# Hardest classes you've taken



## Yellow Shirt Guy (Jun 20, 2018)

Discuss what are the hardest coursework you've taken in secondary or post secondary college, for me it would be Intermediate algebra.


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## Coconut Gun (Jun 20, 2018)

All my classes were easy because I'm smart and college is fucking easy if you give half a shit.


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## AnOminous (Jun 20, 2018)

Federal Jurisdiction.  It's actually really fucking tough.


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## Hell0 (Jun 20, 2018)

the class that is my dick, inside ya mom


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## Draza (Jun 20, 2018)

Lucky for me, i never had a hard class.  Feels weird


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## Sperglord Dante (Jun 21, 2018)

- Structural Analysis
- Dynamics
- Fluid Mechanics
- Differential Equations
- Earthquake Engineering
- Hand Fucking Drafting


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## PlasticOwls (Jun 21, 2018)

I took visual communications 1 thinking it'll be easy, and I had to learn how to draw cars and spaceships by week 3.


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## millais (Jun 21, 2018)

advanced organic chemistry was hands down the hardest for me. Even though the vast majority of people with half a brain are able to work it all out in the end, i could never wrap my head around any of it except the parts that directly overlapped with biochemistry, which gave me enough points for passing grade

There were a lot of other difficult courses at much higher levels, but I never felt so clueless and inadequate as in advanced organic chemistry. Everything else I either did or could have eventually mastered given the proper investment of effort and attention, but not so with the advanced organic chemistry.


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## PsychoNerd054 (Jun 21, 2018)

Calculus 2 is apparently considered one of the hardest subjects in my school. I'm currently taking it as a summer class, and it really isn't that bad. You just need to give half a shit to do well.


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## DumbDosh (Jun 21, 2018)

I took a state and local governments class as an elective but was too cheap to buy the book, that made it way harder.


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## UselessRubberKeyboard (Jun 21, 2018)

Politics and policies of the EU was hard, mostly because it was so fucking boring (and sadly, compulsory).
Politics and protest in postwar Italy was a fucking _bastard_.  Never, never study Italian politics if you want to remain sane.   It defies all logic and understanding.
I did a double-weighted course on the Russian Revolution.  Simultaneously the most interesting and one of the hardest courses I've done, only partly due to having to memorise (literally) two books' worth of Lenin's speeches, letters and political writing.  Dude seriously needed to have his underlining privileges revoked (if you've ever read copies of his writing, you'll know exactly what I mean).

Knot theory.  Why I did a maths course I dunno.


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## Some JERK (Jun 21, 2018)

Sperglord Dante said:


> - Structural Analysis
> - Dynamics
> - Fluid Mechanics
> - Differential Equations
> ...


Fluid Mechanics is basically black magic.


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## Dolphin Lundgren (Jun 21, 2018)

Fucking psychology. The text book is the biggest one I ever had to use and there's way too much to study.


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## Thelostcup (Jun 21, 2018)

So far has to be Global Climate Change.

A 10 page paper with full citations due every week, along with 100 - 200 pages of reading  a week in thick, thick textbooks and scientific papers about atmospheric physics with so many charts all basically saying that we really fucked up big time. A lot of really cool stuff about paleoclimates and the Ice Ages though.

Also had another course where I got lost with a group of people in the desert with no water and had to map our way back.


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## GreenJacket (Jun 21, 2018)

PsychoNerd054 said:


> Calculus 2 is apparently considered one of the hardest subjects in my school. I'm currently taking it as a summer class, and it really isn't that bad. You just need to give half a shit to do well.


>There are people who think integrals are hard.


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## PantsFreeZone (Jun 21, 2018)

Accounting 101. I'm really good at math but after I passed this course, I grew 100% sure investment bankers and CPAs are full of shit.


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## Gordon Cole (Jun 21, 2018)

Esoteric history classes like Colonial Latin America or History of Modern China are these for me, but in a more engaging kind of way if that means anything.


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## uncleShitHeel (Jun 21, 2018)

Sperglord Dante said:


> - Structural Analysis
> - Dynamics
> - Fluid Mechanics
> - Differential Equations
> ...



I found the theoretical stuff fucking confusing and the applied stuff pretty straightforward. Then again I dropped out of engineering school and became a basic bitch programmer.


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## HolocaustDenier (Jun 21, 2018)

systems of differential equations, linear algebra. electromagnetism.


