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This blog is inspired by:
On May 01 2009 06:23 L wrote:
why do poli sci majors even get an equivalent level degree if they'll complain about going to take biochem classes, but biochem majors have no problems taking poli sci classes?
And is also something I've been randomly thinking about from time to time, so I figured instead of study for my midterm I'll spend a bit of time discussing this and see if anyone else has some interesting thoughts/ideas about it.
*(Disclaimer: the following shit is my personal opinion*
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Alright so I know anybody in college has dealt with this once at least; people referring to certain majors as "hard" and certain majors as "easy". I think this is true to an extent, but in large part I think it is false. Why? Because I think people equate the ease or difficulty of a class with the ability to get a good grade. Sure, grades have something to do with it, but I don't think that tells the entire story. I'll start with something like bio vs poli sci (since that's the quote that motivated me to write this blog).
I also have some personal experience with this, since I met this girl who's a bio major recently and I told her I was a poli sci major and she said "oh isn't that an easy major?". Obviously as the quote says, I think people think Poli Sci is an "easy" major because you can see people who are Bio (or any non poli sci major) majors take Poli Sci classes and do well in them. Does that make it easier? I would argue no. I WOULD say that it is easier to get a good grade in a Poli Sci class purely because of the bullshit factor. I can guarantee everybody has randomly bullshitted a paper at one point in their lives and gotten an A on it and said to themselves "man that shit was easy I didn't even study for that A." That doesn't necessarily mean the material was easy, but I've found that it is a lot easier to get by bullshitting papers where you at least have some sort of idea what you are talking about.
With Science that isn't the case. If you have an exam (like I had in ochem last quarter) and one of the questions asks you to draw Adenine; you can't bullshit that. You HAVE to know exactly how to draw it. So there is a certain degree of difficulty here because it requires quite a bit of memorization to be successful in science oriented classes. The reason (imo) non science majors struggle in science classes is not because they are harder per se, but because memorization is involved.
I have a very good memory, and I can study if I want to - but if there is something I am absolutely not interested in, I have a lot of trouble forcing myself to study, and it becomes ineffective and I end up not remembering as much as if I were studying something I was interested in. As a result, I'm not able to memorize science stuff, not because it is hard, but because I just can't force myself to do it. In my opinion, anyone reasonably smart will be in a similar position.
There are some crazy-smart people who are just good at everything and can look at something once and retain it no matter what it is, but I'm talking about maybe a slightly above-average/average college student. Again, it's not necessarily because bio, or any other science is HARDER, it's just that because there is primarily a different skillset involved in being able to do well in a class, the grades are harder to get in science classes.
Poli Sci classes don't require memorization, all you have to do is read stuff, follow lectures, and write a paper or two. Even if you don't understand everything, if you have a general idea of what's going on you can possibly write a decent paper. So it is easier to get good grades comparatively.
If you get really deep into political science and you are engaging in serious researching/writing, you can't just bullshit. Anyone who takes poli sci really seriously would know that serious work goes into hammering out a finely polished finished product. Similarly with science, a lot of work and preparation goes into experiments and whatnot. They're equally difficult in their own right.
I just think people only think about grades when referring to a major as "hard" or "easy", which is a mistake IMO. Random example:
Let's say you have a poli sci major named Joe. He's pretty average, but it's Poli Sci, so he'll probably graduate with a 3.3 or something (that's even an above average GPA). The similarly-intelligent bio-major-counterpart of Joe would probably have a lower GPA, 2.8-3.0 or something. I can guarantee you though that in terms of grad school and/or finding a job after graduation, the difference between the two will be fairly negligible. So ya, sure it is probably a bit easier to get better grades as a poli sci major, but ultimately that will have no bearing on the rest of your life. An average poli sci major will become a non-notable political scientist, once you get into grad school and a work environment, you won't be able to bullshit your way through stuff, and so if you've relied on bs'ing your way through classes, you'll suffer. The only difference is that Bio majors need to be on top of their game from the start, since you can't bullshit science - it doesn't make biology inherently harder than political science.
Discuss: Final Note (read spoiler)
+ Show Spoiler + I'm just using bio and poli sci as examples, this pretty much can go for anything... although I would argue there are some exceptions to this rule, SOME THINGS are "easy" and "hard" inherently... but exceptions are few
 
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I encounter this problem quite often with my friend.
I think what is important to realize about "easy" majors is that while they are probably easier to get an A in, it is still just as competitive to get into some sort of graduate program for lots of majors.
