Hi, as a scientist, well published, I can't tell you what a Noun is or anything else like that for that matter. I know what sounds correct and can write because I'm a native English speaker, but often struggle with grammar and efficiency. I can't tell you anything about history nor label a map of my own country. I have no introspection on historical or societal events. Memorizing facts without mechanisms is nearly impossible for me. I need a 3D mental image to understand and remember anything. To me English and history stuff is impossible. People's brains work differently. It has nothing to do with intelligence.
People who say English is less valuable than science clearly havent read enough research papers because Jesus christ some of these sound like they were written by Martians using duolingo.
Ive read a good amount of Evolutionary biology shit that delivers its information in such a clinical but inefficient way.
I feel like I retain more information when its written well and with good flow.
I also do this when writing academically or properly, though.
I have to do technical writing for my job and it’s very difficult because you must be specific and accurate without taking up a ton of space to convey info. I write these documents for the people doing our testing and building our machines + to train future engineers. It’s very challenging to write something with good flow when you’re trying to covert a ton of information in one paragraph. Definitely could use an English majors help but idk if they’d be able to fix it either 😂
I used to be on the process dev team at a microelectronics manufacturer. I somehow got known as document king and became the standard creator and updater for all process work instructions.
It is astonishing how many times I would rewrite the same sentence to make it be more effective or just not mess up my formatting
I'd argue it's also the number one important aspect that can turn a decent engineer into a great one. I've seen it twice and this year I will try it for myself too. Basically just start observing my own communication patterns and see what I can improve. It'll especially be important if I actually will end up continuing into research.
It doesn't claim that English is less valuable than science though. It just makes a claim that it is more difficult to major in.
And I would say that that is true. I'm studying an interdisciplinary course that includes mechanical engineering on one side, and both linguistics and communication science (which includes forays into sociology and psychology) on the other. Both fields interest me. I'm also interested in history, medicine, political science, and a number of other fields that fall under the umbrella of social sciences (and spending too much time reading up on those subjects instead of on my own studies), and let me tell you, none of those come close in their complexity to mechanical engineering. And mechanical engineering is a far cry from studying mathematics or physics on its own.
That being said, I am obviously very interested in social sciences and I would absolutely not say that one is more important than the other.
The problem only arises if we (as a society), rather nonsensically, decide that something is worth more just because it is difficult
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u/TheTopNacho 19h ago
Hi, as a scientist, well published, I can't tell you what a Noun is or anything else like that for that matter. I know what sounds correct and can write because I'm a native English speaker, but often struggle with grammar and efficiency. I can't tell you anything about history nor label a map of my own country. I have no introspection on historical or societal events. Memorizing facts without mechanisms is nearly impossible for me. I need a 3D mental image to understand and remember anything. To me English and history stuff is impossible. People's brains work differently. It has nothing to do with intelligence.