How Humanities and Social Sciences Help to Become a Better Professional

Frankly speaking, when we came to know that we are supposed to take eight humanities courses in our four years of B.Tech, we all were shocked for the time being. We came to IIT to study engineering, not this illogical stuffs. We had a question, after all why to study these courses that are never going to play any role in our future life, we came up with our own answers without actual analysis of the need. We thought that college wants us to be “all-rounded”, well we don't know what all-rounded mean. Now after the completion of first year I believe that these courses will actually help me to be a better professional. Engineering and humanities are two completely different branches. Engineering gives us certain facts and tells us that this is how things are while humanities give us uncertainty, doubts, and skepticism. Engineering is more about solving problems and knowable answers while humanities are more about asking questions which in fact are the basis of the next set of questions, they create questions. Humanities in a way increase the range of experiences and also broadens the horizons of even the most educated person. Unlike engineering, humanities are not about finding the solution or getting an answer to every question. Usually, engineers need answers to every question, they are very curious to discover the reasons behind it but humanities taught us that it is impossible to answer every question and also that there are questions that do not have one correct answer in a way no single, final solution. Engineers are often perceived as nerds without any interpersonal skills and do only focused jobs based on the technical stuffs and do not care about what happens in the society or outside world. No doubt engineers are good at solving problems but when the problem becomes large and more complex they require to communicate.

Engineers are very good thinkers but they lack communication and interpersonal skills. And developing these skills becomes a necessity for engineers in order to express their ideas to society. Skills developed by learning the humanities and social science courses help engineers to fulfill the cultural and civic responsibilities. Humanities strengths the ability of engineers to work and communicate with others. They are more based on social skills and are rigorous in written and oral communication. This helps them to become better scientists and engineers and also allows them to use their knowledge and create innovation that is outside their field of study. Humanities give us the knowledge about the outside world to which we engineers shut down that is in respect of social, environmental, economical and political domains of life. Not all the people in the world are the same and hence they have different requirements and different perspectives and engineers must know about the way people think, the psychology of human behavior. Courses like economics teach us the basics of how the market works and also provides us with the knowledge of how goods are transported and what difficulty they face during it and based on that thinking an efficient idea that also solves this problem and also looking in the other problem gives engineers an opportunity to help society as a whole. History reveals what our ancestors did to modernize this world and also what leads them to change the world that we see today. Political aspects of society are also necessary to broaden our thought process and help others.

Philosophy makes us and think and analyze the truth about the world and creates more logical sense to this world’s existence and one of the most important things about this course is that it made engineers realise that it is impossible to answer every question and in a way broke the ego of engineers that they must know everything that is to gain. Mastering all these skills can provide tools for expanding knowledge. And interdisciplinary learning in all adds value to one's education. We have developed traditional technical skills developed on our own but now the industry wants engineers who can innovate and create new ideas and have the ability to work in a multicultural environment, one with leadership qualities and one who can understand the business context of engineering and one with the eagerness of lifelong learning. This requirement of industries to recruit peoples on the basis of not only technical stuff but also on the overall development of human in a sense who has a deeper understanding of the contemporary world is increasing day by day and to be better professionals these courses play a very important role in one’s life. Not only in getting jobs but also this teaches us to manage the time, planning strategies which are usually based on people’s interface. Humanities are not limited to just discovering answers or asking questions but also tells us that every human is unique and each of us keeps changing in unpredictable ways. Knowledge of social sciences and humanities help us to make changes to society in a better way. And this implementation of converging various courses and having a multidisciplinary approach to understanding things in a way made us better professionals. Socrates, one of the phliosopher said that “Wisdom means knowing how little you know”.

Humanities have revealed that by asking questions, how people have tried to make moral, spiritual and intellectual sense of this world and also taught us the togetherness. Also in a way prepared us to deal critically and logically with subjective, complex and imperfect information. In a way taking these courses can change the way of thinking of engineers, they provide an environment that forces us to think and analyze every aspect of questions and also teaches us how to ask the right set of questions. The courses designed at IIT Gandhinagar are very well organized and analyzed in a way that will help us to be better professionals in our life. Learning all these courses will definitely be helpful in our future life and will give us not only knowledge about society but also will open doors to that dimensions of this world where one has never reached or are yet to be encountered.