College/Univ. Students: What's your major, and how much work/how difficult is it?

redmosquito10

Self explanatory title, just wanted to see how college experience varies according to your major. As an engineering student, I definitely have a pretty large/difficult workload, but it has gotten better since the first year, which they use to pretty much just scare people out of the program. Anyways, feel free to share experiences, worst classes, etc.

catefrances

im an english major with a history/politics/philosophy submajor.
theres a lot of reading and a lot of critical thinking. when im reading, it doesnt look like im actually doing work, but i am.

redmosquito10

catefrances wrote:

im an english major with a history/politics/philosophy submajor.
theres a lot of reading and a lot of critical thinking. when im reading, it doesnt look like im actually doing work, but i am.

Yeah, before I finally settled on my current major I considered majoring in everything from english to philosophy to psychology. Different types of work from engineering that's for sure, but everything appeals to me, which has always been my problem

emily18

any communications/advertising majors around? i'm thinking about going into that field and wonder what people who've done it think of it...

gleemonex

I'm a history major at the University of Winnipeg. The first two years weren't bad, but this year kicked my ass. I've written more 15-20 page research papers this year than the other years combined. It's just one after another after another. If that's the kind of thing you think you can handle, then history isn't so bad.

deadmosquito

i graduated last year with a degree in history, minor in political science. lots of reading, a good bit of writing and researching. the workload wasn't real bad until the last year or two, but especially my last year, when i had to do a huge paper using only primary sources. it was weeks of living in the library, going through boxes of papers that were 90 years old. good times.

now if only i could find a use for my degree....

stylo17

right now I'm pretty undecided to be honest. ALWAYS wanted to be a pediatrician, that's not gonna happen. It's not the work load, my high school was MUCH more demanding than college, just a change of heart. I might do law school, but I just need a major. Which I have no idea what to do. Might do like Public Relations or something. Maybe English Creative Writing, even thought about Philosophy, I HAVE NO IDEA.

so for now I'm just doing my basic "liberal studies" classes. woop-dee-do.

gleemonex

deadmosquito wrote:

i graduated last year with a degree in history, minor in political science. lots of reading, a good bit of writing and researching. the workload wasn't real bad until the last year or two, but especially my last year, when i had to do a huge paper using only primary sources. it was weeks of living in the library, going through boxes of papers that were 90 years old. good times.

now if only i could find a use for my degree....

God, I had to do the same thing this year with primary sources. My professor made us write a paper using the archives of a department store. It was the single most boring/painful experience of my university life.

redmosquito10

you guys are making me feel more sure of my decision to leave the liberal arts behind and get an engineering degree. i still write for my school paper and write poetry so I haven't completely abandoned it. I'm not sure which is worse though, a 15-20 page primary source paper or the 60 page project write-up i had to do my freshman year after building a robot. It was a group project, but I quickly learned that a lot of my fellow engineers don't have the best writing skills so I wrote the whole thing. That was a fun last 3 weeks of the year.

Tone

emily18 wrote:

any communications/advertising majors around? i'm thinking about going into that field and wonder what people who've done it think of it...

Hey, I did a BA Communications with a minor in Journalism... but I did it in Australia where it was only 3 years (here, I think it's 4, no?). Lots of reading, lots of writing, lots of politics, lots of research (but I was doing Political Reporting and Investigative Journalism) but that's what I like, I was doing journalism so I loved it (kinda wish I'd done a Masters now). I even did an essay on Pearl Jam, for an elective subject "Music & Popular Culture", what else would I choose!? I did a couple of PR subjects too and I also did a marketing certificate at a college (TAFE in Australia). Anyway, I loved it. If that's what you're interested in, you'll enjoy it

I'm aiming to go to Law School for 2009 to do a JD... not sure how I'll afford it here, but I want to do it.

ryan198

I was in politics then switched to sports management. The former was a lot of reading and writing, the later was more a business type degree. In sports management we had a bunch of ridiculous tests...either that or I couldn't get into it because I didn't agree with a single thing the people in the business department was saying.

MA/PhD in Physical Cultural Studies - seriously to go on in an area where you are expected to write is about the single hardest thing to do in school. Basically it is up to you to finish everything by the last day of classes, 20-30 page well researched papers, and you have really no feedback until then.

scot88

I'm majoring in Engineering as well. Tough as balls, let me tell ya.

Actually, it's not that difficult, but I'm still stuck in the "weed out" classes. Lots of tedious work. I was a History major, and the difference is absurd. If you found High School easy and you want to get trashed every day, then History is a solid major. If you want to find a non fast food job after 4 years of college, then not so much. The papers were a pain in the ass though, I'll give you that.

