For me, Engineering is about as hard as a volcanically forged rock who just finished his 8 year prison sentence and has ‘no mercy’ tattooed across his brolic chest. However, this is clearly not a struggle shared by a surprisingly large proportion of my peers. From calculus to programming, I am very often finding myself sitting blank faced as my overly enthusiastic lecturer explains how a concept “makes good sense”.

Throughout my life I have regarded myself as relatively intelligent, not incredibly so, but I’m not a total mug, and the relative difficulty I am experiencing in comparison to some of the individuals in my course is starting to scare me a little.

Take last Wednesday for example, I’m in my weekly programming prac, marveling at the hieroglyphic coding that I’m expected to be producing and I begin to lose focus, looking around the room for a moment. What do I see next to me? A guy who’s half way through the second task, typing commands as quickly as I’d type an abusive message to one of my edgy friends. Now, I don’t mean to pick on racial stereotypes but needless to say he was Asian, and god damn, what has he got in his head that I don’t? Despite being super impressive, the ease at which he is crafting this masterpiece of coding is just downright unfair.

Look, I don’t claim to be the most dedicated student and maybe he just spends his days reading the programming textbook cover to cover (which I have begun doing) but surely no amount of sheer study could make him as adept as he is. Was he born with it? Maybe it’s… that he’s a bloody wizard, a love child of a super-computer and a sexually adventurous Bill Gates.

But, this ungodly ability does seem to come at a price. Ninety percent of the wizards I see are not so good in the whole interacting with fellow homo-sapiens department. Would I give up social skills in order to be blessed with this power? I still haven’t decided, but either way, they’re getting 10/10 and I’m… well passing, at least I hope so.

Anyway, maybe I’m just bad, or not trying hard enough.

More likely both.