I believe it was a former First Call columnist who, when asked to write up a brief description of themselves, said that, “although Jordan has a passion for writing, he is secretly jealous of all those good at math and science.  Sure it’s fun to be an English major, but it would be nice to get a job upon graduation.”  When I first read this it made me very happy, because I am one of those guys who happens to be good at math and science.  I am an engineer – a PENNgineer if you will.  As someone who can integrate and determine forces, I therefore have an easier life path.  I don’t have to spend an entire year (or two, or three,) trying to figure out what I want to major in, I don’t have to page through the entire course catalogue each semester looking for classes, and I don’t have to worry about getting a job when I graduate.  In fact, all of the courses that I need to take have been nicely laid out for me, there will be a wide range of jobs available, and engineers at Penn have the highest starting salary of the four schools (you mean the highest after Wharton, right?  No).  It almost seems too good to be true, and therefore it is.  Jordan is jealous of me, but let me tell you why I am jealous of him.

My life has become somewhat miserable.  I spend 22 hours each week in class.  Thanks to lectures, recitations, and labs I don’t end most of my days until at least seven.  I have weekly problem sets for all of my classes, one due Tuesday, one due Wednesday, one due Thursday, and one due Friday.  I also have labs and projects, which are often pretty fucking difficult.  I could complain about the specifics, but I take it that you’ll trust me when I tell you that I’m unhappy.

More important than these qualms, however, is the fact that I feel like I’m missing out on much of the college experience.  My parents think it’s great that I’m working my ass off these days, because it makes them feel like they’re really getting their money’s worth.  But isn’t college about more than getting a degree?  Isn’t college the place to take random courses in things that you’re interested in, have sex with lots of girls, experiment with a boy, submerse yourself in a different culture, and try out some crazy drugs?  I’m missing out on all of that.

I’ve also recently fallen in love with reading and writing.  When facebook asked me to list all of my favorite books before coming to college, all I put was “Harry Potter”.  This is because I refused to read in high school; it was Sparknotes that pulled me through AP English.  Freshman year in college I had a lot of free time--primarily due to a lack of friends and television--so a camp friend told me to read Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris.  It was the first book I had read since middle school, but I enjoyed it immensely.  I then read the rest of Sedaris’ books.  Then I read all of Augusten Burroughs’ books (the Running with Scissors guy).  I then dove into authors a bit more established, like Wolfe, Conroy, Fitzgerald, Updike, Salinger, Kesey, Capote and Irving.  In between, I read a bunch of unknowns as well, such as Huddle and Kunkel.  If there is one thing that I learned from all of these books, it is that writers understand how the world works better than anyone else.  Writers fully comprehend human interaction and how society functions, and I want to be one of them.

Unfortunately, this just won’t happen.  I’ve dug myself too far into the engineering hole to climb my way back out.  I’ve already invested physics, chemistry, calculus one through four, and thousands of dollars into my mechanical engineering career.  Even if that weren’t an issue, and I were given the chance to start all over again, I would probably choose the same path.  I’m a practical person, and risks scare me.  I don’t know if this is a good or a bad thing, but I know by now that it is who I am.

The last issue, which I’ve neglected to mention thus far, is that I like engineering.  I hate all of my classes, I hate all of my homework, and I hate having no time; but I want to be an engineer.  I look forward to a career based in teamwork – my days spent bouncing ideas back and forth with coworkers.  I get excited when I talk about designing things and modeling new concepts.  I wish I could just skip the coursework, but I know that isn’t possible.

The best advice I ever got about writing is to write about what I know.  So while I’m pushing through classes and pulling all-nighters for projects, I’ll try to have some good experiences along the way.  Thus far my life has not been nearly exciting enough to write a book about, so maybe I can multitask to the extreme – get an engineering degree while gaining life experience.  Whenever someone asks how college is, I say, “It’s good.  I’m really busy with work, but its still college.  So how can it be bad?”  And that’s the truth.

I guess my ultimate life goal is engineer by day, writer by night.  I’ll be kind of like Batman, except a lot less exciting.  I don’t need an English degree to dabble in love, drugs, family, and friendship.  And isn’t that what writing is all about? 

Sedaris and Burroughs both dropped out of college, worked a string of odd jobs, and didn’t publish their first books until their mid thirties.  Sounds like I already have a leg up on them, no?