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Old 06-17-2020, 06:30 PM   #49
ovary
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Disco King View Post
Reading these news articles about literal teenager computer whizzes creating new software to help track and model the pandemic makes me wonder why I spent all those years at a degree that taught me no hard skills, and just soft skills like "lol, I'm a problem-solver."

I think "critical thinking" and "problem-solving" is just a meme people who took majors like I did tell ourselves that we excel at, because stuff like math is literally the tool that gives you the ability to solve complex problems. We have these ideas that more technical people are "not creative" and are just equation-manipulating robots, and yet a lot of human problems are solved creatively by taking math and applying it to the problem in ways that most of us would never be able to anticipate.
i think "critical thinking" (i prefer the term "analysis") is an invaluable skill necessary for success in any venture, and that liberal arts education can help develop it, but doesn't necessarily nor completely. we all know tons of social sci/humanities majors that are fucking morons, but at least if you get an engineering degree you're guaranteed to learn calculus.

 
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