For instance, there are tons of psych majors at my university, but the admissions rate for Psychology grad schools is an extremely low percent. Since so many people will have amazing grades in the "easy" psych classes, it can be that much harder to stand out in your application.
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What about Art vs Computer Science?
I'm a CS major and currently taking an art class in which I literally don't study at all/take notes. I just sit there listening to the guy writing on the board, showing pictures, bringing stuff, and just memorize all of it, and always get A's for his papers, projects, and exams.
But in my Programming Languages Concepts class I'm struggling like I'm carrying satan through hell; I'm barely passing it. And I love CS a million times better than I do art.
=S
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at my university people who are public policy/poly sci majors are just dummies that couldn't handle econ classes
i go to u of chicago
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I do agree that there is no such thing as an easy or hard "major" in the context of a major being a particular subject of study. In almost any subject, there is a great amount of depth, such that intelligent people can continue to learn more, and the concept of difficulty does not really apply.
In the context of a major being a baseline amount of effort required to adequately understand the subject, I would say there's certainly a difference in difficulty levels. Some subjects are just easier to grasp. But once again, that doesn't mean the subject isn't deep.
There is often the implication that if you're in an easy major, you must be dumb or lazy, etc. However, intelligence is intelligence no matter what field you're in.
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On May 01 2009 07:41 EsX_Raptor wrote:
What about Art vs Computer Science?
I'm a CS major and currently taking an art class in which I literally don't study at all/take notes. I just sit there listening to the guy writing on the board, showing pictures, bringing stuff, and just memorize all of it, and always get A's for his papers, projects, and exams.
But in my Programming Languages Concepts class I'm struggling like I'm carrying satan through hell; I'm barely passing it. And I love CS a million times better than I do art.
=S
my major in waterloo (supposedly strong/hard cs) is in 2 faculties: faculty of math (i'm taking computer science) and faculty of arts (i'm taking accounting/finance)
my cs classes are a freaking joke compared to the finance ones i have to take even though they're in the "arts" faculty. count your blessings
i introduce myself as an arts major just to see the reaction i get (since normally the audience happens to be like engineers and stuff). i can tell they don't respect it, and it doesn't bother me. i *do* tell them they would fail my, say, corporate finance class, just because if they're having troubles with some stupid C++ course (that i also took, and aced) where even a monkey can get a 90+, then there's no way they'd live through finance
a lot of pre-conceived notions about the easiness/difficulty of majors turn out to be wrong when you actually try it.
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I think this "easy" "hard" distinction comes from the fact that some people get a liberal arts degree and flaunt it like, "I graduated to college, I'm better than you high school graduates and equal to a physics major." Given that I find physics difficult and liberal arts easy some people may not and may feel the same with the two majors reversed, these two people are not equal. Sure the difficulty has made the physics person the "better" person, but he wants to be acknowledged for it too.
Personally, I feel a major isn't the key here, but its what you do with it. Mark Twain was smarter than your average physicist and he concentrated most of his efforts to writing(liberal arts)
/begin rant
90% of Americans are utterly stupid and this doesn't bother me. It is the ones who put no effort into learning and then want to talk to me about things that I actually know something about or better yet, treat me as if they know MORE that me about something they know nothing about.(I do realize the hypocrisy in my argument and I KNOW i do this.)
Perfect example, i was playing counter strike source(ughhh) and someone was talking about starcraft and got the reply "Starcraft is easy, just learn unit spamming and imba combos." This is where my logic goes away and i become an idiot. I said, "No Starcraft is the most balanced game ever made"*Bashes head against wall* He then proceeds to tell me I don't know what I'm talking about and his roomates does LAN RTS tours professionally. I then told him his roommate is bad on a professional starcraft level because anyone can beat him in Korean pro gaming. He then tells me that a Quebec dude used to dominate starcraft and now a Chinese dude does. My rational came back and i just shut up here, but this guy genuinely pissed me off for a few seconds.
People like this should just stfu and stop fooling other idiots.
/end rant
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chemistry and biology majors are chemical engineers who couldn't hack it
^_^
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United States24770 Posts
When my physics major was difficult, it wasn't because of memorization lol...
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You're in denial. Your degree is easy.
What L said doesn't make sense though. Bio degrees are praised a lot higher than any arts degree, so essentially they are higher levels.
I mean, you can get any degree and it'll put you slightly ahead... but Arts degrees are generally really hard to put to any use unless you just want to teach.
It's not just that you can sometimes bullshit in arts degrees... They're easier all around. There's less material, less work, and it doesn't require a huge commitment.
