Frankly, this university’s requirements are getting a little out of control. It all started with this ENES200 class about “ethics in engineering” or something weird and woke like that. I thought I’d be fine taking this, getting it out of the way, and then being able to focus on my real classes. But no, apparently, this class only fulfilled two of my several gen-ed requirements. So now I have to take a bunch of totally random classes that will have no impact on my ability to speed-run a six-figure salary out of college. What gives?

The information in these kinds of gen-ed courses is pretty useless for me. Granted, some of the requirements are just for math and science classes I’ve already knocked out, but don’t get me started on the humanities classes I’ll have to take. I was scrolling through the course registration system and saw a class talking about something called “American Imperialism” and another on the “Political Economy of Capitalism”. I really don’t understand why they’d have us take these sorts of irrelevant classes — I mean, they have no bearing on something like my internship at Lockheed Martin this upcoming summer.

If people want to learn about these niche little topics with little bearing on the real world, then why don’t people just pick up a book instead? I can’t think of anything helpful about learning a topic from an expert in the field with a group of peers you can talk to about the class. Although I was never much of the reading-type myself, those stupid language arts classes in high school were the ones that ended up dropping my GPA. I think my teacher was a little bit worried about my reading comprehension score, but I wasn’t really able to read the report with my score on it anyway. It’s a good thing a brilliant engineer (I suppose like myself) invented voice transcription because I probably wouldn’t be able to write this much without it.

As it happens, I went to McKeldin Library the other day to check out some of these books for myself. Well, not to actually check them out of the library — I ended up just working on some of my much more interesting mechanics homework instead. Or at least I tried to, until I overheard some people laughing to themselves a few tables away from me. It made me so upset that I had to pack up my stuff and go back to my dorm. How irresponsible are these common folk, laughing and having a good time when they should be quiet with their heads down and studying? And on the first floor no less — don’t they know that it’s meant to get louder as you go up the floors? Acting like this, I bet they weren’t even STEM majors.

These students need to understand that college isn’t about becoming a “well-rounded individual” (who would want to become a circle?), “learning life-skills,” or “making life-long friends.” No, college is just job training, nothing else. The sooner these hooligans understand this fact, the better off their reckless lives will become. More room in the job market for me, I guess. Surely the job application process doesn’t have behavioral interviews!

I hope I’ve made my point clear: the gen-ed classes we’re forced to take are nothing but a scourge on our prestigious university, limiting the potential of intelligent engineering students like me. Anyway, it’s almost my mom’s birthday and I’ve got to go write her a card. I’m just glad that ChatGPT exists for annoying things like this.

Image Credits: Zachary Robinson