@boomzilla said in BAs are harder than BScs ():
There is a theme running through this that humanities students have no friends and never socialize but STEM students have tons of friends and go out and party a lot.
In my experience, that's not actually untrue.
Not because a BSc is easier, but because if you get the subject, you don't have to spend nearly as much time digging through the books. With things like history or literature, there's pretty much no way around rote memorization no matter how good you are - with computer science, mathematics or chemistry, a good student should be building a mental model that lets them deduce what they haven't memorized. You don't have to remember nearly as much if you can apply what you do know to infer the rest.
The article, of course, is a totally pointless whine.
For starters, we can’t copy each others’ answers like you do in your coursework, and once you learn something you’ve learnt it – it’s not so easy for us.
Um... neither can STEM students. In fact, STEM students have it worse, since it's easier for the teacher to just change some parameters in the task and make it unsolvable without at least some understanding. You won't find code to sort a list of exactly 12 items on SO any more than you'll find a ready-made essay on the theme of nature in Hemingway's works.
BSc students can just Google their answers or ask Matt on the boys’ Whatsapp what he got for question 1a.
Because no one in the history of ever has taken someone else's essay, tweaked it a little, then put it up as their own. Oh, wait, no, that's not true. Hell, I wouldn't have passed Literature in high school without help from others, more or less legitimate.
And if you think paraphrasing is a difficult task, then well... maybe Literature is not for you. Just saying.
We get given the choice to write our own essay title, too – what the fuck does that even mean? Is it some sort of reverse psychology where our tutors want us to write an essay title to show autonomy. or will they take offence if we don’t pick one of theirs? It’s much harder than finding out what ‘x’ is.
gasp I CANNOT COPE WITH SO MUCH CHOICE! I NEED A WARM BLANKET, A CUP OF TEA, AND SOMEONE TO TELL ME EXACTLY WHAT TO DO!
Also, "finding what x is" might very well be worthy of a Fields Medal.
When it comes to coursework, you’re always going to get higher than us, too. You’ll come back with a smarmy 90%, and we can tell you think our hard earned 71% is rubbish, but it’s all relative: you may have beaten us by 19% but let’s be honest: it’s not really your own work, is it?
Um... what? No, it's not relative. STEM grading in particular is very much not relative. You either solve a problem correctly, or you don't, with very little leeway for consolation points for effort.
In BAs, we have to go and write arguments. We have to actually form ideas out of words, and do so in a coherent and convincing way.
Um, forming ideas out of words is not an academic task. It's a basic life skill. It's what words are there for. Also, no, you're not impressing me with being able to write an argument.
If our marker is in a bad mood because his cat’s shit on his first edition of Oliver Twist, we won’t know about it, but our grades might be lower.
Or your essay sucks, just sayin'. Sure, I get it, the relativity of arts grading means you may get points deducted undeservedly, but it's a double edged sword - often it works in one's favor.
So, yeah, you might score higher than us, but a maths quiz is nowhere near as hard as writing an essay.
That doesn't follow from the argumentation.
I’m not saying that your degree is pointless, because it’s probably not. But to think that just because it’s a science which makes you smarter, is, paradoxically, pretty stupid.
Wah-wah-wah I'm not stupid, you're stupid! Moving on.
You’re lucky as well because you’re actually taught your degree, whereas a third-year BA student will probably have an average of two hours a week of contact time.
You're on a shitty university, then. I haven't heard of BA students having fewer classes than BSc ones, or fewer opportunities to contact their thesis supervisor.
We’ve got to scrawl through thousands of library books before we find information that will help our essays, when yours is all on Blackboard anyway.
Like fuck it is. In CompSci it's somewhat easier because we've embraced the Internet, but it doesn't mean the things we learn are always common knowledge and never some obscure algorithm someone at the university developed thirty years ago. And don't even get me started on things like chemistry or maths, where relevant knowledge will usually be buried in a paywalled journal issue from the 80s.
We’re sick of the smug looks you throw at us when you ask if we can balance an equation – because we probably can’t – but as least we can use the right to, two, too in context.
Are you actually a BA student? Because neither do BSc students learn to balance equations, nor do BA students learn basic grammar. That's high school level math and English. Or even grade school.
I know, I know, it's fun to mock BScs for not being able to write a proper sentence and BAs for not being able to add two numbers together. But ultimately, that's simply not true.
We also have literally no friends on our courses.
Literally no friends. It's literally impossible to make friends on BA courses. It goes against the laws of nature.
You’re in nine until five everyday which is good for you and your weird bunsen burner pals, but humanities have pretty much no contact with each other; you spend the whole seminar discussing Augustine’s theories which doesn’t give you much of a chance to ask if you want to hit up bar that evening.
