Humanities at Stanford?

[Senior0991]

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Satz was making the point poorly and implying the entire “culture” was that way.

That’s cause the entire culture is that way! No matter what major you are, you somehow fit into this notion a few have that STEM fields are far superior to others. For instance, one of my friends was literally laughed by a math major when he said he was majoring in history. He tells this story to other friends, some of whom are majoring in history, others in English, and others in engineering, and they all get this notion that there is some hierarchy in play here. The only difference is what side of it they are all on. </p>

<p>On a side note, I took a class with Satz. She was very careful in class to make sure her logic was sound. I am positive that she would choose her words very carefully when presenting to the faculty senate. </p>

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It’s well-acknowledged, not “held,” by the student body that many techies don’t respect the humanities as much.

Whatever words you want to use, you pretty much just supported what I am arguing. </p>

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every humanities person I know doesn’t care that much to have an “inferiority complex.”

When someone literally laughs at you because of your major, you don’t think that leads to any feeling of inferiority? Now I never claimed that every (or even most) humanities majors feel this way, but I’m sure there are many who do to some varying degree. I just don’t see how you can argue with that. </p>

<p>And maybe those humanities people you know just don’t care to share their feelings with you. In our society, inferiority complexes are not something to be proud of. </p>

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Sounds like what you’re saying is what you personally believe, and you’re among that group of people who look down on humanities majors.

As someone who straddles the line and takes about 3/5 techy classes to 2/5 humanities (avoiding social sciences in the process haha), I can say that at some times or another I have felt feelings of both sides. When I heard of the story of the guy laughing at the history major, I felt somewhat reassured because I was majoring in engineering (and no one had laughed at me). But when I tell fellow engineers that I’m taking a humanities class and the first conclusion they almost always jump to is that I’m doing it for my humanities GER, I often have second thoughts about telling them I’m doing it out of sheer interest. Not that I’m embarrassed really, but sometimes I’d rather not point out such differences. Or another case is when I told someone my classes for this quarter, with zero techy classes, he said (not knowing anything about my parents), “woah won’t your parents freak out?”</p>