My daughter is going to be an artsie

[chansen]

First, some background.

When you are accepted to engineering in university, at least in Canada, you are pretty much separated from other faculties and even your residence to a degree. In frosh week, the week before classes start, first year students congregate by their residences to take part in activities. You will likely be greeted with a residence t-shirt, body paint, etc. Not the engineers. You do frosh week with the other engineers, where you learn songs about a Lady named "Godiva" and other rather interesting things. Almost no engineering students hang with their residence groups, and it becomes obvious why once classes start: Your roommate has 15 hours of class per week, plus a few labs or tutorials that might get them to a low 20 hours mark. You have up to 35 hours of combined class, lab and tutorial time. You take more classes than they do, and they all come with labs and/or tutorials. You need to make bonds quickly just to make it through. You will wake up earlier than your roommate most days and be at the library later. If you keep the hours of your roommate, you're liable to be a Christmas Grad.

All that leads to engineering students being a little bitter. Everyone else is an "artsie" to them. Everyone. Even science students.

If I'm honest, I wasn't even aware of what McMaster's Divinity College even was. I thought it was just a church on campus, next to Mills Library. Apparently, it has students. Artsies, obviously.

Claire will be applying to universities in the coming months. She intends to apply to Science programs with the intention of going into Psychology by second year. She's interested in the brain and this psychology thing, with I'm as suspicious of as Tom Cruise is.

I raised an artsie.

I even sent her to engineering camp once. Where did I go wrong?

 

[Mendalla]

I raised an artsie.

Well, I'm an artsie (BA in Classics, Master of Library and Information Science) who raised an engineer so maybe we balance each other off?

(to be fair, his mother has math skills that are off the scale and there's a long history of engineers in her family, including a cousin who is in the same field as him)

 

[chansen]

Congrats.

My hope now lies with an autistic twit who can do math in his sleep but can't write his way out of a paper bag. Sounds like the average engineer already.

 

[paradox3]

When I was in university, the engineering technology students at Ryerson believed they worked much harder than the engineering students at UofT.

I have no idea if there is any basis to this.

And I know people who say no one works as hard as the veterinary medicine students at Guelph. Who knows?

 

[chansen]

When I was in university, the engineering technology students at Ryerson believed they worked much harder than the engineering students at UofT.

I have no idea if there is any basis to this.

And I know people who say no one works as hard as the veterinary medicine students at Guelph. Who knows?

Everyone thinks it's them.

What engineers do, is foster an "us against the world" mentality, and because 1/3 of them are gone by second year, they need that to stay out of that 1/3. They need to stick together. The best students will be fine without help. The others need to learn in groups, have the ones who understand a concept explain it to the others, work together on assignments, and when you can't get that assignment done in time because you have a part time job or whatever, have a trusted group who will let you clone theirs to get by. When a member of the group doesn't contribute, they lose the right to copy the work of others. It's an amazing system of honest academic dishonesty.

I took a lot of commerce courses. That faculty was every student for themselves. It's cutthroat. Helping someone else could endanger their class ranking. I hated my commerce courses. Engineering students who took commerce courses stuck together there as well, getting through classes like economics by reducing it to math and getting that part right at least.

 

[chansen]

But what do psych students even do? Look at the skull and say, "Let's stick electrodes on that and make pretty graphs?"

I don't get it.

 

[Mendalla]

What engineers do, is foster an "us against the world" mentality, and because 1/3 of them are gone by second year, they need that to stay out of that 1/3. They need to stick together. The best students will be fine without help. The others need to learn in groups, have the ones who understand a concept explain it to the others, work together on assignments, and when you can't get that assignment done in time because you have a part time job or whatever, have a trusted group who will let you clone theirs to get by. When a member of the group doesn't contribute, they lose the right to copy the work of others. It's an amazing system of honest academic dishonesty.

Fits with what I heard about engineering at Waterloo back in the day. Mathies (which included computer science) had a bit of that going on, too, though maybe less so.

But what do psych students even do? Look at the skull and say, "Let's stick electrodes on that and make pretty graphs?"

I don't get it.

If they are working on a research project, yes that's part of it. There's more. Learning the history of the study of human behaviour. A certain amount of neurology if they are going the "psych as a science" route. At Master's level, counselling courses and that sort of thing if that's the career track they go for. I had two friends do psych all the way to PhD level (both interested more in the neuropsych side of it) and they married women they met in grad school, so four psych majors in the room at a lot of parties in the early nineties. Now? One friend is a professional non-profit executive, the other teaches science at a Jewish private school (he's an atheist Scot, go figure). The wives are both psych profs, though (one at UofT and one at a university whose name I forget in New Jersey)

 

[chansen]

Yeah, seems you have to do postgrad to get anywhere in the field. My wife has experience with postgrad. I wasn't invited to that party.

 

[Mendalla]

Yeah, seems you have to do postgrad to get anywhere in the field.

Yes. Even to do counselling/therapy, you need at least a Master's in Psych or Social Work, or that's my understanding.

 

[chansen]

Dammit, and I had a chunk of that RESP earmarked for ski trips.

 

[Mendalla]

Dammit, and I had a chunk of that RESP earmarked for ski trips.

The good news is that grad studies are often self-funding to a degree. My daughter-in-law (computer engineering) is doing a TA and getting some payment for work on her thesis supervisor's projects. My wife did TAs and even taught courses during her PhD.

 

[Mendalla]

When I was in university, the engineering technology students at Ryerson believed they worked much harder than the engineering students at UofT.

My little brother did chemical engineering technology in college but never heard anything like that from him.

 

[paradox3]

My little brother did chemical engineering technology in college but never heard anything like that from him.

My story is from quite some time ago. Ryerson is a university now (renamed, I believe) but it was a polytechnic institute in those days.

 

[Mendalla]

My story is from quite some time ago. Ryerson is a university now (renamed, I believe) but it was a polytechnic institute in those days.

Yep. I forget the new name, too.

 

[chansen]

Toronto Metropolitan University

 

[paradox3]

There's also Ontario Tech University in Oshawa. Easy to get them mixed up.

 

[Mendalla]

There's also Ontario Tech University in Oshawa. Easy to get them mixed up.

That's fairly new, though, isn't it?

 

[paradox3]

That's fairly new, though, isn't it?

Much newer.

 

[paradox3]

Opened its doors in September 2003.

 

[chansen]

Not really much of a reputation yet.

We'll see how Claire fairs this year. I don't think acceptance will be her problem. It's mostly does she do well enough to be looking at some scholarships. She has a few extracurriculars on her CV, but not as many as some of her peers. At school, she's really only on the ski team, which I've suggested she ask to be named captain and coach of. We did a little coaching together last year. I hope she can lead it this year and the supervising teacher insists the inexperienced racers take a session with her on the practice day, which is usually just kids taking a day away from school. Then she's in her second year of coaching ski cross, which is kinda cool. She's in her second year of volunteering at Season's Centre for Grieving Children, where she works alongside EMS workers and a psychologist or two. I've suggested she ask them about career choices. It's difficult convincing Claire that people generally like to talk about themselves and it isn't a burden to ask these questions.

So school ski team, ski coach and volunteering with grieving children. It's not a long list, but it should show she is well rounded.