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## awoo (Jun 21, 2018)

GreenJacket said:


> >There are people who think integrals are hard.


I would not say Calc 2 integrals are hard, but you can go pretty deep into the black magic of integration. 
I was really bad at multi-variable calc. I never made it to the cool things like residue theorem, Mellin transform, hypergeometric functions you see people pull out of their ass when prompted with a monstrous integral. My interests lie more with discrete math than analysis type stuff although it is probably very interesting also.


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## HolocaustDenier (Jun 21, 2018)

GreenJacket said:


> >There are people who think integrals are hard.


do this one


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## Tanti-Fanti (Jun 21, 2018)

Color theory was hard to me because it took me until halfway until the class to realize what the fuck was going on. There were a lot of complex concepts that the professor clearly did not have the time to go over and it left most of the class super confused. Even she had trouble explaining them. Reading the text on your own didn't help too much either as the text was usually personal artist stuff. Meaning, the artist has this whole new language you had to figure out in order to know what the hell they were saying. Tried to ask a neighbor what was going on, but it was clear they had no idea either.

To add onto that our school had this rule in which you have the same amount of hours per homework assignment. A three hour class twice a week would have 6 hours of homework spread throughout. Most teachers would spread an assignment due in a week or month, but this teacher decided to give us homework every class day that was worth *6 hours not including class time.
*
To make it worse, she was super strict on how she wanted it done and she wouldn't tell you HOW she wanted it done until you failed the assignment. You could redo the assignments if you wanted thankfully, but between how much work she gave you, unless you were crazy, you would not have the time to redo every single one. So basically, each assignment had to be near perfect.

For example, a student had this grid as part of a color assignment, but because the grid she pasted on a paper was slightly off-center, she got C. She did everything else correctly including having the proper hue, value, and saturation but because she was so off-put by the centering, she marked her down to a C. This is despite telling us we had to paste our final work on a clean piece of paper. Also, you got points taken off if the paper had even the slightest scruff.


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## MalWart (Jun 21, 2018)

I absolutely sucked in my Algebra classes, the cruel part about those courses is that half the stuff you're taught serves little-to-no purpose once you graduate.


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## awoo (Jun 21, 2018)

HolocaustDenier said:


> do this one
> View attachment 478130


Fuck you for this. I put it into WolframAlpha Mathematica and it gave me something with incomplete gamma function. Edit: It probably does have a nice form.


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## NOT Sword Fighter Super (Jun 21, 2018)

Surprisingly criminal justice, because it was packed full of boring ass stats.


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## millais (Jun 21, 2018)

Sexy Times Hitler said:


> Esoteric history classes like Colonial Latin America or History of Modern China are these for me, but in a more engaging kind of way if that means anything.


The more specialized upper level history courses are invariably filled with try-hard undergrads or grad students from the country being studied who already know the material backwards and forwards and just sign up for the easy A, so I sometimes felt it was a chore to get in a word during seminars and discussions. For me, history classes were always blow-off GPA boosters, but one time I almost got my ass kicked because I signed up for a Chinese political history seminar course that the professor repeatedly promised to teach in English, but after the three non-Chinese grad students dropped out a few weeks in, everybody spontaneously switched to Chinese for the rest of the semester, and suddenly I had to brush up real quick on the language. It wouldn't have been that bad but for the fact there were all of nine or ten people in the seminar, so it was painfully obvious that I was always having to ask for the English-translated primary source documents.


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## GreenJacket (Jun 21, 2018)

HolocaustDenier said:


>


Yeah, well you're bringing in factorials, and those are cheating.


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## Malodorous Merkin (Jun 21, 2018)

Community college courses Finite Math and Anatomy & physiology I and II.

May not impress you, but I did that shit at nearly 50 years old with a retard math brain of a mildly-raging alcoholic, and I got As.

That shit near to killed me.


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## Slap47 (Jun 21, 2018)

Sexy Times Hitler said:


> Esoteric history classes like Colonial Latin America or History of Modern China are these for me, but in a more engaging kind of way if that means anything.



I'm retarded at math but find these courses easy.

The math is abstract shit. History and politics is simply looking at people and understanding their motivations and personalities. You give states and organizations the same treatment as people, looking at their past experiences to see what made them what they are. It also helps that there is plenty of compelling narratives to pay attention to.


