What was the hardest class youve taken in college?

[nbs2]

Any class before 9am or on a Friday.

I think I struggled the most with classes that I took for silly reasons (usually to meet girls), like ballroom dancing and floral design. And for those of you who laugh, floral design turned out to be part design part botany. Hard to pass a class when you can't identify and don't know the common and scientific name of more than a couple out of 50 flowers.

 

[dmr727]

My hardest classes was a full year of Quantum Mechanics. Nuclear Physics wasn't fun, but I was capable of grasping it moreso than Quantum.

I enjoyed quantum a hell of a lot more than say, solid state. Heh! These classes were hard, but since I really enjoyed the physics, they didn't *seem* hard at the time.

Like others mentioned, my hardest classes were the ones I didn't care about, so I'd put only a minimal effort into them. Like abstract, Chemistry is a good example of this.

 

[superben79]

englssih

 

[Don't panic]

none was really tough, but on a relative scale would be a toss-up between organic chemistry, biochemistry and invertebrate zoology (for the sheer amount of material to memorize)

 

[Xfujinon]

Organic Chemistry.

This soul-smasher was THREE trimesters for me, unlike for your two-semester folks. I had three midterms, three finals, and three "middle of the term" exams just for the hell of it. It was brutal at my college. Failure rate hovered around 20%, but there was always one jagoff who managed to get about 96% on the exams average who made us look like idiots.

Organic Chemistry destroyed my undergrad GPA forever. Worse, it completely destroyed any desire I had to press onward with Pre-Med, with sciences in general, and it took the wind out of my desire to live a fulfilling college life. Due to my schedule, I had 5 hour labs every Tuesday morning starting at 7:30 AM. Exams were usually Wednesdays. No sleep + no hope + no interest + no results = borderline suicidal.

Today, five years later, I realize that the biggest thing holding me back was the lack of incentives; I understood the material well enough, and I even understand it well now, but I just couldn't get motivated. Nothing would make me study, read, or review. I almost dropped out of college. I managed to get back in line thanks to the best girlfriend (now wife) a guy could ask for.

However, as some vindication, I destroyed Biochemistry I & II, Immunology, Histology, Histopathology, Molecular Genetics, Parasitology, Microbiology, Anatomy, and Physiology once I got motivated again.

I even got into med school!

I agree with some of your smug people that organic isn't the most intellectually complicated thing out there; I am still in awe of the classes most math, physics, and comp sci majors take. However, one has to realize that the most daunting part of organic is the inevitable feeling of futility that one feels while studying it. For some, it is an academic roadblock they never pass through. I'll never forget the people sobbing in the hallway as they realized they would never, ever get into med school (PA school, etc.) with this barrier in their way.

Other classes I considered immensely challenging were Ceramics IV and tennis, the former because it forced me to leave a comfortable artistic paradigm and truly be creative, and the latter because I have no athletic skill whatsoever and I needed to stubbornly practice until I was good enough to actually play a whole game.

Calculus was the most boring, I just don't like math for math's sake.

 

[Mousse]

Those damn requisite Physical Ed classes. A 5'9" 120lbs pencil neck (at the time, now 5'9" 190lbs) going up against 6'+ 220lbs+ bruisers. Enjoy eating dirt? I take mine with a bit of salt.

 

[Decrepit]

Financial Risk Management

Derivatives, options, futures, forwards, yow.

I had other classes that sucked due to the professor, but this was the one that sent all 80 students into the halls after class with blank stares and changing majors in their final semester of college.

But I got an A. I busted my ass to get that A, but it wasn't fun.

 

[nizz]

Financial Risk Management

Derivatives, options, futures, forwards, yow.

I had other classes that sucked due to the professor, but this was the one that sent all 80 students into the halls after class with blank stares and changing majors in their final semester of college.

But I got an A. I busted my ass to get that A, but it wasn't fun.

Almost everything about derivatives markets can be understood or derived from knowing the 4 basic graphs

I changed majors a lot. From comp sci to engineering to mathematics to actuary studies. With that last subject comprising of finance to statistics to economics. Programming was lame because of having to know your hardware limits, engineering was cool because Physics was interesting, but chemistry was NOT, math was rough at first but after getting used to theory and proofs, it became interesting and easier. Statistics and economics classes were fun too! (especially probability courses)

So I guess my hardest class was Basic chemistry, and most of my gen eds(I failed theatre, art, which were supposed to be easy A's!). That being said I'd imagine that anything that you aren't interested enough to go to class or open the book will be your hardest class

 

[dllavaneras]

none was really tough, but on a relative scale would be a toss-up between organic chemistry, biochemistry and invertebrate zoology (for the sheer amount of material to memorize)

Invertebrate zoology was one of my favorite subjects! The amount of stuff you have to learn is incredibly vast, but I really enjoyed it. Out of those three, Organic Chemistry would be my choice for hardest subject, but Ive taken tougher subjects, like Animal Behavior.

