Sick of Life Sciences

Posted by Braden

I'm going to be an mechanical engineer. Over the next four years of school I am going to be taking a lot of physics and math classes. Unfortunately, before I can get into the stuff I really enjoy, I need to fight my way through the jungle of GEs--general education classes required by the school of all freshmen.

I was able to take one class this semester that is in line with my mechanical engineering interests. It's called "Engineering Mechanics--Statics", and I love it to death. I'm also taking three of my GE courses this semester, however, and they are health, biology, and chemistry.

Math and physics appeal to me because there is always a right answer, it's almost always quantifiable, there are no exceptions or discrepancies due to genetics/environment, and the vast majority of it is usable and observable on all scales from microscopic to macroscopic. As I mentioned though, this semester I'm a little heavy on the life sciences. And it gets worse--they all overlap each other in content!

One day in health, we were talking about carbohydrates/lipids/proteins. We looked at what in a lipid's structure made it saturated/unsaturated, the way proteins were made up of lots of amino acids tied together with peptide bonds, how carbohydrates were often lots of little glucose rings connected to each other with such and such a chemical formula, and how each of these types of macromolecules stored different amounts of energy because of their structures and contents.

Three hours later, I was in my chemistry lecture for the day, where we discussed the energy that can be stored in the bonds between molecules, and that's why these different types of foods have different amounts of calories per gram. We also mentioned hydrogen bonds, which are different from regular ones such as peptide bonds in the following ways, etc

The next hour of my Wednesday was spent in biology, and guess what we were talking about that day? Yup--cells use glucose for energy, which looks like this. Lipids are used in cell walls, where they form a phospholipid bilayer. Proteins are used in enzymes and as transport mechanisms in the cell walls. Now the way proteins are bonded together is significant to their functions; let's take a look at that...

And that was Wednesday. Rarely do I get a triple dose of the same information, (though it's really more of a sextuple dose because of the reading that I had to do for each of the classes that morning or the night before), but overlaps of two of the classes happen all the time.

Sure, it's nice that the class "complement" each other so well . . . yes, I understand that biology and chemistry and health are all around us and need to be looked at from different perspectives in different classes . . . but I'm missing out on fluid dynamics and multivariable calculus for this!?

Maybe one day I'll be grateful for the broad background that I was forced to get--and don't get me wrong, I do understand the importance of making sure that students don't specialize too early--but it's killing me getting this "jack of all trades" experience as I fight through my GEs (which just happen to overlap in the life sciences, in which I have minimal interest), when I just want to be the master of one--mechanical engineering--but don't have room for any of its classes because I'm overflowing with ones that are busy teaching me about carbohydrates and peptide bonds instead!