I love biology, but I’m an atrocious chemistry student. Mathematical proofs and statistics are a passion of mine, but my geometry skills are mediocre at best. I can write, but not creatively, and current events are interesting, but old political philosophy is usually unexciting to me.
People say I’m an enigma. My college applications requested intended majors, and my list ranged from international relations to studies in cognitive development. My personality may be odd for other reasons (I wear tiger shirts, and I do summersaults in the quad), but I think people are wrong when they categorize me as weird because of my scatterplotesque academic interests.
For as long as I can remember, students have been sorted into “science and math” and “English and history” types, but that kind of mentality ignores that there are aspects that each subject shares.
Darwinian evolutionary theory, for example, is a subsection of biology, determined using logical premises, backed up by statistics, and spread through language.
Isolating evolution as an exclusively scientific subject matter oversimplifies a complicated idea, and classifying people who take interest in it as a “science people” is wrong.
I’ve realized that despite my interest in politics and writing, I’m not an “English and history” guy. Instead, I’m highly interested in determining causes and effects and proving that they are accurate. That general idea threads through all broad areas of study that schools offer.
I usually don’t enjoy topics that are filled with convoluted writing or that deal with computation as opposed to analysis.
Algebra and trigonometry are fundamentally different from geometric proofs, sports statistics, or calculating regression equations to isolate relationships between two variables.
The latter deals with causes and effects and interesting topics, whereas the former is rote calculation.
As evidenced by the amount of college students who radically alter their academic career paths, an enormous percentage of students also feel that they have been inaccurately categorized.
The “you’re a science person” mentality is especially damaging because it directly results in excessive student debt. Christopher Drew of the New York Times reports, “Studies have found that roughly 40 percent of students planning engineering and science majors end up switching to other subjects or failing to get any degree.”
Daniel Okwaisie of the University of Pittsburgh corroborates, “[M]any students couldn’t handle the abrupt change from happily constructing a solar system out of cardboard in high school to memorizing grueling formulas and attempting to beat the curve in college. For many reasons, numerous STEM majors find themselves switching to the humanities before their college career is over.”
These students are often saddled with crushing debt.
Changing majors can add years of school to students’ college experience, which puts previously used time and money to waste.
Schools should be more wary of classifying students as “science and math” or “english and history” kids.
These classifications are usually inaccurate, and sorting students into groups has damaging effects on their futures.
The lead editorial expresses the opinion of Opinions Editor, Abraham Fraifeld and does not necessary reflect the position of the Trinity Voice Staff. Send comments to [email protected].
