Like many humanities students, I roll out of bed at questionable hours, spend late nights frantically finishing essays (most of which could probably use a few more citations, but who has time for that?), and largely make up my schedule as I go along. Meanwhile, my engineer flatmate seems to live in a parallel universe of structure, and terrifyingly early mornings. Having observed this radical thing called routine, I decided it was high time for me to scale the mysterious walls of the Engineering Department and finally settle the debate: Are engineers actually better than us?

“I decided it was high time for me to finally settle the debate: Are engineers actually better than us?”

I like to think of myself as a bit of an early bird. In reality, I’m more of a twelve alarms and hit the ‘snooze’ button kind of girl, and any idea of being a morning person was swiftly disproven with a 7:30am wake-up on a gloomy Friday morning. The first lecture was on mechanics (rotational dynamics…?). The hall was busier than I’d ever witnessed compared to the sparsely populated 9ams of Sidge Lecture Block, with the slow quiet noise of people filling the seats after emerging from a cold and rainy cycle. A primary-school-esque projector displayed the lecturer’s workings on the wall, and an occasional whistle would echo in the hall when the lecturer forgot to adjust the notes into view. Due to my flatmate’s recently broken finger, I became her scribe; I desperately tried to make sense of what I was writing down while trying to dig up long-forgotten scraps from A-Level Maths. Emerging from that lecture I was already mentally exhausted, but the day had only just begun.

Next came the probability lecture. By this point, I’m pretty sure everyone, including the lecturer, was secretly wishing they could be somewhere else. The only thing less probable than me understanding anything was staying awake in the lecture. So, I did what any self-respecting humanities student would do: I settled in for a quick, silent episode of The Mentalist to stay awake. Just when I thought my brain might short-circuit, it was finally time for a sweet treat break. We headed up a few floors to the canteen, where I decided to treat myself to a panini. The cheese had a strange smell, but I convinced myself it was just my imagination. It wasn’t, but hungry from all the puzzling out I’d done so far, I ate it anyway. After a quick catch-up with the other Catz engineers about upcoming supervisions (and the amount of work that they’d be drowning in next week), I was given a tour of the department. From labs that looked like they belonged on a hidden floor of Severance, to shadowy basement hallways where we collected old lecture worksheets, it became clear that the Engineering Department receives far more funding than any building on Sidge. Frankly, it was like walking through a high-tech fortress while I was just trying to remember the names of all the different floors and areas.

“I’m pretty sure everyone, including the lecturer, was secretly wishing they could be somewhere else”

With two hours to spare, my engineer flatmate and I made our way to a cocoon-like study space in the Dyson Building. While I caught up on some reading (which mostly involved glancing at a page and scrolling without reading) and watched a movie for an upcoming supervision (to any engineers reading this, I swear this counts as work); my companion, determined to be productive, started working on her examples papers. At some point, I may have stopped pretending to study and just marvelled at how organised her life was, like a well-oiled machine. The break was lovely but far too short; before I could even begin to question my life choices, we were back in the lecture hall for Information Engineering, where someone spoke for what felt like an eternity about something called Fourier Transforms. By the time the lecture started, my eyelids were beginning to feel heavy and drift downwards (I may or may not have dozed off mid-lecture), but don’t worry, I woke up in time for the grand finale: the Structures lecture. This was the only lecture where something actually happened – a guest speaker came on stage, we had a live demonstration of a house bomb (no engineers were harmed in the process), and even watched a video.

Finally, it was time to go home! We shuffled out of the lecture hall, feeling tired, hungry, and oddly appreciative of my chaotic humanities schedule. After a late lunch to make up for the tragedy that was the cheese panini, I retired to my room for a nap while my flatmate, who seemed to run on some kind of perpetual energy source, went off to meet friends. I took a deep breath, slipped off my engineer skin, and slipped back into my natural state: slightly disorganised, a little behind on essays, but embracing my Engling self.

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