Ben Borgers

Majoring in more

January 8, 2023

This past semester at Tufts, I added a second major: Engineering Psychology. So the current plan is to major in Computer Science and Engineering Psychology, with a minor in German.

Up until this semester, my plan was to major in Computer Science and minor in German. The major was only 9 CS classes and 2 math classes, and I had done 2 CS classes and 2 math classes in the first year, so I had roughly one CS class left per semester. The rest, I reasoned, could be easy filler classes.

But this semester, Trisha convinced me to pick up another major. And a guest lecturer in my Intro to Psychology class made us aware that Engineering Psychology — applying human behavior to the design of software and hardware — was a thing one could major in.

A university education would probably be a shame to waste on filler classes. Engineering Psychology sounds interesting, and it’ll give me another thing to work towards.

Tufts majors are seemingly quite small as well. As mentioned before, Computer Science is 11 courses. A German minor is 6, and Engineering Psychology is 15, but there’s some overlap.

If my spreadsheet is right, I need to spend the next five semesters taking 5 courses three times, and 4 courses twice. That seems manageable.

And in the end, my brain likes pushing things, like seeing whether I can write a blog post every day or never eat dessert from the dining hall. I’m not quite sure why. But I’ll lean into it once again for this.

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