Despite Stanford’s love of liberal education, interdisciplinary academic programs, and efforts to bridge the divide between “techies” in STEM-related fields and “fuzzies” in the humanities and social sciences, it is common — and largely socially acceptable — for students to stereotype each other based on academic specialty.
Techies tend to perceive classes in the humanities and social sciences as less demanding than those in the hard sciences or engineering. Many techies regard the social sciences as less logically rigorous than the hard sciences; it is impossible to prove a theory of international relations or an interpretation of a poem as empirically as a theorem in physics…. Similarly, many fuzzies at Stanford appear to view their disciplines as more intellectually significant than those in STEM. “Fuzzies” spend their academic lives discussing societal challenges, reading renowned texts, and contemplating the human condition, activities which many consider to be more profound and more meaningful than solving equations or writing code.
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