In the end though, it's a personal choice. There's no reason to purposely take a harder path if it doesn't lead to where you want to go. You're better off taking the path of least resistance to get where you wanna go. All you need to tell people who make fun of your degree is what you wanna do with your life, and they'll understand that.
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Awful lot of words there! Trying to convince yourself or the reader?!
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woah woah woah
if you're doing it right science classes aren't that much memorization. It's learning of a bunch of concepts and putting those concepts with a few specific words (such as certain enzymes, etc.). To learn science correctly (as opposed to just memorizing) takes a lot of thought, probably as much as or more than most humanities classes.
Anyway, if it's harder to get a good grade in ______ class, doesn't that mean it's harder to pass the requisite courses, and hence to major in something?
Right now I'm taking a Chem class, a Bio class, a History class, and a few music classes (but let's pretend I'm not taking music classes because that's a whole other can of worms). By far I spend the least time on my History class, it's mostly memorizing dates and names and learning what those names did, but in my chem class I have to learn laws, why those laws make sense, how those laws fit with other laws, and how to apply the laws. To me it's a lot more effort.
Now, I'm a Bio/Biochem major so I'm going to put more effort into my science classes than I am my non-major classes, but I think that since so much of science build off on understanding of other parts of science (Eg, you can't do Biochemistry without a good understanding of cell biology), science majors tend to be harder.
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Yeah I think it's inaccurate to say that 'hard' science majors are more difficult for many people because of memorization .
There may be memorization involved in some sciences (such as certain types of biology, organic chemistry), but for the most part I think the difference is the quantitative precision with which you have to predict the behavior of systems.
In 'soft' sciences (things like psychology, political science etc) to the best of my knowledge you are not making precise predictions, you are just gaining a general idea of the characteristics of systems and trying to create a conceptual explanation of how they might behave. This, in my opinion, is often a considerably easier task, making such majors easier at the undegraduate level for those with decent communication skills.
This is not to say it's easy to really 'know' political science (or anything for that matter) or really contribute anything to the field - it obviously is not - but as others have said the classification of a major as "easy" generally only has to do with the average ability of a student to succeed in terms of GPA relative to effort.
Political science researchers are probably working just as hard as 'hard' science researchers, but because quantitative analytical techniques have not been universally agreed upon (or all that well developed), it's difficult to create an undergraduate curriculum that is rigorous and challenging for the average undergraduate student.
Edit: Sorry to those I essentially repeated - I finished and submitted my post before checking for new ones.
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Also, don't get me started on Music majors. Obviously, there's a huge difference in difficulty depending where you go (for example, a music major at a state school is EZPZLMNSQEZ (Like what Fontong is doing)). BUT I don't go to a state school, I go to Oberlin, and the level of expectation is insanely higher.
Basically if you have too many bad lessons in a row, your teacher has every right to kick you out of his studio, and if no other studios pick you up you're out of a major. Also, we have juries at the end of the first two years in order to make sure that people are doing well enough to continue to the next year (kind of like weeding-out examinations). For each of the last two years, students are expected to prepare a 50 or so minute solo concert, which is looked at similar to juries. All of this is in addition to the fact that we had to audition to get admission in the first place (something like an 8% acceptance rate). But holy crap the people here are good. Like some of the freshmen here are better than juniors and seniors I've heard from other schools, especially in our strings department.
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Baa?21244 Posts
On May 01 2009 08:02 Chef wrote:
You're in denial. Your degree is easy.
On May 01 2009 08:02 Hawk wrote:
Awful lot of words there! Trying to convince yourself or the reader?!
Pretty much sums it up.
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memorizing isn't what's hard about science classes...
what..? maybe biology, but you can't say that for all sciences.
The reason (imo) non science majors struggle in science classes is not because they are harder per se, but because memorization is involved.
i mean please correct me if im wrong, i'm just a high school senior taking college freshman classes
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Arguably, it's like StarCraft races. At the pro level, in which every facet of the field is studied to great depths, they may be equal, but that doesn't exclude the possibility that all fields don't have the same learning curves.
Edit: Added "don't".
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haha starcraft race analogy, clever
actually this could turn out ugly
-looks at xeris unit icon-
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On May 01 2009 07:52 KOFgokuon wrote:
chemistry and biology majors are chemical engineers who couldn't hack it
^_^
chemie ftw! ^_^
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^Well, I'm not trying to incite him, I'm just suggesting a possibility. And I'm not suggesting which I think are more difficult among majors, or even which races I think have harder learning curves. Merely something to consider.
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EPT