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## Star Wormwood (Jun 21, 2018)

Tanti-Fanti said:


> Color theory was hard to me because it took me until halfway until the class to realize what the fuck was going on. There were a lot of complex concepts that the professor clearly did not have the time to go over and it left most of the class super confused. Even she had trouble explaining them. Reading the text on your own didn't help too much either as the text was usually personal artist stuff. Meaning, the artist has this whole new language you had to figure out in order to know what the hell they were saying. Tried to ask a neighbor what was going on, but it was clear they had no idea either.
> 
> To add onto that our school had this rule in which you have the same amount of hours per homework assignment. A three hour class twice a week would have 6 hours of homework spread throughout. Most teachers would spread an assignment due in a week or month, but this teacher decided to give us homework every class day that was worth *6 hours not including class time.
> *
> ...


Art classes in general are kinda bullshit when it comes to grading. In my experience the difficulty of the class was determined by how many decades its been since the teacher wrecked their brains with lsd.


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## Dr. Kaufman (Jun 21, 2018)

The baptism of fire that is autism on the internet.

In all seriousness, quantum psychics is a mindfuck.


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## Gordon Cole (Jun 21, 2018)

Apoth42 said:


> I'm exceptional at math but find these courses easy.
> 
> The math is abstract shit. History and politics is simply looking at people and understanding their motivations and personalities. You give states and organizations the same treatment as people, looking at their past experiences to see what made them what they are. It also helps that there is plenty of compelling narratives to pay attention to.


I'm the same way, thank god my classroom was in a computer room.


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## HolocaustDenier (Jun 21, 2018)

GreenJacket said:


> Yeah, well you're bringing in factorials, and those are cheating.


the factorial is the trivial part


Spoiler: Solution :powerlevel::powerlevel:







We define 

 , then we find:



Next, we use integration by parts:




now we divide by 






summing k's we obtain a telescopic sum



replacing n+ 1 for n



Finally we make m=n



To calculate the limit of this sum . we notice that it is equal to the probability that a Poisson random variable X, of n parameters would be less than n:



A known property of the Poisson variable is that the sum of v.a. of Poisson is another Poisson variable with parameter equal to the sum of the parameters, therefore the distribution of X is equivalent to the distribution of



Where Xi are idd poisson of parameter 1



By the central limit theorem, this converges to the probability that a normal is lower than 0 is 1/2. Thus:




you cant do this using a computer program, you have to think "outside of the box".
you have to use other topics apart from the "calculist aproximist stolz-cesarist" frame of mind.


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## A Welsh Cake (Jun 21, 2018)

The working


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## Red Hood (Jun 21, 2018)

I hate to say it, but College Algebra. I failed miserably and was just unable to hack it. Although my University's tutorial/student help center sucked so much that I don't feel wholly at fault. It was understaffed and the staff they had could rarely explain concepts well. And my professor just couldn't give a shit and covered math for maybe 5 of the 50 minutes of class. 

Safe to say STEM wasn't for me, unfortunately.

Old English was a pain (mostly due to my functional but not technical knowledge of grammar and cases). Norse Mythology was probably harder in my mind because I thought I needed to know every story in the Eddas inside and out. And also, my instructor had a very soft, calming icelandic accented voice for a class at 9am. Made me want to go right back to sleep.


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## RadicalCentrist (Jun 21, 2018)

HolocaustDenier said:


> the factorial is the trivial part
> 
> 
> Spoiler: Solution :powerlevel::powerlevel:
> ...


your images are dead links my man
please fix


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## Dizzydent (Jun 21, 2018)

I've been to a couple colleges and I'm going back in September.  I used to think accounting and math were stupid difficult but I came out with A''s in both although I had no idea what I was doing and probably remember even less now.

Best course: dynamic presentations. Literally just learning to stand in front of a full lecture hall and talk about whatever subject you wanted for 20 minutes with a slapped together PowerPoint. Loved that class it was like no effort to just sperg about something you're passionate about or found interesting.

But it was statistics that killed me. Fucking Z-scores and all this other random bullshit and needing companion graphs to do even a simple equation. I missed one class in stats and when I came back i knew it was all over. Probably gotta take it again in September since I never completed it. Fuck it's going to suck just as bad since I don't remember shit.


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## hambeerlyingnreed (Jun 21, 2018)

Math - but that's probably because I'm legit LD with numbers. Notice I just said "math" and not "calc" or anything like that. I never took anything beyond super basic stuff, and even for that I had a tutor and had to go to summer school.


