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?

[MMXcalibur]

Java Programming

I can code in PHP/HTML/SQL all day. For some reason, Java is a massive asspain.
Managed a B grade, but oof.....I still suck at Java.

[MMXcalibur]

HONORABLE MENTION: Accounting I or II

I still can't believe I went through two of those courses and came away with zero knowledge and a passing grade. Accounts Receivable, Accounts Payable....blah blah blah, holy shit did those classes suck.

[jd1020]

Not sure any course has kicked my ass so far, but I'm still working on undergrad courses. I guess Composition classes for the time invested and the fact that I don't give a fuck about writing papers.

[stonedstooge]

Calculus. It was the ONLY class in my university career that I had to keep up with every day. Graduated with a Chemistry major and biology minor

[Unsmooth-Moment]

Accounting II and finance. Everything else was alright.

[O.city]

Microbial metabolism and physiology sucked. Virology was pretty difficult.

Inorganic chemistry though, by far, was my worst

[Brock]

I had a tough time with o chem.

[Easy 6]

Any class that involved math, nearly retarded when it comes to math.

But I did have the best grade out of 30+ people on my Psych 101 final in community college, the professor told me that, it was probably 2/3 adults in that night class... pretty proud of that.

My right brain is like a walnut, but my left is on roids.

[Third Eye]

For me, it was either Applied Econometrics or Advanced Linear Algebra. Frankly, I wasn't prepared for the Econometrics course. If I took it now, it wouldn't be nearly as hard. My math skills were not where they needed to be for the theoretical portion of that class. It didn't help that the prof made us use possibly the most antiquated statistical software for the applied part either.

Advanced Linear just had some brutal proofs.

[O.city]

I hated calculus. just hated it

['Hamas' Jenkins]

I hated calculus. just hated it

I just found it to be more of a PITA than anything. Finding a common factor for huge problems using the quotient rule was just mind-numbing.

[O.city]

I just wasn't good at it and had to work hard in it.

I have an close friend that's a mechanical engineer who's just a Calc wiz

[Hog's Gone Fishin]

Semen Calculus. Try to figure out how many sperms are in 100 mil semen when they're all moving 100 mph.

[TimBone]

Not sure any course has kicked my ass so far, but I'm still working on undergrad courses. I guess Composition classes for the time invested and the fact that I don't give a **** about writing papers.

I'm the exact oppposite. All the research is a bitch, but I feel much more satisfaction after finishing an English comp paper compared to some bullshit Philosophy paper.

['Hamas' Jenkins]

I just wasn't good at it and had to work hard in it.

I have an close friend that's a mechanical engineer who's just a Calc wiz

Here was a question from my recent final. I got the answer right, but it just pissed me off:

Which one of the following compounds adds twice to this molecule:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8b/Methyl_propionate.svg/75px-Methyl_propionate.svg.png

A. MeMgBr (a Grignard)
B. Me2CuLi (an organocuprate)
C. DIBAL (a source of hydride)
D. LDA (A nitrogen atom with two lone pairs and two isopropyl groups)
E. All of them will.

I added the info in (). We were told throughout the course that irreversible nucleophiles add twice to carboxylic acid derivatives. Also, LDA isn't technically irreversible, but essentially functions as an irreversible nucleophile.

[AustinChief]

Tough call but probably a statics class I had. The material wasn't terribly difficult but it wasn't as intuitive as one would hope and it was taught by a guy who spoke ridiculously bad English. He was almost completely unintelligible so the entire course had to be self taught.

[MMXcalibur]

Here was a question from my recent final. I got the answer right, but it just pissed me off:

Which one of the following compounds adds twice to this molecule:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8b/Methyl_propionate.svg/75px-Methyl_propionate.svg.png

A. MeMgBr (a Grignard)
B. Me2CuLi (an organocuprate)
C. DIBAL (a source of hydride)
D. LDA (A nitrogen atom with two lone pairs and two isopropyl groups)
E. All of them will.

I added the info in (). We were told throughout the course that irreversible nucleophiles add twice to carboxylic acid derivatives. Also, LDA isn't technically irreversible, but essentially functions as an irreversible nucleophile.

http://i806.photobucket.com/albums/yy346/KD3335/2mx2vcw.gif

[In58men]

Fuck you Spanish


Hablo.....habla....hablablahmos

[Rain Man]

I had no trouble at all doing the work in Differential Equations, but I stood in awe of the people who actually developed those methodologies.

Then I took a course beyond differential equations, and it was there that I threw up the only white flag of my academic career. It was some class that involved doing discontinuous Laplace Transforms. So if you're keeping the score ...

1. If it's a problem that regular calculus can't deal with, you go to differential equations.

2. Within differential equations, there was a particular methodology for certain problems that was called a Laplace Transform.

3. If Laplace Transforms didn't work because you were dealing with discontinuous equations, you entered the realm of this class.

I sat in it for perhaps three weeks and had literally no idea what was going on. Not only could I not understand the coursework, I couldn't even understand the problems that the coursework was trying to solve. It was the only time I ever dropped a course because I was terrified for my grade.


I took another course in structural dynamics that was a big game of Russian roulette, and it was terrifying for a while. The entire course was one big concept on how to set up equations to measure structural stresses in a complex structure (e.g., a one-piece car frame). It was kind of weird and mind-twisting, and you either got it or you didn't. The first month of that course was terrifying because it was a required course and I wasn't getting it, but finally the light blinked on right before the first test. A friend of mine had a very high gpa and actually went on academic probation because of that one class. The light never came on and he got a D, despite the fact that he was on track to graduate Magna cum Laude.

[TimBone]

I should add that all of mine have been undergrad courses as well. I'm going back to college after 13 years away from it. I haven't had much trouble aside from a Philosophy teacher that I believe graded toughr if you had an opposing view to him.

[AustinChief]

Here was a question from my recent final. I got the answer right, but it just pissed me off:

Which one of the following compounds adds twice to this molecule:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8b/Methyl_propionate.svg/75px-Methyl_propionate.svg.png

A. MeMgBr (a Grignard)
B. Me2CuLi (an organocuprate)
C. DIBAL (a source of hydride)
D. LDA (A nitrogen atom with two lone pairs and two isopropyl groups)
E. All of them will.

