Ramblings

So my junior year I changed majors from electrical engineering to philosophy. I noticed some profound differences in the two departments:

Old philosophy professors tended to be terrible with email. Some of them weren't the best with technology. I didn't have this problem with the older EE professors, since a lot of them actually played a role in creating the internet.

Philosophy professors knew how to speak English. Only about 3 of my professors and 1 of my TAs in Engineering (to include the math and science classes) spoke English natively. It's a bit frustrating when your professor cannot pronounce the 'V' sound and he teaches an important class on semiconductors and transistors (NOTE: Volts, Voltage, and many variables using the letter 'V' feature prominently in discussions of electronics). The only thing like that I had to worry about in philosophy was the Irish TA who raved incomprehensibly about Berkeley.

Whenever professors would mention their research projects, I would be bored by the philosophy projects and fascinated by the EE projects. I mean, really - Sartre vs. rail guns? Rawls is great and all, but robots are approximately 75 times cooler. On the other hand, it was the opposite when it came to student discussions. Philosophy students would talk about brain in a vat (this was when The Matrix was still relatively fresh on everyone's mind) and the war on drugs (guess which side the typical philosophy undergraduate fell on), while engineering nerds talked mostly about programming and video games. And by the time I left engineering, it was World of Warcraft. That game really has been out for a long time.

I've never regretted switching to philosophy, but I think I could have worked harder in engineering. Approximately 75% of my duties in my current job require understanding technology on a fairly deep level, and I've learned 3 programming languages here in Iraq. Well, realistically, 1 language (Python) and 2 half-languages (VBA is a half language and C# isn't all that different from C++). Plus I've learned way more than I ever cared about internet protocols and satellite communication while administering our personal internet connection.