The last month was radio silent because of two things:
- I had parts of my desktop sent out for RMAs
- Exams were taking place
Finally, I got my desktop back and took my final exam. This means that, barring official graduation, I’m done with school. I don’t intend to continue beyond undergraduate (unless something significant happens later on), so the only thing left is to wait for a diploma.
A lot has happened to me over the last 5 years (4 years of studying + 1 year co-op). I thought I would figure out what I wanted to do, or at least get some sense of it. But now, by the time the world is pushing me to work to feed myself and “develop my career”, my thoughts on my future are as unclear as they were in high school.
Lots of things happened over the past 5 years and I wanted to put them down into words while the memories and emotions are still fresh.
What university taught me (I think)
All you need is a source
Impressing a professor is pretty easy, if they aren’t experts in what you’re talking about: all you need is a little citation referencing “literature sources” or a well-known textbook. The act of showing a reference instantly raises credibility, no matter how dubious or common-knowledge the claim might be.
The best example to demonstrate was my capstone project. I was part of a team to design a chemical plant for producing diesel fuel additives. It was a horrible project. The math came from hell, (most of) the professors were unhelpful, and the workload was pure torture.
At the end of the project, each team delivers a presentation to a few professors and their client (Our client was AWOL for the whole project, fun fact). Our plant’s finances were infeasible. There wasn’t enough information to make a precise estimate, and the estimate we did get was basically losing $800 million over 20 years.
But that’s not a good statement to deliver, so I put in some damage control.
while our current outlook isn’t great, we can optimize our design. In the most optimistic scenario, we’re able to increase the net value of the plant from -$800M to +$800M
Now that’s an extraordinary claim, which should require extraordinary evidence to follow. So naturally, a professor asked how we got that second number. My response was basically:
we used math from a reputable textbook published in 1990, don’t worry about it
And the prof didn’t pursue further.
Sources have the almighty power to raise credibility, but that power comes at a cost: basically everything needs a citation to appear solid. You might as well need a source to claim there’s oxygen in the atmosphere.
Requiring a citation for everything made me realize that the world of academia seems fragile. It’s possible to see paper A cite B, and B cite C, but C cited an earlier work of A. It feels like a bunch of hearsay and “trust me bro”. Adding the little [1] mark for proof seems like adding credibility, but there’s a hidden part to it.
My favourite course was on linguistics
Out of the 4 years of academics, this was by far my favourite course to take. For background, I was in chemical engineering. Other electives I took were:
- Business minor courses (accounting/finance, microeconomics, etc.)
- Petroleum industry overview
- Energy and weather systems of Earth
- Nuclear engineering basics
- Project environmental assessment
- Applications of sustainable materials (terrible course)
Taking linguistics was refreshing; there was no math, no projects, no papers. For me, it was a pure learning experience. From learning phonemes to syntax to language development, it was like falling down a series of Wikipedia articles out of pure curiosity. Each lecture was actually exciting to attend.
The actual chemical engineering courses were pretty bad. They’re math heavy and tough, poorly explained by professors incapable of teaching, not fun, and the curriculum is outdated. First years starts with analytical calculus and even light proofs, but everyone only uses Excel by third year. The software engineers took over everything.
Obsessions with industry
Throughout undergrad, professors would try to make references to the industry. By industry, I mean heavy duty things such as actual chemical engineering plants, companies, engineering and professional work; how engineering actually impacts the world. It sounds cool if you’re into this stuff.
Professors would always mention something about:
here’s how this is actually used in the real world
when you guys graduate and go into industry
as engineers, you’ll need to explain to your boss how this works
or in general, something about how we are expected to go into the “industry”, the duties as an engineer, and about “professional development”. This peaked in lab courses, when a professor would demonstrate equipment like distillation columns or pilot-scale reactors. The professor would tell us:
when you go into industry, you’ll need to know the fundamentals of how this works
Talking about industry and our future is an obvious thing to do on one hand. My degree is about chemical engineering. Therefore it’s appropriate for professors to talk about what chemical engineers do. But on the other hand, the undergrad experience was bad enough to push me away from the field.
4 years of studying engineering made me lose interest in my own major. I have no idea what I want to do or will do, yet the professors would be constantly saying something about students working in the “industry”, how cool it was, and our “professional careers” were waiting. It’s hard to explain to someone who hasn’t gone through the same experience and doesn’t harbour similar feelings, but undergrad to me felt like a lot of conditioning. It felt suffocating at times.
Summary
Besides these points, there are other points that are more obvious: there are great/bad people, the social environment is unique, and opportunities to get involved in cool things are out there. If I were to redo everything, I would go for a different discipline. My top choice would be industrial, which is more well rounded and modern.
Despite the regrets I have, university was a positive chapter of my life. I changed a lot from high school, met cool people, and learned a few things. Looking forward, I think I’ll miss the environment that brought me and my new friends together. Not the actual school part, but the things around it. Finishing doesn’t feel particularly satisfying, cathartic, or anything emotionally powerful. It just feels a little bittersweet mixed with memorable occasions scattered in.