I added the info in (). We were told throughout the course that irreversible nucleophiles add twice to carboxylic acid derivatives. Also, LDA isn't technically irreversible, but essentially functions as an irreversible nucleophile.

So was the answer D? Not my field at all but A should be wrong so that eliminates E.

[Rain Man]

I hated calculus. just hated it


I loved calculus. Loved it. It was like creating art.

Unfortunately 30 years without doing has made my skills a bit rusty. As in, it's like I've never had it and have no idea how to do even the simplest problem now.

['Hamas' Jenkins]

Tough call but probably a statics class I had. The material wasn't terribly difficult but it wasn't as intuitive as one would hope and it was taught by a guy who spoke ridiculously bad English. He was almost completely unintelligible so the entire course had to be self taught.

That's awful. I've been really lucky to avoid instructors with ESL issues for the most part, although my Calculus prof knew of my background and was constantly asking me for spell checks when he wrote stuff on the board.

[TimBone]

Here was a question from my recent final. I got the answer right, but it just pissed me off:

Which one of the following compounds adds twice to this molecule:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8b/Methyl_propionate.svg/75px-Methyl_propionate.svg.png

A. MeMgBr (a Grignard)
B. Me2CuLi (an organocuprate)
C. DIBAL (a source of hydride)
D. LDA (A nitrogen atom with two lone pairs and two isopropyl groups)
E. All of them will.

I added the info in (). We were told throughout the course that irreversible nucleophiles add twice to carboxylic acid derivatives. Also, LDA isn't technically irreversible, but essentially functions as an irreversible nucleophile.

Well. I may as well quit college.

[Rain Man]

That's awful. I've been really lucky to avoid instructors with ESL issues for the most part, although my Calculus prof knew of my background and was constantly asking me for spell checks when he wrote stuff on the board.

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.

['Hamas' Jenkins]

So was the answer D? Not my field at all but A should be wrong so that eliminates E.

It's actually A.

A Grignard functions as a source of anionic carbon, so it is irreversible.

Here's where it gets hairy, though:

A cuprate is also an irreversible organometallic, but it follows different rules than the others (adds 1,4 rather than 1,2, and adds only once).

DIBAL is a hydride source. It's almost impossible to kick a hydride ion off a molecule, so it should add twice...but when added to a ketone it actually makes an aldehyde (which, because of the existing double bond to oxygen and the carbon bond, can't add twice because it would give carbon five bonds).

LDA, despite having a ridiculously high pKa still isn't irreversible, even though we treated it as such throughout the whole term.

So, despite the fact that all four were irreversible and the rule we were told is that irreversible nucleophiles add twice, only one of the aforementioned really added twice.

I was ready to spit fire after reading that question.

[AustinChief]

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.

Yeah, I wish someone had told me! It was my 1st semester at U-M so I was clueless at that point. I managed to avoid Chinese instructors from there on out.

[AustinChief]

It's actually A.

A Grignard functions as a source of anionic carbon, so it is irreversible.

Here's where it gets hairy, though:

A cuprate is also an irreversible organometallic, but it follows different rules than the others (adds 1,4 rather than 1,2, and adds only once).

DIBAL is a hydride source. It's almost impossible to kick a hydride ion off a molecule, so it should add twice...but when added to a ketone it actually makes an aldehyde (which, because of the existing double bond to oxygen and the carbon bond, can't add twice because it would give carbon five bonds).

LDA, despite having a ridiculously high pKa still isn't irreversible, even though we treated it as such throughout the whole term.

So, despite the fact that all four were irreversible and the rule we were told is that irreversible nucleophiles add twice, only one of the aforementioned really added twice.

I was ready to spit fire after reading that question.

HA Of course I got it EXACTLY wrong! I should have looked at what you wrote. I assumed carboxylic acid not a derivative. Good thing I stayed clear of organic!

[Easy 6]

**** you Spanish


Hablo.....habla....hablablahmos

Spanish has many similarities to English, I could learn that 10 times faster than when I tried French in high school... bahahaaa.

I totally gave up within two weeks.

['Hamas' Jenkins]

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.

It's just a matter of survival, especially in advanced classes like that. I do not envy being part of a search committee in advanced math courses. Really, those professors should almost never be hired as instructional faculty, because if you can't communicate, how can you teach, but they open themselves up to massive discrimination lawsuits if you do that. However, one of the things students evaluate instructors on (it's on the actual forms) is the clarity of their speaking and ease of communication.

[ThaVirus]

I have a Poli Sci degree so I can't say any class was all that tough.

If forced to choose, I'd probably say Freshman Comp or Politics and Civil Rights.

I wasn't a particularly good writer out of high school and still hate writing papers to this day, so Comp was tough. Politics and Civil Rights had interesting material so it wasn't hard but we had two separate 10 page research papers that semester. That was some bullshit.

[BigBeauford]

Physics. It changed my entire major.

[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. Fuck online math classes.

[O.city]

Calculus based physics was pretty mind numbing

['Hamas' Jenkins]

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. Fuck online math classes.

Sig figs, bruh. That did piss me off at first in gen Chem.

[O.city]

Biological statistics was stupid, like just dumb stupid

[O.city]

I hate Gen Chem 2, specifically the lab. Kinetics just was blah.

Added to the fact that I had to be on the course for golf practice after noon at that time, so I had the lab at 7 30 am.

[jd1020]

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 took stats with a TI-89 which apparently rounds differently than the 83/84 which was the "required" calculator and I missed points on tests because my calculator would round differently and the teacher was grading based on the results from his 83. Whatever, still finished with a 95%.

[O.city]

Hamas you'll find this out 10 times over, but therapeutics was fucking awful

[AustinChief]

Hamas you'll find this out 10 times over, but therapeutics was fucking awful

WTF is therapeutics??? Is that a pharmacology class?

[O.city]

How drugs work and what they actually do.

And there's a metric fuck ton of drugs

['Hamas' Jenkins]

I hate Gen Chem 2, specifically the lab. Kinetics just was blah.

Added to the fact that I had to be on the course for golf practice after noon at that time, so I had the lab at 7 30 am.

