History Hate thread

[Anonymous No.9967123]

What's ONE good reason that there are history (and literature, for that reason) requirements for a Math undergraduate degree? It's not like any of it is hard, anyone with a brain can get a good grade without even reading half of the material. ALL it does is slow us down and make us spend more on tuition. Fuck that. Luckily I'm smart enough to be dual enrolled at a community college for summer classes to get this bullshit checked off, but it still slows me down on my summer research.

[Anonymous No.9967144]

>>9967123
>make us spend more on tuition

[Anonymous No.9967150]

>>9967123
>What's ONE good reason that there are history (and literature, for that reason) requirements for a Math undergraduate degree?
Which school for brainlets do you go to? I got to take as many math classes as I wanted.

[Anonymous No.9967153]

>>9967123
But there aren't

[Anonymous No.9967154]

>>9967144
>good reason
You've cited a reason, it's not a good reason. They could get more money out of me if they threw undergraduate research opportunities at me instead, but no, I have to just fuck off and do research independently.

[Anonymous No.9967155]

I'm living the opposite
>want to go to school for palaeontology
>requires math
>i'm fucking shit at numbers

hopefully i can switch for a science, if not god damn there goes my childhood dream

[Anonymous No.9967168]

>>9967150
I'm not gonna get cucked into going to a top tier university and spending $100,000 more when I can get the exact same quality of undergraduate education from my public state school, get my 4.0, and get into any top tier university I want for graduate school where they pay me to do research. My grades were decent in High School and I could have gone out of state to a better school but I'm actually smart enough not to fall for that.

[Anonymous No.9967175]

>>9967154

Who said the reason had to be "good" for you, the student? You mathcucks are always so oblivious to the actualities of the non-autist world.

More classes means more money for the university and can be justified under the guise of "rounding off" your academia. Whether it's "good for you" never factors into the equation.

[Anonymous No.9967176]

>>9967153
Not explicitly, but there are multiple slots for the core degree requirements that can get checked off by like 20 different history classes, art classes, women's studies classes, antrhopology, etc. I'm not going to subject myself to the latter options, so I went with history instead but it's still such a waste of fucking time.

[Anonymous No.9967180]

>>9967168
>I'm not gonna get cucked
Then why are you letting yourself be forced into history and literature courses?

[Anonymous No.9967191]

>>9967175
Again, it would literally be better for the university if they just replaced each general ed requirements with, say, 3 extra math classes. They'd squeeze a little more tuition out of me just because of the amount of classes, and the brainlets who can't handle that kind of load would have to spend more time completing it, and maybe take a 5th year, which is WAY more shekels for the uni.

[Anonymous No.9967202]

>>9967180
I'm not taking them at my university, I'm taking them at a community college over the summer where A) the classes are so easy it's a joke, B) the classes are a 10th of the price, C) they mark off exactly the same requirement and D) I get to do it over the summer instead of during the rest of the year when I have actual math to do. During the summer they don't offer any of the good upper division courses anyway, and the classes at the community college are easy enough that I can still work during the summer without losing too much time to do well in the class. Still think I'm getting cucked? Or are you just trying to think of an excuse to discredit me?

[Anonymous No.9967211]

>>9967123
>What's ONE good reason that there are history (and literature, for that reason) requirements for a Math undergraduate degree?

first, college is not job training. you go to college to become less pleb and part of that is having a well rounded education. second, STEMlords are notoriously shit at written communication so having a few courses sprinkled in to prove you can compose a report/memo/email correctly is important.

>slow us down
LMAO at your arbitrary fucking timetable. you are trying to be a white collar professional, with a career that will span 40+ years. do you think an extra semester or even an extra year in undergrad makes any difference? if you are any good at this STEM thing at all, see pic related.

>make us spend more on tuition
this is only important to brainlets who can't get scholarships. maybe you should slow down and get better grades instead of just trying to blow through everything as fast as humanly possible. how miserable you must be to think that college is some grind of checking boxes and getting grades.

[Anonymous No.9967215]

>>9967191

Which would the in-turn require them to restructure the course load and instructor faculty for every single major in the college. Good job brainlet! You just cost the university several million dollars + effectively fired half the teaching staff. Awhh, shit looks like they lost their government funding too.

Universities are subsidized by the government. Yes, even "private" institutions in one way or another. There is no reason to reform, even if it makes sense on a logic and utility level. Academia is one big circle jerk. Sorry.