Don't know about you, but we have breaks on our university to socialize. Also, there's very little opportunity to chat during a lecture, or hacking at a programming task in the computer lab.
Your Science housemates will be talking about how they’re going to go out for dinner next Friday and all you’re concerned with is whether Emily will remember to give you back your pen you lent her last term
That... says more about your priorities than anything else.
We’re forced to join weird societies to make friends but still there’ll be a divide between the ‘hard’ subject of Computer Science and the ‘soft’ subject of Drama.
So make friends with other Drama attendees. What exactly is the problem?
Your degrees are also more obviously vocational but no, we’re not all going to become History teachers or Religious Studies lecturers. We can become journalists, civil servants, MPs, CEOs, start our own businesses – we can do anything.
...good for you? I guess? I mean... you can become an MP or a CEO with just high school education, or no education, and your extensive knowledge of English literature will be largely irrelevant to the job. But... sure, yeah, you can. No one is really arguing you can't.
And while that threatens you and your marginalised concept of STEM subjects as being intrinsically more academic and well paid
They... kind of are.
you are finitely skilled in one area, whereas we have talents in many.
Talent is completely independent from your education. That's pretty much the definition. If you argued that arts courses cover more diverse fields and are more universal, it would make sense, but it would also be a much harder claim to defend.
Whether we’re teachers or world leaders, we don’t need to have a BSc next to our name to do it: a BA is good enough.
Are you arguing for BAs, or are you arguing that a BA is good enough? Yeah, it's good enough, sure. But I thought you were trying to argue that BAs have some value to them.
It’s obvious that BSc students think BA students want to be them. You ask us: “What’s the point to your degree?”, “Haven’t you learned to read yet?”, “Don’t you wish you were good at Physics?”
Stop hanging around smug assholes. Which you'll find plenty of in BA courses as well - if not more.
The answer, quite honestly, is that you’re intimidated by us.
Certainly not by you, since you can't argue for shit.
We don’t mock you when you write things like: “Sure your not coming out tonight?”, or: “This lectures really boring”, but we could.
BUT WE COULD! So keep that in mind, or next time we'll fuck you up by... mocking your grammar?
Is that what you're trying to threaten people with? It must be the lamest power trip I've ever seen. "I HAVE EATEN FROM THE FORBIDDEN TREE! I POSSESS THE ARCANE KNOWLEDGE OF PROPER GRAMMAR CONSTRUCTS! BOW BEFORE ME!"
If you’re reading this and can’t tell the issue in those phrases then you’re probably a BSc student
Heh, heh, BScs can't write English. Right. Except not true.
Like I've said already - BA courses don't teach English grammar. Grade school does. It's like saying BAs can't add numbers together. It doesn't make fucking sense, because you wouldn't even get to the point where you can apply for a BA course if you couldn't.
So don’t think we want to be you just because we skim past your inaccuracies which we get bang on point everyday – it’s harder to be a BA student because people take humanities for granted but think that being skilled at Science is a gift.
No, you just have wildly inaccurate knowledge as to what constitutes being "skilled at science" and being "skilled at humanities". "Balancing equations", "finding x" or "getting grammar bang on point" are not very good indicators of those.
But then, of course, you come to us to check your CVs, your lab reports, your job applications because to some degree you do realise that our BAs are of value – only though, when it suits you.
I don't need someone with Literature degree to tell me whether I've made grammar mistakes in my lab report. Just like you don't need a BSc to figure out how much you need to pay at a cash register.
There’s a real disparity here between the self-professed more ‘academic’ course of a BSc, and the perceived more ‘creative’ side of a BA. People will say: “Oh, well, we need creative people in the world,” as if it’s a substitute for being academic, which isn’t the case.
I... kind of agree here. Yeah, BA courses require a lot of studying and a lot of knowledge, and actually taking up a job where this knowledge comes into play requires you to master it - you need to know the style of Rembrandt to recognize his newly discovered piece from a $5 junk painted last Thursday, and you need to have a good grasp on politics to work as a political columnist. Some would argue with that one...
But you undermine your own point by reducing BA courses to "writing proper English" and "forming ideas out of words".
BA students are academic – just not in the form your logical mind wants us to be. We couldn’t analyse the molecular formation of a cell, but neither could you analyse a line from Taming of the Shrew.
Try me. And stop acting like BSc students haven't read a book in their entire life.
Also, I'm pretty sure you learn what cells are made of in high school. Again.
You think your answers will give you more validity and real world application, but in actuality you forget that it’s humanities, not sciences, that are more concerned with people: note the structure of the word, with ‘human’ lexically leading the subject.
A point for showing off your BA knowledge. Minus two for trying to use the etymology of the word as an argument.
It’s time to stop pretending that your BSc is harder and worth more than our BAs, because the reality is that you need us just as much as we need you.
I'd argue. I could certainly live without this article, for example.