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## dunbrine47 (Jun 21, 2018)

Some of the "harder" classes I took:
Remedial Hell Algebra and Lab: Main teacher sucked, took 50 min to show us one problem. Lab teacher was this lady way past her prime who did not communicate with the main teacher, making this feel like a whole other class instead of a extension. I only passed thanks to some great outside help (that I ditched class for a lot to partake in).

Academic Research and Writing (A.K.A Comp 2): Course was themed on horror and fairytales.  The way the Professor expected all the students be be big spergs in the material made the class seem like it should have been some sort of major elective, not a gen ed course. You could get on her level but she would make you feel stupid in the process.

Geography and World Issues: Required class only held online. Write a cited research paper due every two weeks.

Stats: Too many rules to remember about certain things and weather issues during the semester did not help.

Now the rest of these hard courses were upper level courses in my major:

Concepts in Transport/Travel: The difficulty in this class came the papers and the main project. The main project was to develop and budget a mock itinerary for a class trip to Europe. It was fun trying to gather all the information needed, the no reply e-mails and getting dogpiled on Trip Advisor for asking a question. Eventually stuff did get done and did give me some nice background information about Switzerland and some insight on what our professor was doing with our upcoming trip.

Accounting For Hospitality/Financial management: The last two classes in the required accounting trilogy. Professor was not a bad guy, just not good at explaining some things. The way he taught this stuff is that all of us will suck at this for the rest of our lives, we needed to understand this and that we should respect those who are going to be doing this stuff for us in our careers. Also solve for Net Present Value.


Spoiler: Side tangent



Fun fact about this class. Because I'm a nerd these two bimbos in the class think I knew the material inside and out and asked me to help them with it. Meanwhile I'm like bitches please I don't know anything about this. Now let me work backwards to see how I solved the problem in a fever dream like state of stress hmm.



Food and Beverage Management: One of two courses considered the hardest in the program. In a nutshell the course is a business plan to redevelop one of the campus cafeterias into a new eating establishment. Personally the thing that tripped me up was the burden of proof for the project was not properly explained so I was stressing over stuff I should have not. The other problem was that the professor was in constant conflict between the way she wanted to teach the course and the way the department was to have the course taught. This was proven when I took her Event Planning class, she was a lot better in that one.

And now the Overused Souls joke course of my major: Property Management. It's like F&B management but in a group setting. Take some riverfront property on the Hudson, make a redevelopment plan (Design, Construction, Finance, Tenants and Exit Strategy). It was hard but it was a interesting hard.  It also helped that I understood that when in doubt, find some stats and estimate. We got it done and the feeling of relief when your presentation is done was the best.


Spoiler: More side tangents.



There was a group on presentation day who came into class 30 min late. They had to complete more of there project then what's to be expected at 11th hour. Also the professor for Property Management was great. He told us so many stories in his career that I should one day retell in the Retail Horrors thread


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## Sperglord Dante (Jun 21, 2018)

Some JERK said:


> Fluid Mechanics is basically black magic.





uncleShitHeel said:


> I found the theoretical stuff fucking confusing and the applied stuff pretty straightforward.


It really is. Other than structural-related courses (which are all more of less equally hard) the applied courses are easier than its theoretical predecessors. Going from fluid dynamics to sanitary engineering is just laughable.


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## MeatRokket08 (Jun 21, 2018)

Hand Drafting and Hydraulic/Fluid Mechanics were the two hardest classes I took, not because the coursework was difficult, but because the instructors were.

The former was an 80-year old woman who was very conservative in her teaching methods, and could not give constructive criticism well. The latter had several businesses in Baton Rouge and Lafayette that got flooded so he spent most of his time fixing them up instead of teaching the class. The book was big, dull, and falling apart at the seams.


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## Francis E. Dec Esc. (Jun 21, 2018)

Calculus I-III
Discrete math
C data structures

Also, I once took a macroeconomics class in an accelerated one-week semester in May between the spring and summer semesters. Class from 8-6, midterms on Wednesday, finals on Friday.


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## MerriedxReldnahc (Jun 21, 2018)

I've been lucky to have a lot of great teachers in my college years and the free tutoring center was great (for a while anyway, there's some drama about that) so even math hasn't been too awful for me. The class that really stands out is actually a Mexican Art History class I took a year ago. 

