The Tartan

Within my first hour of college, I became best friends with my roommate. We discovered that we used the same brand of menstrual cup, and from that moment on, I knew we would be inseparable. There are certain values a person must have to be a menstrual cup-user, and anyone with those values is someone I knew I would be compatible with long-term.

With this established, I knew my roommate was someone I could trust with my deepest secrets and innermost thoughts, someone who could help me achieve my dreams and hold me accountable for my highest goals. I decided to share something with her that I knew would be of the utmost importance to me in the coming months of college:

“Katherine,” I said, “If I ever come home and tell you that I want to start dating an engineer, I want you to hit me across the face as hard as possible.”

You see, dear reader, if there is anything I know in this dim and shadowy world, it is this: I am not compatible with boys who study engineering. Based on a series of deeply impactful experiences in middle school STEM clubs, I came to understand that this very specific species of person is not good at communicating in any format. I believe there to be a deeply innate connection between a lack of emotional intelligence and an interest in building airplanes. 

As such, I knew getting into a relationship with any of these creatures would only spell trouble for me. I am a highly emotional girly pop. I serve only to confirm the stereotypes about women and emotional instability, and if the person I am dating cannot read the tomes of strangely-encrypted emotional materials I am pumping out by the hour, I just don’t see it working out. I need to be able to make eye contact with a man across a room and convey the exact mood I am in without speaking a word. Emotional abilities any weaker than this are simply unacceptable for me. 

Unfortunately for me and my college friends, the CIT guys serve their communicative blunders with a side of cutie pie. Many of us — and even me, despite my pact with my roommate — ended up having one strange encounter or another with an engineer. Here, I would like to use these case studies we have painstakingly gathered to support my original hypothesis: Those ECE toolboxes are full of nothing but disappointment and lies.

It all started with Katherine, actually, who met a great CivE named Miles at a party during the first month of school. He was quirky and cool, and Katherine was smitten immediately. Every day, she would come home from class and go on and on about what sweater Miles was wearing that day or how good he smelled or how she had a new perspective on some conversation they had had the week before. She was convinced that they had been fated to meet and that she would never again feel this way about a man. She wrote love letters that she never sent. This went on for two months.

One day, Miles showed up at our dorm covered in another girl’s perfume. He smelled like a Bath and Body Works. Katherine was forced to confront him, and it became clear that they would not be able to stay together. She was hysterical. She sent him awful, mean texts. She decided to give him all the letters she had written so he could feel the weight of what he’d done. A few nights later, he slid a piece of paper under our door. Katherine and I stared at it for a moment before she picked it up and slowly unfolded it. 

On the piece of paper, there was simply a crayon drawing of a house. The sun in the corner had sunglasses, and the clouds were drawn in gray because white crayons don’t work on white paper. We sat in stunned silence. How could he have responded in such a crass, unfeeling way when Katherine had so clearly and elegantly communicated her emotions to him?

As the months of college passed, things only got worse. Stephanie, our mutual friend, became good friends with an ECE major named Nate in her first-year writing class. From first into second semester, they grew closer and closer until it was clear that there was something more than friendship between them. For a few months they had a fabulous relationship, sharing late nights working and many inside jokes. We were all so jealous of them — that is, until Nate started hanging out more with another girl in their class. To do what we suspected him of doing would indicate a complete inability to feel the feelings that were growing between him and Stephanie. Stephanie, certain that Nate was loyal to her, decided to propose marriage to him. She knew they were young and still early in their relationship, but she figured the best way to manage his potential infidelity was to lock him into an agreement that would prevent anything further. We all agreed this was a good plan.

Though it was a genuine shock to us all, Nate did not accept Stephanie’s proposal. “Steph,” he said, “This is insane, what are you doing?” In tears, Stephanie asked why, after so many great weeks together, he couldn’t commit to her. “Because I’ve hooked up with four different girls from our writing class. We were never even exclusive,” he said. We all agreed that he was the problem. 

After all of this turmoil freshman year, you can imagine how I felt sophomore year, when I found myself on the best date of my life with a MechE named Mulligan. He was funny and caring, and we shared a lot of similar interests. Proceeding with caution, I decided that his love of making homemade pasta could unite us even though he had just as much love for making bombs.  

Six months passed, then a year. I was waiting for the other shoe to drop. When would I receive a weird, cryptic text or uninterpretable drawing? Instead, we were setting boundaries, sharing needs, and never fighting. I was highly suspicious. Then, one day, Mulligan sat me down, saying he had something serious to share.

“I realized that I hate engineering,” he said, “I think I want to do a completely different job.” So here was my catch — he was perfect because he wasn’t an engineer! Feeling very righteous indeed about having my intuition confirmed, I promptly dumped him and gave him no explanation. I just feel like I need to have a little spontaneity in my relationships. Plus, I was already seeing three other guys, and the workload was getting a little heavy. 

This experience, though, helped me better understand my theory. There must be something inherent to the process of designing mechanical systems that ingrains a lack of empathy — and, indeed, self-knowledge – in these men. All those hours spent poring over chemical reactions, thermodynamic equations, and all dimensions of calculus suck the human spirit right out of them. They don’t need to write or speak in their classes, so they lack the skills to communicate in real-life situations. 

I pity them. As a highly evolved emotional individual, I can’t imagine a life without constant inner turmoil, weekly crying, and long journaling sessions in my notes app. I feel so lucky to be a creative writing major.