I didn't mind the Gem Chem 2 labs, although kinetics was no fun, especially the occasions when we had to use the quadratic formula.

I'm certainly not looking forward to a seven hour Pharmacotherapy III class, though.

[AustinChief]

How drugs work and what they actually do.

And there's a metric fuck ton of drugs

Gotcha. That's my mom and grandpas fields. (both pharmacists) Threw me off because I had no idea Hamas was doing a medical type degree. Shows how much I pay attention.

[O.city]

WTF is therapeutics??? Is that a pharmacology class?

And I just had a semester of it, basically, dental related drugs and the basic level of other drugs used everyday that I need to be able to recognize.

the best man in my wedding was in pharmacy school at the same time I was in dental school and seeing some of the shit they had to do, ugh.

[O.city]

I didn't mind the Gem Chem 2 labs, although kinetics was no fun, especially the occasions when we had to use the quadratic formula.

I'm certainly not looking forward to a seven hour Pharmacotherapy III class, though.

Yeah, they're 7 hour class was brutal

[AustinChief]

And I just had a semester of it, basically, dental related drugs and the basic level of other drugs used everyday that I need to be able to recognize.

the best man in my wedding was in pharmacy school at the same time I was in dental school and seeing some of the shit they had to do, ugh.

Well if anyone needs help with pharmacology studies just PM "acmom" (yes she has an account, sadly) She knows her shit. Got her degree in Clinical Pharmacology from KCMO.

['Hamas' Jenkins]

Gotcha. That's my mom and grandpas fields. (both pharmacists) Threw me off because I had no idea Hamas was doing a medical type degree. Shows how much I pay attention.

I'm going back. Finishing up my pre-reqs this summer, start pharm school proper in the fall. Went from a graduate school in the Humanities to professional school in the sciences. A one-third life crisis, I guess :shrug:

[Frosty]

My son just finished his first year of O Chem. Got a C first term but got a B this term. He gets into his core Chem E classes next year and is taking BioChem, Chem E Thermodynamics, Chem E 1 and another Chem E class I don't remember. It just blows my mind as I didn't like chemistry and those all sound insanely hard.

Out of my core Electrical Engineering classes, I had the most problems with Signals and System. It was all this antennae shit, Smith Charts and weird math.

I love math and blew through Calc, Diff EQ and other high math. However, I have a complete brain cramp when it comes to Probability and Statistics. For some reason, it just flat doesn't take for me.

[AustinChief]

I'm going back. Finishing up my pre-reqs this summer, start pharm school proper in the fall. Went from a graduate school in the Humanities to professional school in the sciences. A one-third life crisis, I guess :shrug:

Awesome man! Good luck.

[BigMeatballDave]

Recess

[Bob Dole]

Politics and Economics of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union.

Two full professors tag teaming us, each acting like they were the only prof.

No homework. Two exams. Midterm was 25%, final was 75%.

['Hamas' Jenkins]

My son just finished his first year of O Chem. Got a C first term but got a B this term. He gets into his core Chem E classes next year and is taking BioChem, Chem E Thermodynamics, Chem E 1 and another Chem E class I don't remember. It just blows my mind as I didn't like chemistry and those all sound insanely hard.

Out of my core Electrical Engineering classes, I had the most problems with Signals and System. It was all this antennae shit, Smith Charts and weird math.

I love math and blew through Calc, Diff EQ and other high math. However, I have a complete brain cramp when it comes to Probability and Statistics. For some reason, it just flat doesn't take for me.

I never took any advanced stats. I'm in awe of people who breeze through advanced Math, because, while I'm really good at floating calculations in my head, the clumsily-written nature of the proofs makes it hard for me to follow with much interest or understanding.

['Hamas' Jenkins]

Awesome man! Good luck.

Thanks!

This semester was a huge pain in the ass, because I was still teaching two courses while taking four, although one was a total joke of a class (Medical Terminology). I'm going to stop teaching while in school, so I'll actually have more time to devote to being a full-time student.

[Frosty]

I never took any advanced stats. I'm in awe of people who breeze through advanced Math, because, while I'm really good at floating calculations in my head, the clumsily-written nature of the proofs makes it hard for me to follow with much interest or understanding.

I thought Calc was really easy. Just clicked, I guess. I thought it was actually easier than Algebra. I took a Linear Algebra class where a problem might take 5-6 pages of steps to solve. Then you would do the same thing in Calculus and it take like 3 lines.

Statistics wasn't hard but for some reason, probability doesn't work for me at all.

['Hamas' Jenkins]

I thought Calc was really easy. Just clicked, I guess. I thought it was actually easier than Algebra. I took a Linear Algebra class where a problem might take 5-6 pages of steps to solve. Then you would do the same thing in Calculus and it take like 3 lines.

Statistics wasn't hard but for some reason, probability doesn't work for me at all.

Have you ever heard of Math 55? I guess that, while Harvard's math program isn't considered as rigorous as a few other places, that course is supposed to be an absolute slaughterhouse.

Here is a link to a problem set:

http://isites.harvard.edu/fs/docs/icb.topic92739.files/ps9.pdf

[Rain Man]

I love math and blew through Calc, Diff EQ and other high math. However, I have a complete brain cramp when it comes to Probability and Statistics. For some reason, it just flat doesn't take for me.

I'm kind of the same way. Love all of the math stuff and I actually really dig probability though I've had very little training in it. But inferential statistics just don't click for me. Granted, I've had very little training in it, but something about it isn't intuitive for me.

[prhom]

Physics II was the hardest. Never have I worked so hard and gotten so little in return. Ended up doing alright, but only because they adjusted grades at the end of the semester. Hardest class I never finished was Arabic. I dropped that one after two weeks because I couldn't even pronounce the alphabet properly.

[Rain Man]

Physics II was the hardest. Never have I worked so hard and gotten so little in return. Ended up doing alright, but only because they adjusted grades at the end of the semester. Hardest class I never finished was Arabic. I dropped that one after two weeks because I couldn't even pronounce the alphabet properly.

Is it true that they put out a death warrant on you if you drop that course?

[seamonster]

Java Programming

I can code in PHP/HTML/SQL all day. For some reason, Java is a massive asspain.
Managed a B grade, but oof.....I still suck at Java.