On a side note, did you like Invertebrate Zoology? Is it a mandatory course you have to take or did you choose to take it?

 

[Decrepit]

Almost everything about derivatives markets can be understood or derived from knowing the 4 basic graphs

I changed majors a lot. From comp sci to engineering to mathematics to actuary studies. With that last subject comprising of finance to statistics to economics. Programming was lame because of having to know your hardware limits, engineering was cool because Physics was interesting, but chemistry was NOT, math was rough at first but after getting used to theory and proofs, it became interesting and easier. Statistics and economics classes were fun too! (especially probability courses)

So I guess my hardest class was Basic chemistry, and most of my gen eds(I failed theatre, art, which were supposed to be easy A's!). That being said I'd imagine that anything that you aren't interested enough to go to class or open the book will be your hardest class

Those four basic graphs are nice and all, but they don't make your or lose you money. If you price something badly, you pick the wrong place on the graph, and you end up eating cat food.

Or, if you're making the investment decisions with somebody else's money and you screw up, you might end up too dead to eat cat food.

 

[coupdetat]

My freshman year at University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign I took this ordinary differential equations class (Math 441). I was in there with a bunch of juniors and seniors and the class ended up kicking my ass. My only strategy was to sit in the library for 10 hours at a time and practice the patterns of operations without understanding the actual math. Wound up with a B+ because of a big curve.

[edit] Also, I forgot about thermodynamics. That's the class that made me quit aerospace engineering and switch to a pre-med track in BME. The textbook had no practice questions in it, and the professor would just mumble in a thick accent, turned toward the board.. That's how things are at UIUC, unfortunately.

[edit again] Wow, and I forgot about the honors electricity and magnetism class I took. Deriving relativity, Maxwell's equations, etc. I just went into office hours and had the professor walk me through everything. God, I really disliked UIUC classes.

 

[themadchemist]

Organic Chemistry.

This soul-smasher was THREE trimesters for me, unlike for your two-semester folks. I had three midterms, three finals, and three "middle of the term" exams just for the hell of it. It was brutal at my college.

Yup, know how that feels. It was the same at my school.However, as some vindication, I destroyed Biochemistry I & II, Immunology, Histology, Histopathology, Molecular Genetics, Parasitology, Microbiology, Anatomy, and Physiology once I got motivated again.

Wow, your college's biology curriculum sounds a lot more "clinically oriented;" that is, the topics read more like a med school curriculum. My school definitely had a much more profoundly basic bent, which suited me just fine.

I even got into med school!

Haha, no one ever believes it when someone says, "It's OK if your ____ grade isn't so great, you can still get in." But it's totally true. This is especially true if you can do well on the MCAT, whose organic chemistry section, let's be honest, is laughable.

I agree with some of your smug people that organic isn't the most intellectually complicated thing out there; I am still in awe of the classes most math, physics, and comp sci majors take.

I'm actually going to have to disagree with you here, on a couple of levels. For one, once you get down the basic reactions, any orgo professor worth his salt will test you intellectually interesting ways. Mechanism and synthesis questions test problem-solving as much as they test knowing the basic reactions. Organic chemistry really does require quite a bit of creativity and necessitates an individual to be pretty intellectually labile (no pun intended). On top of that, I honestly think that scientifically, organic chemistry changed my life. It was hugely influential. We had to take it before biology, and organic chemistry profoundly impacted the way that I perceived all of science. Thinking about scientific processes in terms of electron transfers and everything that emerges from them can be terribly useful when trying to conceptualize all manner of molecular and biochemical facts. Organic chemistry is beautiful, it's powerful, and it's intellectually stimulating--if you let it be.

Calculus was the most boring, I just don't like math for math's sake.

Math for its own sake? The calculus courses I took were the most application-driven math courses I ever had. Here's another set of tools that I found really influential. Calculus helps you in so many ways to think about the world and, for a science person like me, about science. It's really useful and I don't know how people wrap their minds around, say, physics, without having the concepts of derivatives and integrals to make it *so much easier* (and logical).

 

[huntnboy04]

mixology.

 

[mrfrosty]

Physical Chemistry ..... didn't understand and still don't understand it now

I am sooooooooo with you on that.....I have a chemistry & computer science honours degree.........i got 0% in my physical chem finals....(didnt answer a single question).