This particular class was split into two semesters, and I had each section with a different teacher. First semester went well, the second _sucked. _My teacher was a very strange woman that had the air of being only vaugly familiar with how human interations and communication was supposed to work.  Her voice was usually super soft and high pitched but occasionally he would let out a freaky shrieking laugh. Very pale too, now that I think about it she was probably some form of vampire which is why I was so mentally drained after her class. She was a combination of boring and unsettling while teaching which I would have been able to deal with if she wasn't so bad at explaining assignments. Everyone struggled to understand what the hell she wanted us to do and she was impossible to communicate with.  She'd write something weird and vague on a assignment sheet and she wouldn't understand why you were even asking her about it. I failed a paper because I didn't do something she never told me to do in the first place and her justification was that I was supposed to *know* what she wanted me to do. She'd get so patronizing about it and for me that got me salty as shit. History is my best subject by far, my U.S History professor and the head if the history department would gush about how I was one of their top students. I once got a huge award on behalf of the college specifically for my performance in history classes so when this art history teacher who was potentially a vampire started giving me crap about not understanding her terrible directions and supposedly struggling with the subject I got pretty damn indignant.

In a more humerous note there was also the time she tried to teach us about Afro-Cuban history by showing us a Beyonce music video. More than once in class she used the words "problematic" and "mansplain-y". She's also the first person I've ever heard say latinx out loud.
Overall it was very boring, stressful, mentally draining, and deeply dissapointing class. Mexico has so much cool art and history, but this class was a horrible example of it. Still got a B though!


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## ForgedBlades (Jun 22, 2018)

Honestly, it was some 100 level introduction to agronomy course, and the only reason it was "hard" is because I didn't give a shit, and the professor was this little African guy in a bow tie with a thick accent who ranted like an insane person. Guy was cool as fuck, I just didn't understand half of what he was saying. 

I'm the first to admit that the degree I'm pursuing (horticulture) is a complete fucking joke. It's the lesbian dance theory of STEM, both in difficulty and projected job opportunities and pay. I've blown through about three quarters of the required classes in the department, including a few 400 and 500 level classes with a perfect 4.0. Most of the classes are just memorizing lists of information, and even the "sciencey" classes like plant physiology and plant propagation aren't terribly complex. 

This upcoming semester I'm taking all gen-eds, so I expect to hit the wall pretty hard. Organic chem, generic plant genetics, that kind of stuff. But I'm also enrolled in "Landscape Architecture of Antiquity", so there's going to be a balance.


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## Ravelord (Jun 23, 2018)

Let me preface this by saying my fucking university is a disaster when it comes to IT. Because IT is competing against Telecomm Engineering, we have some courses about signals were we "try" to know most of the TE Syllabus (obviously we end up doing almost jack shit). Those courses are among the hardest. Its names are: Digital Systems and Specific-Applied Hardware.

Then all the damn courses of Logical Programming, because the teachers are shit.


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## Muttnik (Jun 23, 2018)

In grad school, I had to take Research Methods, which is basically the logic and psychology behind how good research is implemented. Sounds easy, right? The professor was a nice guy but was completely ruthless when it came to grading. Studied my brains out for the final and STILL ended up failing it. Luckily, my essay assignments managed to score me a B in the class.


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## UselessRubberKeyboard (Jun 23, 2018)

Alto said:


> In grad school, I had to take Research Methods, which is basically the logic and psychology behind how good research is implemented. Sounds easy, right? The professor was a nice guy but was completely ruthless when it came to grading. Studied my brains out for the final and STILL ended up failing it. Luckily, my essay assignments managed to score me a B in the class.


I'd forgotten the horror of Research Methods (and stats too).  Pure hell, as well as being dry and boring as fuck.  It was compulsory at my grad school and I only just scraped through, so I totally feel you on this one.  It doesn't help that it often feels like worlds away from the subject grad students are studying.


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## Yellow Shirt Guy (Jun 24, 2018)

UselessRubberKeyboard said:


> I'd forgotten the horror of Research Methods (and stats too).  Pure hell, as well as being dry and boring as fuck.  It was compulsory at my grad school and I only just scraped through, so I totally feel you on this one.  It doesn't help that it often feels like worlds away from the subject grad students are studying.


What would you say is harder Quantitive reasoning or Stats, thats what Im faced with taking for my next level math class.


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## Crunchy Leaf (Jun 24, 2018)

I have to admit, it was Intro to Java, partly because it's one of my university's weed-out courses for their notoriously hard to get into CS major (I was taking it because I wanted to do Informatics), it assumed you had already taken programming, and because the professor couldn't teach, but also because my brain just couldn't grasp object oriented programming, and that's something you get or you don't. I plan on taking Intro to Python, but the professor for that is someone I've had and who I know is good.

