Rants
Why Engineering Students Dislike Other Majors
It’s very common if you have friends who are engineering majors. They have a massive dislike towards students of other majors, especially art majors. It’s understandable, I have the same feelings.
I’m close friends with a Business major, and a nursing major. I give some more respect to the nursing major with some exceptions, most of my classmates are the same. We’re bitter for reasons.
First of all, the workload. I’m a 4.5th year engineering student. I’ve been in college since the Spring of 2007. I probably won’t graduate for another full semester. This was because I spread my classes out a bit more than most other students do, that and because I worked 2 full/part-time jobs the entire time also to pay my way through school. (I don’t believe in taking out excessive amounts of money in the form of loans, exception being perhaps a house.) Most of my friends do 18 credit hours a semester. At least one of those classes a semester is a engineering/science lab course, which really should be a 6 credit hour course. You can enter the engineering buildings here at Carolina any time of the day, including 3:30AM and see people walking around and working on stuff like it’s any other time of day. Not saying that other majors have the same issue, it’s just not as common.
Now comparing students of other majors I know. One person I know who is a nursing student, she spends 4 out of 7 nights a week getting wasted (with plenty of photographic evidence on facebook), and somehow has a near 4.0GPA. Now either that major is easy as hell, or the courses don’t involve that much time. I know for a fact she is not a smart person. She spent a lot of her time in high school asking people for answers and or paying others off with sex to get her answers. Now my business major friends. One of them gets wasted 3 out of 7 nights a week and on top of that has a 4.0GPA. Sitting in a few of his classes, all the students in that class needed calculators to subtract 48,000 from 60,000. The answer is 12,000, and you morons needed calculators?
Most of my other friends with my major are the same way. And that is the reason they are bitter too. It’s some what more insulting when they complain about having too much to do when they only spend 3 hours a week doing homework, whereas a lot of us spend over 80 hours a week doing stuff for school. Imagine doing that load too while working, it sucks.
I Hate SUVs
I hate SUV’s…
Er, well mainly the people who own them mainly. Lots of people I’ve met own then because it allows them “to control the road better”. Good majority of the drivers are female, and they are more aggressive when they drive them. Every morning when I travel through town, I encounter single females on their cellphones running redlights. If someone honks their horn at these women, they flip the drivers off or cuss them out as they’re driving. Sounds kinda hypercritical, they are the ones actually breaking the law. Mothers seem to own them to carry their kids around, although the size of the car seems pretty unnecessary, as most of the time, you see only one kid in the back seat, however that kid seems to be off the wall, jumping around in the back of it without a seatbelt.
I understand the need for a vehicle with a lot of seats if you have a lot of children (however now a days people who have a lot of children are of very low income families and all their stuff is subsidized by the government), however for most North Americans, buying a SUV is completely pointless.
As of this writing, gas prices in South Carolina were around 3.47$ a (US) gallon (about 0.91$/L). On TV this morning, they were interviewing some chick who owned a SUV and was like “It cost me 300$ a week in gas just to drive my kids to school! The government needs to do something!” First of all, if you’re paying 300 dollars to drive your kids to school, either you’re a crappy driver, or your suv you’re standing next to pumping gas into gets 8 whopping MPG (or 30L/100km).
The United States has some of the cheapest gas in the world, next to the Middle East. For example, Germany currently pays about 2.20$/L for gas, which is about 8.33$ per (US) gallon. We really shouldn’t be complaining about the cost of gas. We’ve taken cheap gas for the past century for granted. Europe and Asia all mainly have small cars because of the excessive cost of gas there. We’re heading on that way.
I don’t think we will completely go the way that Europe and Asia has for a long time, because in comparison, there is more open land that separates cities and towns from each other, and public transit would be sluggishly slow until some kind of high speed rail is implemented. (That’s another post another time though.) Cars will be here for a very long time, however people will have to be more reasonable on what they own. Personally, I doubt that would happen as we all have this mentality that we are superior than the rest of the world and we can abuse everything that we please.
People in the next decade will have to be more reasonable when it comes to the cost of gas. Some suggestions to follow would be:
- Quit complaining about gas prices. If you purchased a 38k$ hummer, that’s your own damn fault that it costs you 300$ a week in gas.
- If your kid is hyperactive and you get an SUV so the kid can move around, you’re just a shitty parent. Control your kid better. (I can rant about this quite a bit)
- Remove your arrogance that you “rule the road”. It’s morons like you who cause accidents for everyone else.
I’ve noticed too that every time a new more fuel efficiant car is put out on the market, its immediately ostrizied by the media, for example, the Chevy Volt over its batteries. Well the car is the first of its kind on the market here in a very long time, there’s bound to be problems. They get worked out, and for example GM is doing the repairs for free. People who complain about the cost of the Volt don’t seem to have any trouble going out and buying a SUV with the same cost, which seems kinda hypocritical. Oh well, that’s just me. Personally, if I had the 30-40k$ to spend, I would buy one in a heartbeat.
Sources for cost of German gas: http://gasoline-germany.com/statistik.phtml
Doom and Gloom Television News
Have you ever noticed how often most TV cable news networks are portraying the world as being in a “Doom and Gloom” situation? For example, some channels are blaming President Obama for everything wrong going on with this country, others are blaming the republicans in congress for why everything is going wrong.
They’re both wrong.
There’s a lot wrong with the country, I will admit that. Rampant lobbying (aka bribes), businesses screwing people over, SOPA/Protect-IP, etc. Yes, nothing gets done in congress, however that’s the way our country is set up. Two political parties who are in polar opposite views (unless money is thrown at them) and will not discuss anything with each other, that’s the main problem.
Speaking about SOPA, I saw NBC talking about it during the website blackouts a while ago. They made sure to go out of their way to label Google and Wikipedia as organizations that “permit thievery.” Makes me kinda wonder if the people running these news outlets are the whole reason people act like they are today in the first place.