[Anonymous No.9967234]

>>9967123
>ALL it does is slow us down and make us spend more on tuition

Only if you're a total brainlet that won't do more than 4 courses a semester.

[Anonymous No.9967235]

>>9967211
I literally have a 4.0, and I'm entering my senior year. I got 100% in Vector Calculus, Differential Equations, and both lower division linear algebra classes offered (as opposed to Abstract and Numerical Linear algebra classes, which I'll be taking next year). Yes, that means that between every single exam in all of those classes I did not miss one single question, nor homework assignment. I got an A+ but not quite 100% in real analysis 1, A+ but not quite 100% in abstract algebra.

>slow down and get better grades
literally impossible for me. These history classes are nothing but a nuisance, why isn't enough to learn it in high school? If our public education system wasn't so fucked, universities could just trust that everyone with a high school diploma already knows the general education bullshit, and instead just require the actually reasonable necessities for the subject at hand.

[Anonymous No.9967236]

>>9967202
>Still think I'm getting cucked?
Yes, as long you're wasting your time doing non-maths classes.

[Anonymous No.9967244]

>>9967202
>During the summer they don't offer any of the good upper division courses anyway
That's when you do research.

[Anonymous No.9967245]

>>9967215
How? There are already plenty of brainlets majoring in History and English and shit. Why not replace their math and science requirements with 3 extra classes relevant to their degree? Boom, problem solved.

>Academia is one big circle jerk

Can't argue there, lol.

[I Go !2HARVARdHk No.9967250]

>>9967168
>when I can get the exact same quality of undergraduate education from my public state school

>he actually believes this
lol

[Anonymous No.9967254]

>>9967234
No, my typical term is already 5 or 6 classes and I have a 4.0. That's why I take general ed in the summer. I'm not saying that those classes make my real classes any harder, I'm saying that, objectively speaking, they're just mindless busywork and all they do is take time. The mere existence of those classes slows me down.

>>9967236
True. If I didn't need the degree to go straight to grad school I'd avoid history, but I guess I'm getting cucked after all.

[Anonymous No.9967268]

>>9967250
The education is exactly the same for any accredited undergraduate program. Hell, I learn most of the shit independently anyway so what could, say, stanford, even offer me education-wise for basic undergraduate mathematics?
The only advantage to the world class universities for UNDERGRAD is the networking opportunities. So without scholarship (I'm white and my parents are paying so fat chance. I've applied, and if my 4.0 won't get me one, nothing will), the only reason anyone should go out of state for undergrad is because their state is one of the bad ones. My state school actually has pretty great staff and facility nationally, but it's not world class.

[Anonymous No.9967271]

>>9967235
>These history classes are nothing but a nuisance

how can you have such great grades and still have such contempt for knowledge? haven't you realized by now that the act of learning is what expands and sharpens your mind? the content merely emphasizes a mode of thought.

>literally impossible for me.
then focus on some other aspect. take a semester abroad for those oh so troublesome humanities electives. pick up a second language and bang a foreign girl or something, what the fuck are you racing towards? a 9-5 job? a bunch responsibility and lame ass adult shit?

[Anonymous No.9967290]

>>9967271
I'm racing toward trying to complete 2 degrees in 4 years. I'm double majoring in CS in order to research Cryptography and Number Theory. Because many advanced courses are only offered in certain parts of the year at certain times, I need to cram in as much as I can early on to avoid time conflicts between departments, because if I put off even one class it could cascade into a time conflict that throws off my entire plan, and I would need to take another year, thus pay another year's tuition just to keep myself registered. It's fucked.
I'm going to be staying in academia for a long ass time one way or another, so I'd rather rush through undergrad than grad school where I'll have more responsibilities as a TA and researcher.

And I don't think I have a contempt for knowledge. History is interesting, don't get me wrong, but it's pretty shitty that it's a REQUIREMENT for my degree(s) when I could be studying something 100 times more interesting. Why can't I take responsibility for my own rounded learning, and just watch history videos on youtube to learn the exact same shit?

[Anonymous No.9967401]

>>9967123
Are you saying that you cannot read, anon? That's all that those two fucking subjects consist of. If you can't read and understand what you're reading, then how in the fuck do you think you'll be able to make it in the world?

[Anonymous No.9967447]

>>9967401
No, I'm saying I already know how to read so the classes are a waste of time. Can you read? Because I've already said what I need to say in my other responses.

