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> There are a lot of pointless liberal arts classes for a STEM degree in the US. I understand, this was my outlook when I left school too, but I changed my mind about that. It took me maybe 5 years of work experience before I realized that no matter how "technically" smart I was, my technical skills were worth shit if I couldn't communicate better with my teammates. My writing was poor, I couldn't explain myself concisely, I could get flustered when someone didn't understand a point that looked straightforward to me... I had no notion of how I might go about convincing someone to do something I needed, especially someone who wasn't working in the same field as me or didn't have the same educational background. Not saying I'm a rockstar at this either now, but at least I understand the benefits of well-roundedness in a way that I didn't see earlier in my career. I also see this with some of my younger colleagues now, who seem to care about technical output and cranking out smart stuff, but they're having problems communicating or taking feedback, and it's really clamping their future professional opportunities until they work on that... Anyway - I don't mean this to disclaim your experience of feeling like you were wasting your time, and maybe the classes weren't the right level for you, just pointing out that at least for some people in the tech field, lack of skills in the humanities dept eventually prevents their professional advancement, hence it's not necessarily a waste of time for everyone to take classes outside of their major even if they're studying in a STEM field... |
I found quite a few interesting history/culture/etc classes and enrolled in them. They had no prerequisites, but offered engaging material. A week in I notice... these classes don't fulfill my general education requirements--only the most fundamental, non-challenging classes do.
So I switch from classes with 15-20 students that would've involved long discussions, some research, and actual thinking, into lectures of 150 students and only 3 multiple choice tests in the entire semester.
I went to every class. Never was I challenged. They were very much "here are facts. Memorize these for the tests" classes and nothing more. Very surface level stuff. Not even any questions from the professor, and oftentimes if students asked questions, the professors would tell them to ask later because they're short on time. Just a waste of time and money.