Evil Engineering: The Education vs. The Students

"Wow," I exclaimed, "I'm so inspired! I just spent 4 hours with my English teacher and I finally understand!"

My room mates looked at me very strangely as I ran through from

room to room proclaiming that I had actually been enlightened in Introduction to Interpretation, a course feared and hated even by major people in the department. "Oh no, they've warped him." "What did they do to you?" "Are you sure you're still sane?" "Hey ......" Well, Some comments were not re-printable, which shows that I am not the only student who dislikes the set up of the curriculum here.

It's the last week of classes and I have a final paper due. The assignment is to be based on some personal revelation and I have finally found it. Valarie, my English instructor has helped me finally see the through my previous draft, which was, in reality, a large complaint against the English class specifically. I had intended it to be an argument for more choice in the engineering curriculum in my particular school, CMU. Now realize that it is not particular at all. The same situation would arise in all universities, because they all have the same rules, the same system, and that is exactly what David Noble was trying to say in "Technology as People", the eighth chapter of his book, "America by Design".

I really do like being here at CMU. It's a school with an excellent reputation for my major, Electrical and Computer Engineering, and it has interesting technical lectures as well as interesting people.

Despite my positive feelings, I also have some disputes. I am not Super Student by any means. When I accepted I new I would probably be in the middle of the class ranking, or perhaps slightly below. Federal law offers me an option to this: I am allowed to define my own minimum full-time course load by law because of my various learning disabilities, but I hate to use this as an excuse. I also do not wish to spend eight or more years as an undergraduate because on the one hand this would be a large chunk of my life in which most students would already have a graduate degree. On the other hand I already do not know how I am paying for only four or possibly five years of my education and any additional years would be even more financially painful.

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