The nooks and crannies in majors make each equally competitive

Everything about math makes me sick: the thought of it, trying to do it, whatever. Although… Everything about math makes me sick: the thought of it, trying to do it, whatever. Although I’ve somehow managed to squeak through trigonometry and algebra with decent grades, I’ve never been good at math and have hated it for as long as I can remember.

When I think of math-related majors, I can’t fathom why anyone would subject herself to such torture. The same goes for science. I can barely pronounce the names of chemicals, let alone imagine working with them. I’ve heard enough horror stories about organic chemistry to confirm my worst suspicions about science classes.

I have a friend, whom I refer to as “math genius,” who is majoring in accounting, so she spends a lot of time crunching numbers. One day when I was complaining, as a political science major, about all the reading and papers I had, her face turned to a disgusted grimace.

She said that just as the thought of math makes me sick, the thought of reading endless pages of a textbook and writing papers makes her sick. So, with a lot of math and the need for precision, I can acknowledge that she has a difficult major. And she acknowledges that with a lot of reading and papers, I have a difficult major as well. We can both recognize the difficulties of each others’ majors, which is exactly how it should be.

One of my pet peeves is people who think they have the hardest major, and no other major even compares. We all know people like this. Not only do they groan about how hard their major is, but they put down other majors in the process, such as my friend, a chemistry major, who said he sometimes wishes he would have majored in business because it would be “so much easier.”

No matter how hard the major, it must be kept in perspective that chances are, people major in subjects in which their strengths lie. I would most likely fail calculus with flying colors, but that probably wouldn’t be the case if I was mathematically inclined. Think about it: When was the last time you met a journalism major whose biggest weakness was writing?

The whole concept kind of reminds me of the sports debate over which sports are the hardest. As a former soccer player, I used to get upset when football players would claim there was no way we could comprehend how hard football is compared to soccer.

Football players have to tackle other men, soccer players have to run for 90 minutes, golfers have to maintain perfect precision and concentration, and swimmers must use virtually every muscle to propel themselves through the water, and so forth. Such an argument over which sport is harder accomplishes nothing.

Why are we so quick to assume that what we are doing is harder and more complicated than what someone else is doing? Why are we so defensive of our majors and offensive to other majors?

The answer is simple: We take pride in what we do. We want people to know that we are smart enough to handle even the most complex subjects, and despite intense workloads, we’re still doing pretty well.

A mechanical engineering major may look at majoring in philosophy as a piece of cake, but who’s to say how well they would do if they were forced to interpret the more complicated and obscure texts of Hobbes and Rousseau?

We shouldn’t judge other majors as easier or less important, because in the big picture, we need every one of those majors.

Despite the broad spectrum of majors ranging from Slavic languages and literatures to bioengineering, we are all college students with the common goal of advancing our education and gaining skills that will one day help us in our careers.

Reading page after page of a textbook is draining, but I don’t want pity from people in other majors. I just want them to respect what I’m studying just as I respect what they are studying.

Just because I’m not deriving elaborate equations or replicating DNA doesn’t mean I’m not working hard. I may even be working harder than someone who is doing such tasks; who knows?

In a world where different people have so many unique talents and strengths, we must embrace such differences. Yes, the surgeon who saves lives is crucial, but so is the garbage collector who prevents trash from piling up on our streets. While splicing arteries and heaving trash bags into dumpsters are about as different as they come, if either were to stop performing, our society would fall apart.

E-mail Anjali at amn17@pitt.edu.