What was the hardest class you ever took?

[Deleted]

"Physics 2 (I don't remember the actual number, but second semester of Physics for engineering majors) and Calc III (in the same semester)."

Same here! Considering you and I went to the same college, I wonder if we had the same profs

I also hate History. The only class I have ever failed, yes, I got an F! But my excuse is everytime i started reading the damn book, I would fall asleep within 10 minutes, no exaggeration!

[Deleted]

Hardest was definitely Advanced Calculus. You could take it for graduate or undergrad credit and I took it my junior year as an undergrad. I got a D one quarter- the only D in my entire academic career and I worked darn hard for it.

Easiest- Intro to Music. It was a music appreciation class so popular it was held in an auditorium. The professor just LOVED music- from Mozart to Ray Charles- and wanted us to love it, too. It was at the U. of Cincinnati where they have a fantastic music school and students could attend performances for free. I learned a lot about music even though most of my other courses were YM-approved STEM disciplines and I still love it.

[Phoenix84]

Dec 9, 2013 14:23:08 GMT -5 cronewitch said:

Math at a school that wasn't used to math. The school was for adults getting degrees in accounting or MBAs. Most of us had been out of school 20 years so not just finished another math class and this was the only math class they offered. We took the classes in 5 weeks at night while working full time. The instructors weren't real teachers but business people or IRS agents. This instructor was a Boeing Engineer who taught at Boeing and it was his first time teaching at a college. He thought we needed to learn everything in the book like negative exponents. We didn't we only needed enough to get past the statistics class we took next and would never take math again. Since the classes are only 5 weeks you got a mid term at 2.5 weeks and a final at the end and since we all worked full time and took other classes the other nights we could only study weekends. So we were all struggling and some asked him to slow down but he said if we don't master this we wouldn't do well in future classes. We explained there weren't future classes and he started to catch on that we weren't future engineers.
The final was open book and take home so a bunch of us met at a student's apartment to do the test. Her husband was an engineer so helped us with the final.

I always did well in math at the college before that but it had been 20 years.

The school required a two year degree to get in and we went 4 nights a week for 4 hours 6-10PM taking two classes every 5 weeks so the whole two years was hard. I was working 8-4:30 school 6-10 and maintaining a home and relationship so spent all weekend on homework. They required a term paper for every single class.

They didn't consider doing the test as a group cheating?  We were strictly forbidden from doing tests in groups for the few take homes we did have.  If they caught you, they'd kick you out of the university.

[NomoreDramaQ1015]

Simpson had bumper stickers that said "I survived P-chem".  So glad I didn't have to take it.

[Phoenix84]

Dec 9, 2013 13:37:03 GMT -5 @gdgyva said:

statistics

professor was so boring it was hard not to fall asleep in class

he didnt grade on curve

no A's

2 B's

24 C's

13 D's

5 others 

a number of students dropped class midway through 

i got a C ....and was thankful i never had to retake

I actually have good memories of my statistics class.  I actually totally bombed the first test, failed it spectactularly.  The professor said "come to my office hours and we'll work through it."  I went, and we went through the test step by step.  Afterward, she gave me an A on the test, and I learned so much I got an A on the rest of the homework and tests.  Ended up with a A in the course, really good teacher.

[Deleted]

Dec 9, 2013 16:15:38 GMT -5 Phoenix84 said:

Dec 9, 2013 13:37:03 GMT -5 @gdgyva said:

statistics

professor was so boring it was hard not to fall asleep in class

he didnt grade on curve

no A's

2 B's

24 C's

13 D's

5 others 

a number of students dropped class midway through 

i got a C ....and was thankful i never had to retake

I actually have good memories of my statistics class.  I actually totally bombed the first test, failed it spectactularly.  The professor said "come to my office hours and we'll work through it."  I went, and we went through the test step by step.  Afterward, she gave me an A on the test, and I learned so much I got an A on the rest of the homework and tests.  Ended up with a A in the course, really good teacher.

You slept with her, right?

[Phoenix84]

Dec 9, 2013 14:55:40 GMT -5 The Captain said:

Intermediate Accounting.  I think it is by design, the hardest course in my major (accounting).  At my school, this was the class that weeded out the kids not serious about accounting.

