How I would have picked my classes, in retrospect
In retrospect, I would have taken different classes.
I graduated from Tufts University this May with two majors, Computer Science and Engineering Psychology, and one minor, in German. I also kept a catalog of all the classes that I took.
Tuftsâ majors are small â you could complete the Computer Science major in 3 semesters, if you really wanted to. So what do you do with the other 5 semesters?
In sophomore year, I added Engineering Psychology on top of my original Computer Science major and German minor. I needed something to fill up the copious empty space in my coming years, and the entire Engineering Psychology major fit (just barely) into my plan.
It was another ladder to climb, another list of checkboxes to check.
When I brought the idea to my advisor, Sam Sommers, he told me to keep an open mind about stopping at any time: the difference between âsomeone who was an Engineering Psychology double majorâ and âsomeone who took a lot of Engineering Psychology classes but stoppedâ is not significant.
I should also explain what Engineering Psychology is. Itâs similar to Human Factors Engineering or Ergonomics, if that means anything to you.
Itâs the study of how people interact with technology â mostly physical, since thatâs the era the field came out of. How to design airplane cockpits to reduce confusion, factory machines to reduce accidents, and software to reduce frustration.
I did not learn very much in Engineering Psychology. And I did take all the classes for the major.
It was an array of classes which all seemed to overlap and which contained half-baked enthusiasm and a marked lack of real substance to learn. Half of the things we covered seemed to me to be common sense, or dumb, and the other half was covered in the first couple chapters of Don Normanâs The Design of Everyday Things. (Perhaps they were covered more later in the book as well; I did not ever finish the book, so I would not know.)
I hope that none of my Engineering Psychology classmates are reading this essay. But I truly could not fathom that some people majored exclusively in this stuff. What do you possibly learn over the course of four years?
Anyway, I did not heed Sam Sommersâ advice. My brain loves completing checklists. A second major was another checklist.
But while it made my smooth brain happy, there was opportunity cost. Engineering Psychology just barely fit into my 8 semesters at Tufts. It left no space for interesting random Computer Science courses, or humanities courses, or anything else.
Engineering Psychology was interesting, but not 15 courses interesting. If I was picking again, Iâd opt for more random interesting-sounding picks. They wouldnât add up to a major, but nobody will ever ask about what specific classes I took in college.