too buddy. I hated it too.

More
University of Connecticut