 

[corporation]

hardest classes while getting my BA in Theatre - I deal with the technical aspect professionally, btw:


Play Analysis
required reading of many boring play and critiquing them endlessly each week. ugh. so boring.

Cultural analysis of Latino Theatre workshop: along with 1000 word paper every 2 weeks, i had to act in 3 plays the class put on. instead of 1 large cast play (where everyone could have a part), the class decided to do 3 small ones - and as one of the 2 guys in the class, i had lots of lines...

European Theater History 2 - i took this during a short summer term (i want to say 9 weeks), it was still the full course material- and requirements... I had a 1000 word paper every week, along with a 15000 page paper due at the end of the semester (5000 every 3 weeks to keep us on task)
Latin word origins -


hardest class while trying to get a 18 month Business Certificate from the local college:


Accounting:

wow. i never 'got' the 'formula' that was taught during the first week of the class - thus i never understood any of the material taught afterwords...This was coupled with the fact that i started a new job that was working me around my school schedule - causing me to not do homework assignments...

i dropped out of the course, and the program - got too consumed with work...

 

[Antares]

Business Statistics.

 

[floyde]

Algorithm Analysis, but only because the teacher was a dictatorial psycho.

 

[themadchemist]

along with a 15000 page paper due at the end of the semester

Man! That is long...

 

[Xfujinon]

Wow, your college's biology curriculum sounds a lot more "clinically oriented;" that is, the topics read more like a med school curriculum. My school definitely had a much more profoundly basic bent, which suited me just fine.



Haha, no one ever believes it when someone says, "It's OK if your ____ grade isn't so great, you can still get in." But it's totally true. This is especially true if you can do well on the MCAT, whose organic chemistry section, let's be honest, is laughable.



I'm actually going to have to disagree with you here, on a couple of levels. For one, once you get down the basic reactions, any orgo professor worth his salt will test you intellectually interesting ways. Mechanism and synthesis questions test problem-solving as much as they test knowing the basic reactions. Organic chemistry really does require quite a bit of creativity and necessitates an individual to be pretty intellectually labile (no pun intended). On top of that, I honestly think that scientifically, organic chemistry changed my life. It was hugely influential. We had to take it before biology, and organic chemistry profoundly impacted the way that I perceived all of science. Thinking about scientific processes in terms of electron transfers and everything that emerges from them can be terribly useful when trying to conceptualize all manner of molecular and biochemical facts. Organic chemistry is beautiful, it's powerful, and it's intellectually stimulating--if you let it be.



Math for its own sake? The calculus courses I took were the most application-driven math courses I ever had. Here's another set of tools that I found really influential. Calculus helps you in so many ways to think about the world and, for a science person like me, about science. It's really useful and I don't know how people wrap their minds around, say, physics, without having the concepts of derivatives and integrals to make it *so much easier* (and logical).

Yeah, my college allowed an abundance of clinically relevant electives, which is part of the reason I shelled out the absurd dollars it cost to go there. Most of my first year of med school is already based on information inside my head; I know it will be more detailed, but a solid foundation can go a long way: it can turn a five hour study session into a three hour session, or less.

Yeah, I pulverized the MCAT, because I really didn't have any other choice at the time. Plus, the fact of the matter is that NOTHING anyone tells you really matters unless you actually get in. At that point, you can pick or choose which truisms were offered along the way that proved valuable.

I fully understand your comments regarding the creativity inherent in chemistry. I buy that. However, at my college it was a designed weed-out class, taught by the most dispassionate jackass you could find. There was no creativity here. Now, I appreciate the immensity of the subject, and since that time much of the finer points of organic (mechanisms, conformations, etc.) have been extremely helpful. At your school, you may have been very fortunate. Where I came from, it was about as sterile as you can get. I wish I had the chance to take it from an enthusiastic, motivated instructor with a flair for creative lecturing. Most days I considered drinking my lab reagents in order to go to the hospital instead of going to lecture later.

Once again, your college must have been different. My calculus course was like a high school algebra course: twenty minutes of crappy lectures, and then work on the problems in the back of the book. Now, I admit that I absolutely loathe mathematics, but this course probably could have tapped into some things I was already learning (such as physics). Alas, those correlations never got made, and I spent the majority of the trimester just using that lecture time to read interesting books, which had a more immediate utility to my life.

I love learning applied mathematics. I can't stand math courses, for the most part. Part of me wishes that early on in my education math and science were better unified; I know they are parts of the same whole, but the microsecond I have to anything more complicated than algebra or geometry I want to stab myself in the eye.

