Which is the Harder Major: Nursing or Engineering?
Obviously asking on this site would be biased but I trust that engineers will look at the question objectively. I've had this debate a few times but usually ended it with something along the lines of "Both are difficult in their own ways." to basically avoid confrontation (the nursing majors get really defensive really fast). But now it's bothering me. So here are the arguments usually presented for pro-nursing:
1.A Lot of/Harder Material
2.Very Competitive
3.Life/Death Situations
4.More Socially Interactive
1. This one is a harder one to decisively pick one or the other, because I am well aware to the ridiculous amount of vocab nursing majors need to memorize. But this is one people always argue first and honestly, engineers have to memorize a lot too. Not as much as nursing majors, but where we lack in number of terms we make up in application and comprehension. I mean, as far as difficult material goes, I think nursing majors need at most Calc 1. I feel like our material is a lot more difficult. So I give this one to engineers.
2. Ok, I will give nursing the fact that it is more competitive than engineering, but I want to interject that it is solely a result based on numbers of applicants. If you had a whole bunch of people that wanted to major in basket weaving, that would be a competitive major too. (Not comparing nursing to basket weaving, just making a point). Nurses get this one.
3. Engineering also has life and death situations and where nursing often has more time conscious urgency, engineering often has more lives at stake. I would say that engineering and nursing are equal in this argument.
4. I don't really view this as a real point of argument because it's almost irrelevant when it comes to the specific time period of getting your major, but one girl mentioned it so I thought I might as well include it. I guess I would say this argument is equal(because engineers have to work with people too) but leaning toward nursing. This is because people can be very hard to deal with and a nursing major would encounter more people in the jobs they have to get as requirement for their major.
There is no doubt in my mind that nursing is very stressful. There are way more hours and it's an intense field. The question is, does the fact that a field is stressful make it hard? I mean, just in terms of getting your major, it's a lot of work for engineering as well. The real life work may not generally be as intense, but in college it's very stressful. There's a lot of work.
I'm purposefully not including working with sick people vs not working with sick people because I think that's just a difference in the majors, but if you think it's relevant to the argument, go for it.
(*Please don't use the argument that it's "different for each person". That's such a cop-out. You could say that for literally every major*)