Out of a starting class of 38 we had 6 drop after the first test.  We eventually only had 30 accounting majors graduate so it did it's job.

A lot of material crammed into one class.  It was not the difficulty, but the volumn that almost did me in.

Most majors seem to have a "weed out" class.  For us, it was physics 2.  Something to separate the boys from the men, so to speak.

[Phoenix84]

"You slept with her, right?"

Not exactly.   But I have always wondered if some sort of attraction may have played a role.  In hindsight, she did sit pretty close to me while we were going over the test, closer than she needed to.

[muttleynfelix]

Dec 9, 2013 15:06:38 GMT -5 @bunnysmom said:

"Physics 2 (I don't remember the actual number, but second semester of Physics for engineering majors) and Calc III (in the same semester)."

Same here! Considering you and I went to the same college, I wonder if we had the same profs

I also hate History. The only class I have ever failed, yes, I got an F! But my excuse is everytime i started reading the damn book, I would fall asleep within 10 minutes, no exaggeration!

I don't remember either of their names. But the physics guy was old, grey beard, his name started with a K and he said he spoke "Ozarkian".

ETA: I never did history on campus. I took one class at my community college back home over the summer taught by my former high school history teacher. (For the record, he was a VERY good history teacher). And I did the history of Missouri online.  I did accidentally cheat on the history of Missouri.  A friend of mine had a copy of the final, but said it never helped him because his final was completely different and he gave it to me. I got to the test site and the final was EXACTLY the same.   Oops.

[Phoenix84]

Dec 9, 2013 15:58:20 GMT -5 NomoreDramaQ1015 said:

Simpson had bumper stickers that said "I survived P-chem".  So glad I didn't have to take it.

My understanding was O Chem was the big bad course in the chemistry cirriculum.

[Deleted]

hahha! I think my Physics II guy was Parris. Calc III, I don't even remember, the teacher or anything from the class

[NomoreDramaQ1015]

O-chem is easy.  P-Chem had people in tears. 

[muttleynfelix]

Dec 9, 2013 16:23:46 GMT -5 Phoenix84 said:

Dec 9, 2013 15:58:20 GMT -5 NomoreDramaQ1015 said:

Simpson had bumper stickers that said "I survived P-chem".  So glad I didn't have to take it.

My understanding was O Chem was the big bad course in the chemistry cirriculum.

Nope. My former roomy was chem major and P-chem is what took her 3 times to pass and was the reason she nearly did not graduate. She got a special permission to be dual enrolled (enrolled in undergrad and grad school at the same time) for 2 semesters because of P-Chem issues.

[mmhmm]

Calculus I and II, by far.  Gads, I hated calculus!  I'm not a math person and I've never denied it.  Science?  Yep.  Love it!  Math, not so much.  It's an odd combination of abilities, I guess.

My favorites were English Lit, Anatomy & Physiology, Organic Chemistry, Microbiology and Biology.

[Waffle]

I took statistics as a freshman in college. I loved it. Other people struggled - it seemed easy to me. For some reason it just clicked - not that I could tell you much of anything about it now.

[The Walk of the Penguin Mich]

Dec 9, 2013 15:57:03 GMT -5 alwaysbeoptimizing said:

physical chemistry  aka "math thinly veiled as chemistry"

P-chem is the only reason why I graduated as a biology major rather than chemistry.  I was p-chem short of a double major.

[The Walk of the Penguin Mich]

Dec 9, 2013 16:27:49 GMT -5 muttleynfelix said:

Dec 9, 2013 16:23:46 GMT -5 Phoenix84 said:

My understanding was O Chem was the big bad course in the chemistry cirriculum.

Nope. My former roomy was chem major and P-chem is what took her 3 times to pass and was the reason she nearly did not graduate. She got a special permission to be dual enrolled (enrolled in undergrad and grad school at the same time) for 2 semesters because of P-Chem issues.

