The Hardest Class You Ever Had

['Hamas' Jenkins]

I just finished up my coursework for the semester. While Organic I was a comparative breeze, Organic II was a bitch. Honestly, the tests were more of a monster than the actual course load.

Here were the grade breakdowns (all tests were MC):

80-100-A
62-79-B
46-61: C
40-46: D

While the baseline material itself wasn't exceptionally difficult, there were so many exceptions to the rules, and exceptions to exceptions, that the tests ended up as absolute minefields.

With that said, I've heard even worse things about Biochem, and I'm sure that those of you with or pursuing advanced Math/Science degrees have had nightmare courses as well.

What class was it that kicked your ass the hardest?

[rico]

Med Surg 1.

[Mike in SW-MO]

Originally Posted by Frosty

A huge pet peeve of mine in college were professors who couldn't write a test. I had so many classes where the test looked nothing like what we had done in class and the highest score would be like 30%. Basically, the test told you absolutely nothing about whether you learned anything or not.

There were three circuits for EE classes. I was a Chem E so I took the Circuits for other than EE class.

We did not cover the same material but took the same tests. Pain.

[rico]

Originally Posted by Rain Man

At the risk of being crass, we knew in my undergrad program that you avoided the Chinese profs and instructors at all costs. You could kind of halfway understand the Indian ones, but with the Chinese you were at risk of literally not understanding a word. It surprised me that some of the students never figured that out.

I had a Chinese instructor for 2 courses. Russian History and Democracy/Global Diversity. His accent was very distracting. Not only because it was difficult to understand what he was saying, but also because I caught myself drifting off, thinking about how he was enunciating his words, but not the words that were actually coming out of his mouth...basically studying the way he enunciated words so I could go home after class and show off my perfect "Chinese dude" impersonations to my roommates.

[cdcox]

I wasn't always the most serious student as an undergrad.

I remember Organic Chem II pretty much like you do: a bunch of general rules with all kinds of exceptions. I would try to cram 2 days before the test and managed a C. But I felt like if I put more time into it I could have earned an A. It wasn't impenetrable.

The second semester of Physical Chemistry was the closest I ever came to dropping a course. The professor was Korean and a little bit difficult to understand, the book wasn't all that useful, and the material was difficult. I managed a C in that course. But I learned a lot of the material in that class in later classes and it isn't that bad.

I took a transport class as an under grad using Bird, Stewart and Lightfoot. The professor was really good, the textbook is considered a classic (but very dense!), and I actually tried to do well in the class. The thing was that I would work for hours on the homework without making much progress, come to class the next day, and the professor would invoke some advanced math (like Green's function), that we hadn't had yet.

My feeling is that most material can be learned if you've mastered all the the material leading up to it, you are motivated enough to learn it, and it is taught in an accessible way. Any time I have ran into difficulty it is because one or more of those three conditions have not been satisfied.

[Iconic]

Calc II, Gen Physics, and Gen Chem II.

Calc II is the only class I've dropped in the past three years I've been attending college. Absolute ball buster if you suck at integration like I do.

I enjoyed the concepts in Physics a lot but word problems coupled with numbers was never really my strong suit.

Chem wasn't a hard subject but the teacher was a total stuck up ****. Her exams often times made me wish my father had a vasectomy after he got married.

[displacedinMN]

Statistics

OMFG

Still have an F on the transcript from that.

I switched to education just after that.

[Buehler445]

Originally Posted by ThaVirus

As an aside, statistics online was some bullshit as well. I can't count the number of times I would submit the answer to the wrong decimal point (I'd answer .0034 but they were looking for .003) and get absolutely no credit for it. The instructions were often unclear and despite knowing the material and getting the "right" answer, I'd end up with no credit whatsoever. **** online math classes.

I never really had any trouble with the conceptual stuff in my degree field. But I didn't do anything out of the practical realm.

Toughest class I had to deal with was Marketing strategy. It wasn't hard. But the first 8 weeks we did NOTHING. The second 8 weeks we had to submit a strategy paper on a case Study every week. That wouldn't have been a problem at all if I wasn't working full time and taking a full time load. It didn't help I would go get ****ing smashed each week.