[Anonymous No.9967452]

>>9967123
Not taking History of Math to fulfill the Humanities requirements

[Anonymous No.9967463]

>>9967452
>university requires intensive writing class
>all the classes have massive essays
>take history of math to fulfill the requirement
>the math professor hates grading writing and the "writing" homework is reading 10 pages and writing 50-60 words summarizing it.
>rest of the homework is discrete math stuff
>all the exams are stuff like "prove the pythagorean theorem"
based

[Anonymous No.9967494]

>>9967290
>Why can't I take responsibility for my own rounded learning, and just watch history videos on youtube to learn the exact same shit?

you get to do that in grad school. undergrad is taught to an amorphous average of students and as it turns out, those average students benefit from a couple humanities courses.

i don't know what else to tell you man, but i have a feeling when your PI has you under the gun in a few years that you are going to be wishing you were back in undergrad taking a chill humanities course. stop and smell the books nigga.

[Anonymous No.9967552]

>>9967463 >>9967452
History of Math is Based & Redpilled

All other Humanities classes are filled with SJW & Libtards

[Anonymous No.9967627]

>>9967494
Tbh I've been waiting my entire life to be challenged by any Math at all, so I'd welcome the idea of my PI expecting an unreasonable amount of work from me, I might actually be able to finally know what it feels like to not understand math. I might finally be able to relate to normal people as a result.

[Anonymous No.9967811]

>>9967627
>Tbh I've been waiting my entire life to be challenged by any Math at all
There are thousands of open problems, if you want to be challenged just start working on any of them

[Anonymous No.9967829]

>>9967123
The fact that you're graded on it presumably forces you to learn that shit instead of just assuming you will, because people are lazy fuckwits who won't read outside class and not knowing history is bad in certain cases.

[Anonymous No.9967841]

>>9967811
Yeah, the ones I've found that are within my grasp given what I already know have actually turned pretty fruitful. I can't exactly just start working on the Riemann Hypothesis, lol. That's like giving a calculus problem to a 6 year old.

Part of me wants to hold off until I can get paid for my research, but I can't resist. I've been dabbling in geometric group theory in higher dimensions this summer and I wrote a proof for a subgroup of symmetries of euclidean space perfectly generating the vertices for it's own cayley graph. I don't know if it was an open problem but it was an multi-step extrapolation from something that I found in a publication from 2008, so I'm not really sure if it's been done before. I programmed a graphics engine to render 4 dimensional objects to be able to visualize one of the examples, and it turned out super cool.
Any aspiring (or professional) mathematician who doesn't at learn a few programming language is seriously missing out IMO.

[Anonymous No.9967996]

>>9967627
You’re a fag breh

[Anonymous No.9968002]

Prime example of how over emphasis on analytic subjects can accelerate cluster A personality disorders.

This is also why so many people in CS and maths are gay/trans.

[Anonymous No.9968013]

>>9967123
I satisfied nearly all of my general requirements, except writing, by taking philosophy courses. Had to take a couple econ courses for social "science" credit but they were easy as fuck like literally a free A+

[Anonymous No.9968019]

>>9968002
I feel that. Not gay or trans, but I'm definitely strange. I've been called psychotic and sociopathic by a lot of people in the last couple years the deeper I pursue my field. I don't think that really describes me, but it's hard to tell. There's definitely something off about my personality that a lot of people detect. I used to be very unaware of how others felt about my personality because I was raised very sheltered, and I went to a science and technology oriented private school.
But college has really fucked me up because of over exposure to people, and I can finally start to see normal people's (i.e. not sperglords like I've been around my whole life) reactions to my overall behavior.
I get overwhelmed by people not liking me, I go into hiding and study math and CS all day with my only interactions being with my professors and with grad students, I outcast myself completely to the "normal" student body so I fundamentally miss out on normal human interaction, because of that people don't like me, and then I get overwhelmed. Viscous cycle. One day I'll have my revenge on the brainlets when I become one of those asshole professors who makes his exams way too hard just to curve it afterward because he doesn't give a fuck about any of his retarded students.

[Anonymous No.9968020]

>>9967123
Only brainlets hate history as a subject, but I agree that it shouldn’t be required for a math degree.

[Anonymous No.9968028]

>>9968019
This man is a CIA asset and somebody said his triggerword lol.