I can remember taking my first Java class and there were a few of those double nutter questions (recursive algorithm in Java 100) but other than that I thought it was way simpler than the JavaScript\Functional programming languages that have taken over. I'd take Java any day over ES5 closure insanity that is modern web development.

[Frosty]

Have you ever heard of Math 55? I guess that, while Harvard's math program isn't considered as rigorous as a few other places, that course is supposed to be an absolute slaughterhouse.

Here is a link to a problem set:

http://isites.harvard.edu/fs/docs/icb.topic92739.files/ps9.pdf

It's been more than 20 years since I've used anything more than basic algebra. This looks like Greek now. LMAO

The thing I liked about Calc was how it integrated so nicely into the real world. Differentials are basically rates of change and integrals were roughly the average (area under the curve) of a function.

[Third Eye]

Have you ever heard of Math 55? I guess that, while Harvard's math program isn't considered as rigorous as a few other places, that course is supposed to be an absolute slaughterhouse.

Here is a link to a problem set:

http://isites.harvard.edu/fs/docs/icb.topic92739.files/ps9.pdf

While those problems sound hard, they are really not.

[seamonster]

I was surprised at the sheer amount of s' I had to go through in Statistics. Calc and Calc II were challenging but the boat load of material my Stats class went through was out of control. I remember taking the mid term, driving to the grocery store, and walking around like a zombie in search of 12% blackout stout.

[cosmo20002]

Linguistics. Graduate-level class that I didn't need at all but took as an elective because I though it would be interesting. Undergrads in the class were graded on a curve so my D-range grade ended up an A.

Honorable mention:
An Econ class taught by a teaching assistant with an Asian accent so thick I couldn't understand a goddam word. I and many others had to drop the class. That was some bullshit.

[Frosty]

I was originally going to into Power Engineering but the power systems guy at OS was this old crusty guy that totally stuck in the past. Almost all of the homework was to be solved by writing programs in Fortran. Even then, nobody taught Fortran and we were all clueless. I ended up switching to control systems and am now glad that I did.

['Hamas' Jenkins]

Linguistics. Graduate-level class that I didn't need at all but took as an elective because I though it would be interesting. Undergrads were in the class were graded on a curve so my D-range grade ended up an A..

I fucking hated Linguistics. Hated it.

[Mike in SW-MO]

Circuits.
Studied my ASS off. Got a 28% on the first test & had highest score in the class. Rest of the semester was similar.
Passed.
Moved on.

[Sweet Daddy Hate]

"Reading Hootie 101"

Just...

fucking...

brutal.

[lewdog]

Mine was Anatomy and Physiology with weekly cadaver labs for an entire year. I absolutely loved the cadaver labs. We had access to both a female and male body and it was a very cool experience learning the body this way.

It was considered one of the hardest undergraduate classes though. It's not the material or the cadaver part, but she wrote the most horrible multiple choices test I have ever seen. Is it A, B, C, D, A/B, ABC, All the above? Shit like that on every question. Questions on the smallest details. Average scores on her lecture tests were near 50% for the only anatomy class for Athletic Training, Physical Therapy and Pre-Med students. I smoked everything on the cadaver labs to boost my score to a B each semester (80% exact) even though my lecture test scores were in the 60%. Close to 25% of the students ended up having to retake the whole course which was a whole year again! Many of them switched majors because of it. My lowest grade I ever received in undergrad or graduate school was a B in each semester of this class.

[Sweet Daddy Hate]

Hamas, I thought you were a teacher or something?

If I recall correctly, when I came here in 2008, you were in school at that time.

Professional student? Masters degree?

WTF, man?

[ghak99]

Here was a question from my recent final. I got the answer right, but it just pissed me off:

Which one of the following compounds adds twice to this molecule:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8b/Methyl_propionate.svg/75px-Methyl_propionate.svg.png

A. MeMgBr (a Grignard)
B. Me2CuLi (an organocuprate)
C. DIBAL (a source of hydride)
D. LDA (A nitrogen atom with two lone pairs and two isopropyl groups)
E. All of them will.

I added the info in (). We were told throughout the course that irreversible nucleophiles add twice to carboxylic acid derivatives. Also, LDA isn't technically irreversible, but essentially functions as an irreversible nucleophile.

I have a feeling I sat in the back of this class several years ago completely ****ing lost for a whole three lectures.

1st lecture... Man, he's a little hard to understand and I'm not following.
2nd lecture.. I didn't understand a damn thing that man said. Hmm, she's cute.
3rd lecture.. The cute girl is gone. What the **** am I still doing here. :bolt:

It was the only course I blew out of knowing I was completely in over my head with at Mizzou.

[Frosty]

Circuits.
Studied my ASS off. Got a 28% on the first test & had highest score in the class. Rest of the semester was similar.
Passed.
Moved on.

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.

['Hamas' Jenkins]

Hamas, I thought you were a teacher or something?

If I recall correctly, when I came here in 2008, you were in school at that time.

Professional student? Masters degree?

WTF, man?

BA from '00-'04
MA from '05-'07
Taught from there.
Pharm D. beginning in '15.

[AustinChief]

Oh honorable mention here was an easy class called "Engineering Computing" (or some such). The professor was ancient and decided that since he had to learn on PUNCH CARDS he would make us at least do one project that way. It was bad enough that we had to learn Fortran 77 (so named because 1977 was the last major update).. but PUNCH CARDS??!??

Not a hard class but hard to care anything about something so completely useless, yet required for all engineering students.

[Willie Lanier]

I'd have to say "religious history"

That class was insanely interesting, but throwing all of those theologies into 1 semester was unfair, both to the students and the religions

[Red Beans]

Finite Math. From Kindergarten to my Masters, it was the only F I ever earned.

[Molitoth]

Took Calc I at university and hated it. Thought to myself... really? I need calc III to graduate? eff this.

Went to programming trade school and coded straight A's until I finished my degree.

Gen Eds like calc are a bunch of bullshit nonsense.