Benzor

I'm a history major and an indifferent student at best and it's incredibly easy.

Medicated-Genius

redmosquito10 wrote:

Self explanatory title, just wanted to see how college experience varies according to your major. As an engineering student, I definitely have a pretty large/difficult workload, but it has gotten better since the first year, which they use to pretty much just scare people out of the program. Anyways, feel free to share experiences, worst classes, etc.

Same sort of thing for me. I started a Bachelor of Midwifery last year, first year was HUGE!. I think the Uni had the same idea, sort out the people who REALLY wanna do this from the one's who were just there coz it seemed like a good idea at the time. First year for me was hard core. The workload was ridiculous, we were at Uni from 8.30am to 6pm five days a week, I have to travel an hour and a half each way. So my day was starting at 5am, I wasn't getting home till sometimes after 8 if the traffic was bad and was trying to juggle four kids in the mix, get all my assignments and "self directed learning" tasks done (homework and study). On top of that we had 10 weeks of clinical placements and had to recruit 10 women into a follow through program and attend all their ante natal appointments, their births, and up to six weeks in the post natal period, with the aim of accumulating 120 follow through hours.
Looking back, I dunno how the fark I did it, but I do remember many moments where I thought I'd lose my mind. Thankfully, so far, second year has been a lot easier, with only three days a week at Uni and a lot more clinical time. Third year is mostly clinical hours so won't be so bad either.
It's amazing to me how many people have no idea what a midwife does, and assumes she's just a glorified baby catcher. SO not the case.
Oh and worst class? Had to be anatomy and physiology, man thats like learning a whole new language! I really struggled with it, stressed over it, had melt downs during exams and such, but funnily enough...... I got my highest grades in those classes......
Best of luck with your studies

mca47

Degree in Biology with an emphasis in Biochemistry.
Not fun.

scot88

mca47 wrote:

Degree in Biology with an emphasis in Biochemistry.
Not fun.

Are you planning on med school? Teaching? If not, I cannot conceive why someone would major in biology or chemistry. Not putting you down, I just don't understand.

markymark550

scot88 wrote:

Are you planning on med school? Teaching? If not, I cannot conceive why someone would major in biology or chemistry. Not putting you down, I just don't understand.

There are jobs out there besides being a doctor or teacher that require bio and/or chem degrees. Not all research is done at the university level and there are a lot of R & D jobs available for biologists and chemists that might not want to go back for a masters/phd or go to med school. I have a couple of friends that got into the chemistry research and just love it.

As for me, I'm a computer science graduate. If you are a logical and sequential thinker, that major is a piece of cake. Anybody can learn the syntax and semantics of a programming language, but not everybody has the necessary logic to be a programmer.

Kilgore_Trout

Im at the Univ. of Illinois (C-U) and majoring in painting and art education with a minor in art history... typical useless white person degree...

seriously tho... its alot of work... tons of hours at the studio... more than most probably spend studying or writing papers... the materials cost more than most probably spend on books and constantly need to be replenished which is obviously a bitch... and thats just for my useless degree... the education classes are boring, repetitive, and full of lengthy papers and state requirement jargon that will have little or no application to my future job

i get a rewarding final product and get to do what i love every day... which is all i ask...

just need to get all this out of the way to become a HS teacher which i think will be fun despite the low income

mca47

scot88 wrote:

Are you planning on med school? Teaching? If not, I cannot conceive why someone would major in biology or chemistry. Not putting you down, I just don't understand.

I currently work in clinical cancer research.

DOSW

Right now I'm almost done with my freshman year at Bloomsburg University in PA. My major is political science, but I didn't take very many poly sci classes this year so it's been really easy. Next semester I'm going to be diving right in to harder classes though, so I'm going to need to work a lot more than I have these first two semesters.

redmosquito10

mca47 wrote:

I currently work in clinical cancer research.

Hey I did cancer research when I was planning on becoming a biomedical engineer. Very interesting, but at times a bit tedious/repetitive, like pretty much everything else it seems.

I'm currently going through basic required engineering classes: statics, dynamics, differential equations, etc (if you don't know what those are, all you really need to know is they for the most part suck majorly). I get to mix in a few field classes because my specialization revolves around the environment, so those definitely help keep me sane when I'm spending hours on a math problem set I couldn't care less about. It's basically a push for me to finish my undergrad degree, and then when I go to grad school I can focus on classes that really interest me