BITS has a unique curriculum. For the first year, every student has to take the same courses. Generic courses spread across the subjects like physics, math, biology, chemistry, computer science, mechanical engineering and writing too! And for the second year, we have to take either economics or management science as a course and three humanities courses. The first year made sense, as an engineer you have to know the fundamentals to build a product. I didn’t understand why humanities?. I begrudgingly took Philosophy (because I actually like it) and International Relations, because I didn’t know what it meant and it sounded cool. Side note, I realize how much I build my life on either food or doing things which sound stupid or cool. Coming back, I instantly fell in love with both, and it took me on a course of it’s own. Fast forward, I only recently realized that each domain has it’s own attitude. You don’t try to solve a problem in philosophy like in engineering — most ‘problems’ in philosophy don’t have an end. They’re just differing opinions backed by plausible statements. Some are definitely ‘more right’ than others. However, it’s not 2 + 2 = 4. After talking about how I need archery or a sport in life, now I’m thinking what’s the core attitude in each domain?
Engineering has always been about solving problems. It’s a ‘solution’ field, there’s an answer which works. As much as these fields are about intelligence, there’s a lot of design thinking, creativity and implementation involved where you use the tools to come to a conclusion. These ‘tools’ are usually based on sciences, things which ‘are’. 2+2 is always 4, regardless of ‘why’ it is. Hammers are hard because of the material’s chemistry, and it hits nails better than rocks because of physics. Science is all about finding out why things work the way they do. Lots of experiments involved. STEM is the overarching cluster for these fields.
Humanities and Liberal Arts focuses on society and culture — the human condition. It can be subjective because it’s hard to come to one single answer. It depends on interpretation and reasoning that leads to it. Communication skills are important in every field and might be the most important in liberal arts. High curiosity helps
I feel compelled to club Business and Sports together because they both have rules and competition, and the final goal is to win against the competitor. It involves strategy and implementing them, thinking long term.
Arts is all about creating and expression, highly personal and subjective. Art, like engineering involves design and creativity, however, they differ in the fact that the goal in engineering is to solve a problem but in art, it could tackle and affect a problem without solving it. Both art and sports need high skills involving focused practice
Talking about different fields (there might be more that I missed, but let’s focus on the ones I know and care about), there’s some elements or building blocks one needs to have to like and excel in these fields. Creativity, curiosity and problem solving, persistence and discipline, observation and correction along with varying levels of natural skill one is born with. And each discipline needs all of them but some require more. An engineer needs to be curious to find a solution. However, finding every solution isn’t a requirement as much as having the patience and persistence needed to implement it. I think realizing which characteristics one has and what each field needs is a great way to understand what one would like. I like thinking, sometimes way too much. I’m curious, yet usually not too interested in answers, I like finding answers — off to the next question. I think of myself as persistent and disciplined and extremely competitive — it only plays out when I really care about something. If I don’t care about it, again, I’m not interested. That also shows how selective, choosy, picky I am and how I have my own opinions and interests. — I’m meant for goalless fields, where the direction matters more than the destination fields — a perfectionist against perfection.