['Hamas' Jenkins]

Oh honorable mention here was an easy class called "Engineering Computing" (or some such). The professor was ancient and decided that since he had to learn on PUNCH CARDS he would make us at least do one project that way. It was bad enough that we had to learn Fortran 77 (so named because 1977 was the last major update).. but PUNCH CARDS??!??

Not a hard class but hard to care anything about something so completely useless, yet required for all engineering students.

Maybe the crazy old bastard was a fan of the IBM punch card system the Nazis used to catalog prisoners in death camps.

[Sweet Daddy Hate]

BA from '00-'04
MA from '05-'07
Taught from there.
Pharm D. beginning in '15.

Niiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiice.

[ghak99]

Seems like I remember a physiology class that had single questions as tests.

The class was massively confusing, but if you could bullshit your way around the concepts involved in the processes he'd circle some shit and mark out some stuff and you'd end up near the top of the curve because half the class was in the 25-30% range with many never even having a clue how to answer the question.

Cute girls with large breasts seemed to get their test grades raised via one on one discussions. The only time I tried it I'm pretty sure I left his office with a lower score. LMAO

[BucEyedPea]

Physics

[Mizzou_8541]

Here was a question from my recent final. I got the answer right, but it just pissed me off:

Which one of the following compounds adds twice to this molecule:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8b/Methyl_propionate.svg/75px-Methyl_propionate.svg.png

A. MeMgBr (a Grignard)
B. Me2CuLi (an organocuprate)
C. DIBAL (a source of hydride)
D. LDA (A nitrogen atom with two lone pairs and two isopropyl groups)
E. All of them will.

I added the info in (). We were told throughout the course that irreversible nucleophiles add twice to carboxylic acid derivatives. Also, LDA isn't technically irreversible, but essentially functions as an irreversible nucleophile.

http://i.imgur.com/TA3Rgu7.gif

[MagicHef]

Vibrations. I think I blocked all my memories of it, because the only thing I remember was the one day that I wrecked my bike on the way to class and sat there quietly bleeding on my desk.

[AustinChief]

Maybe the crazy old bastard was a fan of the IBM punch card system the Nazis used to catalog prisoners in death camps.

HA! He was old enough to have worked on it for all I know.

Only cool part of the class was when he had a guest prof teach for a week. Guy was from my specialization, aerospace, and we learned about the giant water tunnel at U-M for testing submarines for the military.

[lewdog]

We had a professor in grad school who gave us 100 question True/False tests. Every question was True or False. He then would make you turn them in where he sat at a table in the front of the class. He'd put his answer sheet over yours and make the most obvious, arm jerking movement for each checkmark he had to make, so the whole class could see how many you were missing. I admired how much of a dick he was for some reason because I thought it was a pretty genius way to humiliate students like that. Like a CP thing to do.

[prhom]

Is it true that they put out a death warrant on you if you drop that course?

Hah, good one! But this was pre-September 11, so things seemed different.

[BullJunkandIron]

http://i806.photobucket.com/albums/yy346/KD3335/2mx2vcw.gif

I would get mad at that too.

[TrebMaxx]

I would tell ya but I don't have any class! "badabing"

Truthfully, Logic messed me over.

[cdcox]

It's just a matter of survival, especially in advanced classes like that. I do not envy being part of a search committee in advanced math courses. Really, those professors should almost never be hired as instructional faculty, because if you can't communicate, how can you teach, but they open themselves up to massive discrimination lawsuits if you do that. However, one of the things students evaluate instructors on (it's on the actual forms) is the clarity of their speaking and ease of communication.

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.

[prhom]

We had a professor in grad school who gave us 100 question True/False tests. Every question was True or False. He then would make you turn them in where he sat at a table in the front of the class. He'd put his answer sheet over yours and make the most obvious, arm jerking movement for each checkmark he had to make, so the whole class could see how many you were missing. I admired how much of a dick he was for some reason because I thought it was a pretty genius way to humiliate students like that. Like a CP thing to do.

That IS a dick move. My favorite test memory was in Fluid Mechanics. They handed out the tests and this guy next to me puts his name on the top and starts flipping through the test sheet by sheet. I figure he's just sizing it up and deciding where to start. He gets to the end, mumbles something, calmly stands up and starts walking to the prof's desk. By now everyone is watching to see what he's doing. He reaches the desk, places the test on the desk and just walks out! Never seen anything like it. Most people just wouldn't show up at all if they were that unprepared.

[rico]

Med Surg 1.

[Mike in SW-MO]

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]

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]

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. Fuck 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 fucking 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 fuck 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]

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]

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]

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 Fuck out of my face. I just don't have any use for the abstract.

[Buehler445]

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]

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.

[ThaVirus]

I'm not an abstract thinker either. That's probably another reason I struggled with Comp.

Say what you mean, motherfucker!

['Hamas' Jenkins]

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.

We read large chunks of Phenomenology in my basic Lit Theory class in grad school. Hegel is a terrible writer, but the Master-Slave dialectic and the dialectic itself are tremendously valuable concepts that I used consistently while teaching.

['Hamas' Jenkins]

I'm not an abstract thinker either. That's probably another reason I struggled with Comp.

Say what you mean, motherfucker!

If you had a good Comp instructor that should be the primary focus of the course.

College Comp is about clarity, concision, support, and vividness. Far too often students ramble on for a paragraph thinking that they are thinking abstractly when they are really just vague. The beauty of precise writing is that it actually allows you to be far more descriptive because you can fit more information in the same space.

I have a lot of students who think making heavy use of a thesaurus and using purple prose that their lazy high school English teachers praised for the vocab (often laced with malapropisms) means that they're excellent writers.

[cdcox]

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.

I'll point out that schools that emphasize teaching and de-emphasize research do not generate better student outcomes than schools that have a balanced teaching and research mission. Sure there are confounding factors, but in our current socio-economic system, the balanced teaching and research approach is the educational model of choice for students in technical fields considering cost, the quality of instruction, and student outcomes.

[Rain Man]

That IS a dick move. My favorite test memory was in Fluid Mechanics. They handed out the tests and this guy next to me puts his name on the top and starts flipping through the test sheet by sheet. I figure he's just sizing it up and deciding where to start. He gets to the end, mumbles something, calmly stands up and starts walking to the prof's desk. By now everyone is watching to see what he's doing. He reaches the desk, places the test on the desk and just walks out! Never seen anything like it. Most people just wouldn't show up at all if they were that unprepared.


