Originally Posted by Commie42

Totally agree with you. I personally would struggle with reading novels and writing long essays. I'm just saying that based on personal observation, students who are in humanities tend to not not have as hard of a time going through their programs as say an engineering student. However, like I said, this is a generalized statement and not true for everyone.

But it could just be that engineers have a harder time because, as I said, they have more course units they have to complete overall, and also typically have a CO-OP component.

There are also a lot of confounding variables you'd have to control for, such as: do engineers and humanities students enjoy their programs equally? if many engineers are just there because engineering will "get them a job" and don't actually enjoy what they're doing, of course they're going to struggle more than a humanities student, who is in their program because they like what they're doing.

Originally Posted by Commie42

Generally speaking, the humanities program is not quite as difficult as some faculties such as engineering or life sciences, but that doesn't mean there isn't so much to learn from these programs.

I beg to differ, there are some difficult courses in humanities too. It really depends on the person how they define difficult. I know, I've gone through it myself since I was once a humanities student...

Ironically my engineering roommates that liked to look down on humanities and social science students for various reasons (it's easy, anyone can get in, they don't get paid like engineers) tended to have grades that hover around the 50% area (saved by the bell). This leads me to believe that its more about the perception of prestige.

Originally Posted by akikokoyoki

I beg to differ, there are some difficult courses in humanities too. It really depends on the person how they define difficult. I know, I've gone through it myself since I was once a humanities student...

Exactly.
In fact, when science students take humanities courses as electives or "bird courses", they tend to complain about the difficulty of it more than anyone else, and claim that the course will drop their GPA.
Heavy reading and essay writing aren't for everyone.
Science students know facts from textbooks (something I, personally, would never be able to do, because I have the worst memory and a terrible attention span)
Humanities students know argumentation, critical thinking, logic, etc.

Originally Posted by SweetyTweety

Science students know facts from textbooks (something I, personally, would never be able to do, because I have the worst memory and a terrible attention span)
Humanities students know argumentation, critical thinking, logic, etc.

Whoa, can't make that generalization either. xD not all of us in science do straight-memorization of facts from textbooks. we too, learn critical thinking, logic and argumentation through case studies, PBL and hands-on work in research settings. we also write papers in some programs, but they're a different type (typically scientific papers and critiques) than what's expected in humanities. You would be surprised to learn that many of my upper year courses have no midterms or exams, just papers and group projects. so we're more similar to humanities than you think (but again, it probably varies by program too).

Just realized I posted this in the dating/relationships section. oh shit. the numbers of people who are probably hating me for this.

Originally Posted by akikokoyoki

I beg to differ, there are some difficult courses in humanities too. It really depends on the person how they define difficult. I know, I've gone through it myself since I was once a humanities student...

Agreed. It's not generalizable for all people or all courses. I'm just saying, from personal observation only, that is the tendency have seen.

As a humanities student, I have been on the receiving end of this discussion. I can tell you I work harder than most of my friends, taking 39 units in a year. It is not an easy program, yes most humanities students graduate, but not that many do well as it is so subjective, it is not black and white, there often is not a right or wrong answer, but one based on opinion.
Mac has some really great humanities departments, I am part of Music and History, I highly recommend the programs. The most important thing to do is to check out the school and find out if you get the right feeling from the campus, if it feels like home. At the end of the day you are going to go to a university and get a degree, it often does not matter where that degree is coming from. It is about the opportunities that can be provided outside of the classroom, how much you can learn in the real world.

Originally Posted by SweetyTweety

Science students know facts from textbooks (something I, personally, would never be able to do, because I have the worst memory and a terrible attention span) Humanities students know argumentation, critical thinking, logic, etc.

For my fourth year capstone project (mechatronics engineering) my group and I designed and built an autonomous model car that could drive itself around obstacles and keep itself inside lanes on a track (no driver required). It took argumentation, critical thinking and logic from all four of us to get the job done, memorization played an incredibly marginal role as most of our work was done on computers anyway. I'm absolutely certain that 4 humanities students could not have done the job.

To say science doesn't involve critical thinking is just nonsense, science IS critical thinking.
If you're thinking critically then by definition you're doing science (weighing evidence and evaluating your hypotheses), regardless of what subject you're studying.

In general, science/engineering is about solving problems using critical thinking. Humanities is about presenting subjective opinions in a convincing way. The world is drowning in subjective opinions, we need more people who can be objective and solve problems.

There are a lot more people who switch from eng/life sci into soc sci/humanities than the other way around. there's a reason for that.

I did a commerce degree and I've decided there's a hierarchy of condescension depending on what program you're in. Whatever program you're in, most of the people in the program are going to think they're better than the people in other programs. My advice is to just do whichever one interests you the most rather than trying to impress others.