 

[ravenvii]

eh, college was easy. law school is another story...

x2.

But if I HAD to answer the question, it'd be Logic. Begun off REALLY easy, but then went off the steep end.

 

[themadchemist]

Yeah, my college allowed an abundance of clinically relevant electives, which is part of the reason I shelled out the absurd dollars it cost to go there. Most of my first year of med school is already based on information inside my head; I know it will be more detailed, but a solid foundation can go a long way: it can turn a five hour study session into a three hour session, or less.

I imagine it's very helpful, especially during first year. Unfortunately, you'll find that next year is a process of cramming seemingly disconnected facts into your head at as fast a rate as possible. Buy First Aid for the USMLE early--I wish I had.

Yeah, I pulverized the MCAT, because I really didn't have any other choice at the time. Plus, the fact of the matter is that NOTHING anyone tells you really matters unless you actually get in. At that point, you can pick or choose which truisms were offered along the way that proved valuable.

Ain't it the truth.

I fully understand your comments regarding the creativity inherent in chemistry. I buy that. However, at my college it was a designed weed-out class, taught by the most dispassionate jackass you could find. There was no creativity here. Now, I appreciate the immensity of the subject, and since that time much of the finer points of organic (mechanisms, conformations, etc.) have been extremely helpful. At your school, you may have been very fortunate. Where I came from, it was about as sterile as you can get. I wish I had the chance to take it from an enthusiastic, motivated instructor with a flair for creative lecturing. Most days I considered drinking my lab reagents in order to go to the hospital instead of going to lecture later.

It's a damn shame when organic isn't taught well. Now I must admit, I'm the kind who doesn't show up to lecture, so while I went pretty consistently the first quarter (I was an eager freshman), I had already lost a lot of interest in going quarters 2 and 3. But when I did show up, it was well taught. I was lucky to have had two very passionate professors. One of them was even the designer of a now-blockbuster drug.

Once again, your college must have been different. My calculus course was like a high school algebra course: twenty minutes of crappy lectures, and then work on the problems in the back of the book. Now, I admit that I absolutely loathe mathematics, but this course probably could have tapped into some things I was already learning (such as physics). Alas, those correlations never got made, and I spent the majority of the trimester just using that lecture time to read interesting books, which had a more immediate utility to my life.

I'm no math genius to be sure, and the furthest I ever got was differential equations. I was also never particularly good at electricity and magnetism, though oddly, studying the cardiovascular system in med school was what made the circuit stuff I learned in undergrad actually stick...I took most of my introductory cal in high school, and I thought it was pretty applicable to physics. Honestly, I learned Newtonian mechanics way better in my high school calculus class than the algebra-based physics class I took at a local university in the evenings. I never could wrap my mind around physics without the calculus there. That said, I also did enjoy the "pure" aspects of it. I'm comparatively bad at memorization and I always enjoyed how easy it was to derive every formula you needed in single variable calculus on the fly from a few concepts and maybe a bit of geometry. I also enjoyed multivariable a great deal, certainly more than Linear Algebra. The only calculus course I didn't manage to do great in was Differential Equations, because I stopped showing up after I slaughtered the first midterm...Apparently, everyone did, so the professor put a bunch of questions on the exam that were peculiar examples from his notes. The class was terribly boring, I thought, just a series of algorithms you memorized in order to work out the problems.

I love learning applied mathematics. I can't stand math courses, for the most part. Part of me wishes that early on in my education math and science were better unified; I know they are parts of the same whole, but the microsecond I have to anything more complicated than algebra or geometry I want to stab myself in the eye.

Don't worry, you will not be alone among doctors, for sure. Sadly, we in the medical profession have a notorious distaste for math. I forget her name, but there's this brilliant (and absolutely gorgeous) young professor at Sloan Kettering--a mathematician by training, but she models tumor metastasis--who bemoans the resistance she comes up against from doctors when she tries to promote using even simple models for predictions in oncology.

 

[Frisco]

Comparative Psychology.

 

[dukebound85]

mine was thermodynamics lab. soooooooo much work for a 1 credit class.

 

[PlaceofDis]

hardest class? the one i had the most problems was a Arthurian Legend's class, but i don't think that was because it was hard, but moreso because the teacher had a problem with me. i don't know which would be the hardest for me. they all had their challenges, but since i've always had problems with math i don't know how i got through math101 without failing as most people did and still do, since its so fast and so much is crammed into one small semester.

 

[brn2ski00]

Algorithms, hands down the hardest course of my Computer Science degree.