We give skills tests to job candidates at my company, and I had a candidate do that once. The funny thing is that he had some souped-up turbocharged resume that was really impressive, and the test sliced through that fakery like it was a samurai sword.

[Rain Man]

I have to say through all this discussion that weed-out classes are a really good thing. I think the concept of the "Gentleman's C" really dilutes the power of a degree. While a college degree is obviously the best way to build one's skills (at least in my field), having a degree isn't a guarantee that someone has those skills, and that's unfortunate for everyone.

['Hamas' Jenkins]

I'll point out that schools that emphasize teaching and de-emphasize research do not generate better student outcomes than schools that have a balanced teaching and research mission. Sure there are confounding factors, but in our current socio-economic system, the balanced teaching and research approach is the educational model of choice for students in technical fields considering cost, the quality of instruction, and student outcomes.

It's not a matter of de-emphasizing research, but seeking candidates for their research skills alone who are poor communicators is a recipe for disaster for the students, as you often end up with horror stories as illustrated in this thread.

[cdcox]

In our UG program, I coordinate a class that prepares students to pass the Fundamentals of Engineers exam, which is an external board exam that is a step toward professional registration. The class essentially functions as a cumulative exam for our degree program. I've had several students that have had to repeat that class to graduate, some multiple times. Passing the class is not an extremely high bar, but it at least ensures some minimum level of competency as students walk out the door.

['Hamas' Jenkins]

I have to say through all this discussion that weed-out classes are a really good thing. I think the concept of the "Gentleman's C" really dilutes the power of a degree. While a college degree is obviously the best way to build one's skills (at least in my field), having a degree isn't a guarantee that someone has those skills, and that's unfortunate for everyone.

You're absolutely right about the degree.

Here is something that bothers me about classes structured like the one I took: I just managed to cobble an A out of it, but someone could sit through that entire semester, get a 46% in the course, and end up with a C. Sure, that isn't going to look great on a transcript, but given the nature of Organic as a weed out class for med students in particular, many schools will take that candidate with a C because of the assumption that Organic is hard.

What worries me isn't the difficulty of the weed-out class itself, but how you get to that difficulty. Questions like the one I posted earlier are certainly difficult, but I think they are terrible metrics for actually evaluating knowledge, but because the class sizes are so large, instructors are forced to give MC tests rather than grade an exam from 300-400 students.

[BigRedChief]

Physics with lab.

Had to design the strongest bridge possible with the parameters and tools he gave us. Had to hold X amount of weight. What he didn't tell you is that you had to be perfect to achieve his goal in the class.

[Rain Man]

In our UG program, I coordinate a class that prepares students to pass the Fundamentals of Engineers exam, which is an external board exam that is a step toward professional registration. The class essentially functions as a cumulative exam for our degree program. I've had several students that have had to repeat that class to graduate, some multiple times. Passing the class is not an extremely high bar, but it at least ensures some minimum level of competency as students walk out the door.

That's pretty cool.

Is that the new name for the old "Engineer In Training" exam? I never took it because my career field didn't require it, and I've since regretted not taking it. But at the time it was a situation where it would be bad to fail it and there was nothing to gain by taking it.

[cdcox]

It's not a matter of de-emphasizing research, but seeking candidates for their research skills alone who are poor communicators is a recipe for disaster for the students, as you often end up with horror stories as illustrated in this thread.

My point is that schools that de-emphasize research and presumably have better communicators as faculty as a result, do not get better results.

[cdcox]

That's pretty cool.

Is that the new name for the old "Engineer In Training" exam? I never took it because my career field didn't require it, and I've since regretted not taking it. But at the time it was a situation where it would be bad to fail it and there was nothing to gain by taking it.

Yep. You would not have failed it.

[bowener]

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 was actually coming in here to post this very same thing. Hegel can be such a bitch to read and comprehend. Too fucking dense to read more than a few pages without wanting to gouge your eyes out. The funny thing is, one of my favorite books I've read is a break down of Hegelian philosophy and how Marx flipped it on its head. It is written by Charles Taylor I believe.

Second most difficult class would be stats or possibly a high level phil course that covered only Kant (taught by Robert Johnson), which isn't terrible, but it was taught to us as if we already had a full understanding of his work, which the majority of us did not. We spent the second half of the semester pouring over an unpublished manuscript by a Harvard professor that was best buds with our professor.

['Hamas' Jenkins]

My point is that schools that de-emphasize research and presumably have better communicators as faculty as a result, do not get better results.

This is breaking down into a chicken-egg argument.

I could easily point out that Tier-I research institutions, Public Ivies and the like generally attract the most motivated students, and thus, those likely to get better results regardless.

Conversely, schools with the lowest faculty-student ratios, and thus, the most one-on-one communication tend to have better educational outcomes, less student stress and anxiety (and more satisfaction) because they are able to establish a rapport with the instructor and they become more emotionally invested than as a face in the crowd. Additionally, clear enunciation and effective communication are discrete.

In a college course, you can be a clear speaker but not a good communicator.

[prhom]

That's pretty cool.

Is that the new name for the old "Engineer In Training" exam? I never took it because my career field didn't require it, and I've since regretted not taking it. But at the time it was a situation where it would be bad to fail it and there was nothing to gain by taking it.

That is the new name for it, though I preferred EIT to FE. Had a better ring to it. I decided to take it, and passed, but haven't taken the next step to become a PE. There would be some benefit to it in my field, but it wouldn't result in a pay raise or better job. Someday I hope to do it, but need to be able to commit the time to study for it and do it right.

['Hamas' Jenkins]

I was actually coming in here to post this very same thing. Hegel can be such a bitch to read and comprehend. Too fucking dense to read more than a few pages without wanting to gouge your eyes out. The funny thing is, one of my favorite books I've read is a break down of Hegelian philosophy and how Marx flipped it on its head. It is written by Charles Taylor I believe.

Second most difficult class would be stats or possibly a high level phil course that covered only Kant (taught by Robert Johnson), which isn't terrible, but it was taught to us as if we already had a full understanding of his work, which the majority of us did not. We spent the second half of the semester pouring over an unpublished manuscript by a Harvard professor that was best buds with our professor.