Toughest class to grasp was art history. I was a dumb freshman. I read the degree requirements. You had to take 2 of 3 of music exploration, theater appreciation, and music appreciation. But I read in the fine print that art history could be exchanged for one of those. So my dumbass self says to myself, "art history has to be better than art appreciation." What my worthless **** of an advisor didn't tell me was that it was a core class for the art program. Think Accounting I vs Personal Finance. No remember that I have an accountants brain. Art just doesn't fit. The teacher was good. It was interesting. But man. The art concepts were way out of what I could grasp. I ended up just writing down everything the instructor said studied my balls off.

Either class was very hard, but I was way too busy for one and the other was like a fish trying to fly.

[GoShox]

Graduated with a computer science major and math minor in December. I got D's in two classes: Calc III and Accounting 1. Calc III was pretty tough and my teacher wasn't the best... how I got a D in Accounting 1 I'll never understand. It was my sophomore year and apparently I had no motivation at all, cause I remember never going to class and never knowing anything on the tests lol

I took Calc III again my last semester and passed it pretty easily, probably thanks to a nice curve (got that in a lot of classes). I'd consider that the most frustrating because while some of my programming classes were tough, I knew they'd matter. Calc III was hard because I couldn't understand how it really relates to my major and what I'll do in the real world.

[siberian khatru]

Originally Posted by BigBeauford

Physics. It changed my entire major.

Same. Luckily I hit the wall junior year of high school. I had planned on being an engineer until I almost flunked physics. I passed only because I got an A on the final, which was a New York State Regents exam. It proved to be easy because it was all stuff the teacher taught the first month of the class. After that, he basically taught a college-level physics class.

I found the concepts fascinating, but I flat out couldn't do the math. I was like a drowning man.

So naturally I became a journalist instead.

[ping2000]

A class in political philosophy where the entire semester was focused on Hegel's The Phenomenology of Spirit. Consistently referenced as one of the hardest books to read on the planet. Sentences that were 12 pages long. This is the book that can cause brain tumors from strain.

[cdcox]

Originally Posted by ping2000

A class in political philosophy where the entire semester was focused on Hegel's The Phenomenology of Spirit. Consistently referenced as one of the hardest books to read on the planet. Sentences that were 12 pages long. This is the book that can cause brain tumors from strain.

I would write a computer program to break it up into shorter sentences and add some commas. BOOM A.

[SPATCH]

BS Biochem here. Biochemistry wasn't bad. O Chem II was definitely one of my harder courses.

But, hardest course, hands down, was Physical Chemistry. I consider myself to be VERY good at physics, but I struggled mightily with this course. I studied more for this course than any other course throughout my undergraduate (by a lot) and only got a C.

The professor was an absolute terror, though.

[Buehler445]

Originally Posted by ping2000

A class in political philosophy where the entire semester was focused on Hegel's The Phenomenology of Spirit. Consistently referenced as one of the hardest books to read on the planet. Sentences that were 12 pages long. This is the book that can cause brain tumors from strain.

LOL. WTF? That can't be proper English.

I've always been somewhat this way, but I very much deal in the practical. I can do abstract if it can be evaluated in practice. I'm far worse now that I'm self employed. If it can't help me make a decision, get it the **** out of my face. I just don't have any use for the abstract.

[Buehler445]

Originally Posted by siberian khatru

Same. Luckily I hit the wall junior year of high school. I had planned on being an engineer until I almost flunked physics. I passed only because I got an A on the final, which was a New York State Regents exam. It proved to be easy because it was all stuff the teacher taught the first month of the class. After that, he basically taught a college-level physics class.

I found the concepts fascinating, but I flat out couldn't do the math. I was like a drowning man.

So naturally I became a journalist instead.

I took physics and chemistry classes in high school. Fortunately for me the teacher was a far better math teacher than any math teacher in the building save one. I made it through it because the dude taught me math.

['Hamas' Jenkins]

Originally Posted by cdcox

Tenure track faculty in technical fields have to teach and conduct research. Usually someone is stronger than one area than another. We have to balance the two during searches. We can and do decide not to hire faculty based on poor communication skills -- there is no concern about discrimination lawsuits with respect to poor communication. A couple of our better rated teachers are native Chinese speakers.

I'm well acquainted w/ the responsibilities of tenure track faculty and the financial interests behind many hiring decisions. However, given the often horrendous speaking abilities of some of the professors, I think that most college students would far prefer instructional faculty that can communicate clearly, but faculty would rather have someone who has the possibility to bring in a great deal of grant funding through their research.

While the two aren't diametrically opposed, there are often cases where that happens.