Choosing a STEM major can be both mentally and financially satisfying, although it’s faced with higher dropout rates.

Our journey is shaped by many unique challenges which we feel only we can comprehend. Here are some of them.

Crazy Contact Hours Means We Have No Life

When a humanities student complains about falling behind on readings or their large amount of essays, STEM majors will find it impossible to empathise.

Many of us spend up to 20 plus hours on campus over four to five days a week. Essays are painful no doubt, but can be completed in the comfort of your own surroundings, whereas a three-hour laboratory has to be completed on campus.

Labs might involve exciting topics like robotics from time to time, but for the most part it’s gritty work and hanging around waiting for a busy lab instructor to help you. Unless you live on campus or close-by, it can be difficult for STEM students to work in part-time jobs or be active in university societies.

Our Assignments Can Be Deceiving

Our initial happiness at a maths or physics assignment that commonly ‘only’ has two to three questions quickly turns into horror when we realise just how many parts each question has. These assignments will mainly involve staring at the task paper 95% of the time and trying to work out what on earth the question is asking us to solve, before crying helplessly to a friend for help.

Programming assignments are infamously the worst because having minor syntax errors in one’s code means that their submitted program won’t work. All that hard work goes to bust when the student receives a low mark for something they might have potentially spent 20 plus hours on. Now those are truly character building times.

We’re Hounded With Group Work 

Group work is probably more relevant to STEM majors as most engineers or scientists will collaborate with each other in their professional careers. There tends to be a natural sense of cohesion that STEM students have with each other and most will willingly help one another to comprehend some tough concepts.

However, the huge amount of assessed group work and presentations required in lab-based projects can lead to a constant state of exhaustion.

We Operate In A Fairly Apolitical Atmosphere

The minimal subjectivity in quantitative-based subjects means there’s a fairly politically neutral atmosphere around STEM faculties. While not as dramatic, a STEM student will not really have the experience of listening to a professor with strong political views so it’s always eye-opening to hear about these experiences from non-STEM students. 

On an added note, It’s not as common to see a STEM student running for student election, which seems to be reflected in politics at a senior level. It’s definitely important for politics at any level to draw people from a wide diverse of educational and workforce backgrounds in order for different perspectives and ideas to be in circulation.

A Lack Of Female Peers

It really hits anyone studying Engineering or IT when they have a look around the lecture room and notice the lack of women.

Despite initiatives by universities to change a lack of women in STEM, the unfortunate male-dominated legacy of the past still remains. Around 85% of those enrolled in Engineering and IT degrees are male which is an outrageous gap. Especially when female representation thrives in medical science enrolments.

Seems we still have a fair way to go.

Sameer Murthy is an Electrical Engineering student at the University of Sydney. His hobbies include cricket, reading and having passionate debates about the motivations of Game of Thrones’ characters.

(Lead image: Silicon Valley/HBO)