Have you ever read The Arcades Project? Benjamin left it unfinished before his death. It's probably the single most impenetrable thing I've tried to read. We spent about half the semester on it in a Grad-level course I took in High Modernism as an undergrad.

[Nzoner]

I socialized so much in college I actually flunked weightlifting because it was at 9 in the morning.

[CoMoChief]

I socialized so much in college I actually flunked weightlifting because it was at 9 in the morning.

I got a D in beginning swimming in HS. (and I was on the swim team)

I hardly ever went to that class. It was my Sr year and I just really didn't care either way. Already was accepted in my college.

[mdchiefsfan]

Calculus. It was the ONLY class in my university career that I had to keep up with every day. Graduated with a Chemistry major and biology minor

You are a god, sir!!! :p

[Ming the Merciless]

Not the hardest but interesting story

I was getting ready to graduate, and realized I forgot to take an upper division elective in history...

I went to a fairly small school, and so the offerings were fairly limited...and I realized I was pretty much stuck taking a REALLY hard professor in some world history class I thought I would ace ... since I figured it would be mainly writing and tests....

My plan was basically to take the class and ace it or if I didnt ace it, I was going to switch to credit / no credit (I dunno if they still do this, but we were allowed a couple of credit/no credit courses..)

So any way I go in the class, and the guy basically introduces himself and asks everyone to introduce themselves...and EVERYONE barring me was a history major.....there wasn't one person in this upper division class who wasn't...

So when I tell them I'm not a history major I could see and feel that this guy had it out for me, right away.

Basically if you are even still reading this, I'll try and shorten it HAHA...

So the guy proceeds to give me C's on papers and ding me on some tests.....I really feel like he had it in for me because I wasn't a history major, but I did have my backup plan (cred/no cred)...So I went to the office or whatever the ****, and signed up for credit no credit.

A couple weeks went by and he mustve realized what I had done ..like received some kind of notification...I mean all I had to do was get a C to get credit, and it wouldnt even **** up my Cum Laude honors...

Well he started torching everything I wrote after that, giving me C-'s and D's even. At this point I knew he was out for blood...he didnt want some non history major breezing by credit/no credit in his elite upper division world history club

The day of the final (which I studied my ass off for) I realized I needed to get a B- on the final to get credit for the class..otherwise I would have to find another shitty history class to take ..and maybe not be able to take it cr/no cred

I show up for the final...we were allowed to bring our own books....( I think my paper was about Mussolini / Italy around WW2) and if we used anything from our books we had to cite the sources as endnotes or whatever the **** and then do a list of works cited at the end....

I'm getting nearly done with this beheamoth and I panic because I am running out of room (do they even use bluebooks anymore?) and this dickhead wasn't the kind of guy to let me use paper if I went over...

So I barely get it done in the bluebook , turn that mother****er in.....

and I go home, and about 2 hours later realize that I FORGOT to ****ing list all my references , and page numbers etc...I had just put like (1) and (2) in the text, and was planning on putting them in after I finished my thoughts.

Well, I knew I was ****ed. There was no way I was going to get credit, and I was going to have to take another ****ing history class on top of an already slammed last semester...

I half way thought about trying to call him or talk to him, but I was resigned to my fate......

So a couple weeks later I go to campus to look on the window and I look down at the names...Ahh pawnmower.....B+ on the final

WTF

easy last semester & cum laude

to this day I do not know if he ever even read ANY of my papers because he gave me a B+ on a rushed piece of shit with no sources and was giving me C's and D's on shit I actually tried on....


Not my hardest class but probably the shittiest and most asshole of a professor

[TimBone]

Have you ever heard of Math 55? I guess that, while Harvard's math program isn't considered as rigorous as a few other places, that course is supposed to be an absolute slaughterhouse.

Here is a link to a problem set:

http://isites.harvard.edu/fs/docs/icb.topic92739.files/ps9.pdf
Dear lord.....wtf is wrong with those people? Remember yesterday when you told me you couldn't read Chuck Palahniuk's Guts without having to lay down? Well, that's where I'm at after reading two of those problems.

[-King-]

Calculus. Not necessarily because it was hard, but because I was TOTALLY not ready for it. My advisor told me I should skip pre calc because I did very well on the math portion of the ACT and I was a A student in most of my math classes including college algebra.

I got in there and literally had no idea what the fuck was going on. There was a professor saying words I'd never heard of in an accent so thick that we probably would have understood him better if he taught in Indian vs. English. I lasted a week before dropping it and picking up pre calc.

But yeah, for classes like those, I learned to pretty much much avoid ESL professors. I had a Korean professor a couple semesters ago for a Psych 322 class. I only understood every 5 words but 99% of what she taught was in the textbook or in the powerpoints so I breezed through even though I couldn't really understand her.

[BlackHelicopters]

I tested out of Calc I and Calc II as a college freshman. Thus, was placed in Calc III as a freshman at Mizzou. I got a C, but had to stay on top of material everyday .

[ping2000]

We read large chunks of Phenomenology in my basic Lit Theory class in grad school. Hegel is a terrible writer, but the Master-Slave dialectic and the dialectic itself are tremendously valuable concepts that I used consistently while teaching.


I remember sitting outside the same class right before an exam. We were discussing Modernity. A girl came up to us and interrupted in broken english, "I am also confused by this "maternity". I don't know for sure, but I don't think she passed.

[beach tribe]

Autodesk Advanced Solid/Assembly Modeling.
The entire course load wasn't that big, but the frustration in completing some of the advanced polygon assemblies in time was nervous breakdown inducing.

[loochy]

Algorithm Analysis and Complexity Theory was tough. It was just hard in general.

Mechanics was a killer too. We had a professor from Poland named Kowalski. He was very hard to understand and very stern and angry. I got a 7 on the first test.

['Hamas' Jenkins]

I remember sitting outside the same class right before an exam. We were discussing Modernity. A girl came up to us and interrupted in broken english, "I am also confused by this "maternity". I don't know for sure, but I don't think she passed.

