Engineering is fucking awesome. You build the craziest stuff, you force yourself into the upper echelons of academia, you explore the secrets of the universe, etc. What’s not to love? At some point you burn out though. Thirty hours of lab writeups per week combined with your homework and reading for the twenty credit hours you’re taking and the likes doesn’t leave a lot of time or sanity for you. Something gives.
But that’s not so bad. You do enjoy, no, you love learning. And soon enough you’ll become proficient at optimizing your time. You may work in groups, you may learn from the solutions manuals that are inevitably online, you may ditch classes—you’ll do something. Something else is being realized though-you’re fitting that damn stereotype. It’s not that you look terrible although you don’t have nearly enough time or motivation to stay in peak fitness. It’s not that you hate people or can’t stand socializing, per se… but you do. Holy fuck do you hate people. When you go home for breaks or go socialize on those ever fewer occasions, you withdraw from conversations because you can’t stand to hear people bitching about anthropology 101 or how they can’t understand some ridiculously simple problem that keeps recurring in their life even though it has a juvenile solution.
And then—egad, holy shit… you have distanced yourself from your peers beyond reconciliation. You find that you enjoy the company of a predominantly male circle of intellectuals who exhibit strong autistic tendencies than to being with a cute girl you used to know both because she doesn’t and could never understand the way you think and because she really is fucking boring. Never underestimate the importance of being able to relate to others. Never lose it. It’s hard to find once it’s gone.
- frankthehelmut, Reddit (This was too long for a quote post).
