As an arts and humanities student, I hear and see a lot of comments on a regular basis that essentially devalue my entire college career. When talking to my STEM-major peers about my workload, I am usually answered with eyerolls and an, “Oh, that’s all?” or “That’s so easy! You’re lucky.” This is what Arts, Humanities & Social Sciences (AHSS) students are hear constantly and it needs to stop.

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Yes, STEM majors have extremely tough educational regimens. However, the social sciences that are so often seen as pseudoscience (psychology, sociology, etc.) are generally harder for students to grasp. According to the article, “Social Science is Hard”, author Kevin Drum explains it, “The public commonly thinks of disciplines like physics and chemistry as hard because they rely so heavily on difficult mathematics. In fact, that’s exactly what makes them easy.” Eugene Wigner, a theoretical physicist, engineer, and mathematician, calls math’s role in natural science “unreasonable effectiveness.” The world, “for reasons we don’t understand”, does in fact operate according to mathematical law. But after we figure out those laws, “the rest is mere engineering” (Drum).

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Discovering the laws of nature is hard and time consuming, but the important thing is that it is not impossible. Social Sciences, however, do not have the con sistency that those laws do. Physcists can be that every time they let go of a pen, it will fall down. They know this because they have consistent the laws of gravity. Political Scientists, try as they might, cannot predict the outcome of events so easily. Sure, they might have a hypothesis based on precedents set years ago in similar situations, but due to the unpredictability of human beings, they can never be one hundred percent sure that the outcome they expect will come into fruition.

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Not to mention, AHSS subjects like writing, public speaking, and even psychology, are important to know no matter what your major. If you do not know the way around making a speech or writing a report, it will be harder to land the job no matter how many equations you can solve. I have spent time with STEM friends who called humanities work easy; hours later they would be sitting, head in their hands, ranting hopelessly about the five to seven-page papers they had due for English 15. I would always think to myself, what do you think I do?

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The rift between STEM and AHSS needs to close because it is petty. We all have people in our lives who have it worse than us, and this is exactly the same thing. I am passionate about this because I am sick of my very busy and difficult college career being invalidated by others who have not stepped into my shoes before. We are all here to learn and grow, and we all have a lot of work to do. So instead of debating who has it worse, we should all come together as college students and realize that we all have difficult work and responsibilities. No matter what your focus is, we are all capable of making an impact, whether it be by an equation or an essay.