There was a cute German girl in several of my classes my first year of grad school. One day we were talking outside of class and she stopped to get a drink from the fountain. She started talking about how interesting water fountains were and that she never saw them in Germany. Then, I told her about how they used to be segregated. She was stunned by this.

Given her ancestry, I was more than a little amused.

[Fish]

Thermodynamics. I thought that course was going to kill me. Only one professor taught it, and he was a sonofabitch...

[Discuss Thrower]

Western Political Thought.


It was philosophy. Six short papers over philosophy. Aristotle, Thomas More, Locke, Rawls.. et cetera.


I got a decent grade in the class and I'm not sure how because I never got a firm handle on half the coursework. Hated it at the time but in hindsight it was one of the more important classes I took from a wholistic standpoint because it got you thinking about how people (in this case, political scholars) used to think. You become a lot more understanding of other people's decisions once you realize that they are making said decisions from (possibly) a completely different standpoint than you are.

Runner up was the section of a postmodern literature class where we spent 7 weeks discussing Gravity's Rainbow

[BeeHo]

Thermodynamics. I thought that course was going to kill me. Only one professor taught it, and he was a sonofabitch...

Seconded on thermodynamics. And fkn quantum mechanics. My mind as blown away.

[Chieficus]

One of my freshman meteorology classes at Oklahoma--designed to weed out the twister fan boys; taught by a Prof named Josh Wurman (of the discovery channel's Storm Chasers first couple of seasons).

Wrote into the syllabus: "I prefer test averages around 50%."

Leaving a question on a test blank would net zero points, guessing and getting it wrong would net negative points--best to not guess.

On our midterm, the average was less than 40%, and we got 10% free just for writing our names and student id on each page. He also began that class day by playing music for five minutes from a tape that contained kids singing about wanting to grow up to be meteorologists. It was a bit sadistic...

[Bufkin]

Probably molecular biophysics for my Masters program.

[Frosty]

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.

Where I went to school, Physics was known as "Pre-Business" among the engineering students. When I got a D on my first exam, I know I considered it. :doh!:

[RealSNR]

Underwater basketweaving

[cdcox]

Underwater basketweaving

It sounds easy, but people underestimate that whole no oxygen thing.

[DrRyan]

I agree 100% with Hamas on this one. I absolutely hated both Organic I and II, but II was much worse. That said, I enjoyed biochem, had no problems with it. The biochem professor was the definition of a hardass, but very good. The Organic teacher was awful, "read the chapter, figure it out" kind of guy.

[O.city]

I didn't think biochem was that terrible

['Hamas' Jenkins]

I agree 100% with Hamas on this one. I absolutely hated both Organic I and II, but II was much worse. That said, I enjoyed biochem, had no problems with it. The biochem professor was the definition of a hardass, but very good. The Organic teacher was awful, "read the chapter, figure it out" kind of guy.

I actually liked the classes right up until the last month. Our Organic II professor was great in class, but he had his own instructional method that differed from the book just enough to always make me anxious as to how effective just doing a lot of book problems would be, because he often had us just read half a chapter.

Also, a lot of our questions focused more on reagents than mechanisms, which I think forces more brute memorization than understanding the interactions of the molecules.

He would assign problems from the text, so I made sure to do those, but I don't know if it was actually enough practice.

Overall, I thought he was an excellent professor save for the evaluation methods, which relied far too heavily upon trickery.

I didn't think biochem was that terrible

That's good; I've heard a lot of horror stories about that class.

[ChiefRocka]

discrete mathematics

[O.city]

I actually liked the classes right up until the last month. Our Organic II professor was great in class, but he had his own instructional method that differed from the book just enough to always make me anxious as to how effective just doing a lot of book problems would be, because he often had us just read half a chapter.

Also, a lot of our questions focused more on reagents than mechanisms, which I think forces more brute memorization than understanding the interactions of the molecules.

He would assign problems from the text, so I made sure to do those, but I don't know if it was actually enough practice.

Overall, I thought he was an excellent professor save for the evaluation methods, which relied far too heavily upon trickery.



That's good; I've heard a lot of horror stories about that class.

hell I took biochemical twice, once in undergrad, then in dental school. It was somewhat similar to organic With bioactive reactions instead of what you get in organic.

[el borracho]

Any class that does not interest you will seem difficult.

[loochy]

Any class that does not interest you will seem difficult.

I was not interested in art history. It was quite easy.

[mlyonsd]

I actually liked the classes right up until the last month. Our Organic II professor was great in class, but he had his own instructional method that differed from the book just enough to always make me anxious as to how effective just doing a lot of book problems would be, because he often had us just read half a chapter.

Also, a lot of our questions focused more on reagents than mechanisms, which I think forces more brute memorization than understanding the interactions of the molecules.

He would assign problems from the text, so I made sure to do those, but I don't know if it was actually enough practice.

Overall, I thought he was an excellent professor save for the evaluation methods, which relied far too heavily upon trickery.



That's good; I've heard a lot of horror stories about that class.It sounds like you go to the same school as my son. He said just about the same thing about his Ochem II class this last semester.

[Bearcat]

Calc II... I heard those who took III said II was the most difficult. Part of the problem was I took Calc I as a freshman and II as a senior.... got a 46 on the first test, easily the worst at any level, and busted my ass to get a high B.

Sadly, it wasn't until then I truly realized how much I should have been studying and applying myself for the previous four, er five years.

[BucEyedPea]

I was not interested in art history. It was quite easy.

That's usually an elective right? You had to choose it for a reason.

['Hamas' Jenkins]

It sounds like you go to the same school as my son. He said just about the same thing about his Ochem II class this last semester.

I took this class at Mizzou.

[lewdog]

I took Statistics as part of some weird thing they called a symbolic systems to get out of taking a year of foreign language or an art class. Not sure how many did that but I like math more than either of those, although I later became a speech therapist, so a foreign language class like Spanish might have come in handy! ROFL

Reliving the glory days here Hamas. Thanks!

[mlyonsd]

I took this class at Mizzou.
SDSMT. So the take away from us uneducated is Ochem sucks.

[Pepe Silvia]

I know I'm going to get slammed but I was a retard when it came to Geometry, I even had to be tutored in order to pass.