As you may have noticed, one of the major moves on this campus is to expand the School of Humanities and Social Sciences. Many courses come under this umbrella such as writing, literature, cognitive science, philosophy, and a good many others.
To many, the degree requirement to take these courses is an inconvenience at best, and some even regard it as a horrible form of torture forced upon them by RPI. However, with the breadth of courses that are offered and the effort that is put into ensuring that they will be available, it doesn’t necessarily have to be that way.
While not everyone has an interest in reading or writing, there are many benefits to taking a reading or writing course. When you go out into the real world, any writing skills that you have will give you added upward mobility. Every time you write a report or an e-mail people are going to be judging you based on what they see—every bit of practice now will help you later on.
Beyond this though, the little fun courses that you take can sometimes be the most helpful to developing your own thoughts and opinions. In a philosophy course you will learn about other schools of thought that will provide you with a new point of view that could help you with creative problem solving or developing a new way to deal with people. A cognitive science course can similarly enable you to understand more about the people around you so that you can get along with them better.
These suggestions may seem to be coming a little late in the semester to affect a real change in your course load, but there is a purpose behind this editorial running now. You can ask your friends who might be taking humanities and social science courses how their classes are going. Odds are that if you ask around, you can find some course that will not only fill your degree requirements but might actually be fun as well. And remember: Just because this is an “engineering” school, you don’t have to hate humanities and social sciences. You just don’t have to admit you enjoy them to your friends.
