Because no one has ever seen a current pass through wires or created a magnetic field around conductors.
A civil engineer can visualize the bridge he is creating in his mind as he creates the equations.
All of us know what a bridge looks and feels like. A bridge student in civil engineering does not need to be taught how to see it.
An electrical engineer must be able to see the current flow through a circuit. This ability is essential to solve most EE problems and perform any type of circuit analysis.
You must be able to see what is happening when you look at a circuit.
And this is an easy one. Being a power engineer, I deal with multiphase circuits, so most of the circuits I have to look at look more like this, only more complex:
Being able to understand power flow (current flow) is a big part of my job-and in order to do that, I have to be able to “see” how current flows. And, for some people, that’s pretty hard to do. I never really had a problem with it-one of my calculus classes required the ability to visualize 3D solids for volume calculations (triple integrals). That class was easy to me, but if you had a hard time with visualizing it, setting up the integrals was hard to do. If you could picture it, setting up the integrals was simple.
It is also important to visualize the magnetic fields surrounding a conductor:
We have to use tricks in order to visualize:
The “right-hand rule” – Every EE who has ever been to an E&M class knows this. Yes, this is what you’ll see if you walk into an E&M classroom.
Math is another thing that can sink electricals. You will struggle to complete the EE curriculum if you’re not a good math student. We rely on math to determine relationships and circuit analysis, as we are unable to draw from real-world visualizations like mechanical and civil engineers. You might reconsider continuing with calculus if your first two years were a nightmare.