CE VS ME

Why Civil Engineering is Harder than Mechanical Engineering

Through some unfortunate changes I ended up taking only 14 credits this semester. That should be a super light load, and yet I spend 19 hours a week in class and countless hours doing homework. My roommate, a Mechanical Engineer, is taking 15 credits and spends 14 hours a week in class, and on average tends to have slightly less homework than me. Now I've finally realized the reason for this:

As a Civil Engineer I'm going to spend four years in college getting a degree, take and pass the Fundamentals of Engineering exam, work for several years, then take and pass the P.E. exam to become a certified engineer. I am then going to get paid to go to gravel pits with a 5 gallon bucket, fill the bucket with gravel, take it back to my lab and cook the gravel in an oven. Once the gravel is dry I'll pour it onto the floor, take half and throw it away. Then I'll throw away another half of the remaining half, leaving me with one fourth of the gravel that I started with, at which point I will weigh it and put it into a series of different sized sieves. I will shake the sieves and record how much gravel got stuck in each one. Then I need the book. I'll have a book with standards for different sized aggregates (gravels) and I will compare my sieve results to the acceptable results in the book: from that I make the decision to give the contractor either a check or an x on the aggregate, potentially costing him thousands of dollars.

Meanwhile, what are the Mechanical Engineers doing? Rockets! Engines! Air travel! Space travel! Guess what guys? We're going to the freaking moon! We're designing technology to go to the moon! So it's only natural that Civil has a more demanding courseload then Mechanical.

In all seriousness though, Civil Engineers do some cool things and Mechanical Engineers do some uncool things. I just don't understand why Mechanical Engineering isn't way more work than Civil.