Have a cup of camomile tea and start training a martial art or something

[Anonymous No.9968029]

>>9968020
Not the subject that I hate, it's the requirement that I hate. I don't really hate any subject except for women's studies. I took one of those classes as a freshman for the meme... not worth it, it was terrible. I pass/failed it so it didn't harm my GPA when I got a C-, but I got to check of my "cultural diversity" requirement that my university pushes for every degree. The instructor literally took off 40% on one of my essays, and her only feedback was circling the first two paragraphs in red pen, and writing "this reads like it was written from the perspective of a white male". Such bullshit, I would have taken it to the Dean if I thought that it would actually accomplish anything. Fuck, my blood boils just remembering that.

>>9968013
I was able to check off one of my requirements with a philosophy class that I actually really loved. There really just weren't any good options for the requirement that I'm filling with history though, unfortunately. I chose US history because it's literally the exact same shit that I've already learned in middle school and high school. But there are definitely other gen ed requirements that have lots of fun classes to check it off with.

>>9967996
no u

[Anonymous No.9968038]

>>9968029
Yeah, it pisses me off too. I look at the course catalog and see all the neat math courses I won't have time to take because of bullshit requirements.

[Anonymous No.9968042]

>>9968038
fuckin hell I relate to this response more than any of the other responses ITT, including mine lmao

[Anonymous No.9968059]

>>9968042
>What's that anon? You want to take discrete dynamical systems? Too bad, you have to take a humanities class with a bunch of NPCs

[Anonymous No.9968070]

You wouldn't need the history stuff if American schools were good.

[Anonymous No.9968077]

>>9968028
Na, I want to see how fucked up I can get.
Mathematical genius is all about the tradeoff between mental health and mental strength. I'm not suicidal, I have been before but it was a long time ago and I was in a very different situation. I don't anticipate ever having serious thoughts of suicide ever again. So with that out of the way, I'll gladly sacrifice my social aptitude and mental health if it means I can get paid to do what I excel at all day. All the greatest mathematicians, physicists, and computer scientists were a little bit nuts. Fuck it, why give brainlets my time? I'll gladly teach and tutor, I know for a fact that people actually respond really well to my tutoring because I have such a keen eye for figuring out precisely what's wrong with their logic and how to correct it. And by nature I get something out of it too, that's just how teaching works. But on an even playing field where I'm supposed to try to blend in? Fuck it, it's too late for me. Normal people figured that shit out in high school, I didn't have that chance, and I have to just roll with it. I like math and cs. I like teaching math and cs. I am valued for my abilities in math and cs. I am math and cs.

[Anonymous No.9968118]

>>9968077
which uni do you go to?

[Anonymous No.9968134]

>>9968118
Oregon State. One of the best engineering and CS programs nationally, with many opportunities for internships for Intel and HP. A few fantastic math professors, but the math program as a whole isn't much. The Real Analysis classes here are notoriously shitty because they don't focus on the introductory measure theory enough, but the Algebra and Number Theory research group is full of some brilliant minds. I've been talking to those guys directly for advice on personal summer research, even some of the grad students think I'm a little crazy because I just keep doing harder and harder math and keep performing excellently. But I'm getting the hell out of here for grad school, there's a tiny cryptography research group in the CS department. I don't know why anyone would choose here for that unless they couldn't get into a better program, which won't be a problem for me.

If there are any math grad students or profs at OSU that are reading this thread, they probably know who I am lmao whoops.

[Anonymous No.9968328]

>>9968134
Is there any reason why you didn't accrue as many AP/community college credits as you could during high school? Also, how much merit aid/scholarships did you get and what were your stats? Are you in-state? Is Oregon State's engineering strength relevant to you?

[Anonymous No.9968849]

lol

[Anonymous No.9969625]

>>9968328
Not sure why you'd assume that I didn't, I got about a year's worth of AP/community college credit during high school. I'm going into my 3rd year but I'm doing my senior math classes, and my junior CS classes. You can't really get very much progress towards a CS degree besides general ed from my local community college so I got some basic writing and some economics credits, and in high school I did Calc AB, physics, CS, and chemistry. The teacher for the non-stem AP classes (she taught all of them) was a bitch so I didn't bother doing those at high school, and just got some credit from the community college instead.
And yes, of course oregon state's engineering strength is relevant. CS is in the engineering department. I'm double majoring in math and CS