Organic chem was easy.  A friend of mine was a year ahead of me, but a chemistry major.  When she realized that she was not ever going to pass p-chem without divine intervention, she changed her major to Education in Chemistry.  I watched her struggle and beat her head up against the wall, decided I didn't want that kind of grief and avoided it.  Until the senior year, I was taking both biology and chemistry courses in tandem.

[Timberwolf]

I flunked level 101 chemestry twice .  Just no head for it.  I also had the experience of having a foreign math teacher, German, I think and few passed his class either.  To this day I think the university should have reimbursed students for that class.

One class that turned out to be suprisingly hard for me was a music theory class taught through the college of education (teaching majors attended the college of education).  I had private piano lessons as a teen for a couple of years and I thought the class would be soooo easy, boy was I wrong.  I didn't flunk it or anything but I think it ended up being a very hard earned B or something like that.

[Cookies Galore]

I had a couple of favorite classes. My film class was obviously the best. I'm a pop culture junkie so watching movies and discussing themes was awesome. My research paper was on Fight Club and male emasculation.
I had two favorite classes in my major: magazine article writing and magazine production (the capstone). The article writing class was great because the instructor was so inspiring. The production class was great because I was the copy editor (and I wrote an article on street musicians) and I held that magazine in my hands at the end of the semester and felt accomplished for the first time in my life.

Worst class ever was the women's studies class I was stuck with after adding and dropping too many classes the first week of a semester. It was women in sci fi, which completely bored me. I only talked once in class but that was because I was drunk (Spring Fling was that day).

[Anne_in_VA]

Macro Economics - I passed, but didn't really understand it. 

Favorite (and easiest) were the English classes. I've always been good in English and got a 4.0 for every one.

[alabamagal]

Dec 9, 2013 15:57:03 GMT -5 alwaysbeoptimizing said:

physical chemistry  aka "math thinly veiled as chemistry"

PChem - I don't remember the math, just that it was horrible.  Organic Chem, no problem, 5 Quarters of Calculus at Georgia Tech, piece of cake,  PChem, I got my only D.

Also there was this Senior level Thermodynamics class taught from a graduate level textbook that was horrible.  Noone in the class understood it.  The average on the first test was a 5 (out of 100).  I remember that day clearly even though is was 28 years ago!

[Virgil Showlion]

The hardest course I ever took was a graduate level course on schemes. I dropped the class shortly before the drop deadline, worried that it would sink my GPA if I didn't.

[comom1]

Calculus and Physics were the worst.  I hated them and I sucked at them.  I don't care if I never see the words cosine, tangent, joule or erg again, unless I'm playing Scrabble.  Then they can be useful.  Not sure what else I'd use them for.

I loved biology, English, literature, chemistry and drama classes.  Geometry was easy, but I didn't particularly like it.

[Sunnyday]

In high school, the hardest class was Chemistry.

In college, I had no real hard class. I picked a non-STEM degree that I was brilliant at.

The only challenging class was math at college. But it wasn't really hard, because they dumbed it down considerably for the humanities majors.

My favorites classes were Latin, astronomy and origins of life.

[Phoenix84]

The easiest class I ever took was astronomy in college.  It was the astronomy for dummies version, like astronomy 101.  I had to take a "basic" science course to meet the requirements, apparantly the advanced physics courses I took didn't count.

I signed up for the class, and never read the book, never went to class, just took the tests and did the homework.  I got a B+.  For the most part, it covered astronomy topics I knew even when I was a kid.

[Phoenix84]

Dec 9, 2013 15:57:03 GMT -5 alwaysbeoptimizing said:

physical chemistry  aka "math thinly veiled as chemistry"

That's pretty much what all advanced physics courses are. 

[Deleted]

 Psychology of Personal Adjustment.

What I found out about myself, scared the crap out of me.

[constanz22]

Philosophy...ugh...dropped it in college

Easiest, French in college.  I spent a year in France as an exchange student the year before college

[vonna]

Orthogonal Functions and Boundary Value Problems . . .

. . . made my head hurt . . .

[mmhmm]

Dec 9, 2013 19:01:53 GMT -5 vonna said:

Orthogonal Functions and Boundary Value Problems . . .

. . . made my head hurt . . .

Makes my head heart just reading it!