And Intermediate Macroeconomics, which is a requirement for my major, and on the first day the professor said 'this is going to be the hardest class you'll ever take in the undergraduate econ department at [school]'. And I got a C+, which I'm disappointed in myself in, but it was really challenging. The graphs were what got me.



Yellow Shirt Guy said:


> What would you say is harder Quantitive reasoning or Stats, thats what Im faced with taking for my next level math class.


I don't know what level of Stats you're taking, but I 100% agree with Dizzydent that z scores are the worst. Even using a calculator doing problems with them was incredibly tedious, and if you have to do the calculations by hand...there's just a lot of very boring figuring overall.


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## UselessRubberKeyboard (Jun 25, 2018)

Yellow Shirt Guy said:


> What would you say is harder Quantitive reasoning or Stats, thats what Im faced with taking for my next level math class.


I'd go with what @Crunchy Leaf said too - stats.  It's boring as hell and tedious.  My view is pretty skewed by being a humanities student with a brain that struggles with math, though, so you might find it a lot easier.  The boring is less simple to deal with.


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## Raging Capybara (Jun 25, 2018)

I'm a sped so I still can't undestand basic high school math.

I binge watch numberphile videos though. This is one of my biggest sorrows, I just wanted to be good at mathematics. It was one of my childhood dreams, I failed.


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## Pina Colada (Jun 25, 2018)

I struggled with Statistics 1 in community college and failed the course. Difficult problems aside, it's not so much the material I had a hard time understanding (I'm great at math) as it was the professor's BS teaching methods that threw me off. However, I retook it and Stats 2 during the summer intersession and passed them with Bs.

_Fuck_ Intro to Logic, though- way to deceit me with what I _thought_ would be simple problems and feed me a bunch of migraine-inducing, pseudo-coding nonsense. It didn't help that the professor was a decrepit geezer who made even the easier problems hard to grasp. I dropped out of the class in 2 weeks.


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## Smaug's Smokey Hole (Jun 25, 2018)

Not higher education but I went to a high school that had lots of money and bad planning and for some reason they had forgotten to plan gym class for a long time. So we had to put in the requisite hours and they signed everyone up to a gym with an instructor/leader that really kept up the pace. We weren't unfit guys and gals or anything but holy shit a lot of us had to puke in the locker room between the sessions, and there were multiple of them each day. Had to get those hours.

Another tricky thing was a math class with a teacher that spoke 95% russian and communicated how things worked by looking at everyone and gesturing to the white board. She was really good at math though and seriously helped me out by photocopying the entire textbook for me.


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## Bassomatic (Jun 25, 2018)

Ever spent 2 years on a single paper?

Yeah, stop wondering why I drink.

Semi jokes aside, one of the hardest classes I ever took was algebra 2 because my teacher was so god awful she left myself, and the rest of the class thinking we were stupid when she was a poor teacher. I never had a teacher so bad before, where you honestly couldn't tell at the time they were the problem and not you.

I think most people know I've taken a lot of time in education and some of the stat classes made me want to blow my brains out due to the difficulty of them, but in a sick way I enjoyed them. All that effort you see what the tool of math can do and that makes hours upon hours of struggle worth while. It's a lot faster reward than seeing the grade at the end of the semester where lots of classes I didn't feel a reward until the passing grade came.

The hardest with out a doubt for me was teaching MAT012 (high school level stuff) because this was the first time I was given the reins 100% the math was  not hard for me but to lay it out and deal with making sure everyone had a good chance to do well, understand and get a grounding to build off was not easy. You know that piece of paper handed to you in the first class where you look at test dates and throw out? Those cause more sleepless nights than your mid terms, I promise.


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## laoyang (Jul 15, 2018)

I feel like an idiot, most people here have answers like Calculus, Fluid Mechanics, etc and here the hardest classes I ever took was Algebra 2/College Algebra, mainly because of factoring quadratics. I know on a basic level what factoring is but in practice I am just lost and my grade in class ended up suffering since the second half of the year was pretty much focused solely on that. Despite my profile name and picture I am just not an Algebra person (I fared better in Geometry), nobody in my immediate family is. At least I went above my mom who never went beyond Pre-Algebra when she was in college.


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## Lez (Jul 15, 2018)

Physics and law.


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## LagoonaBlue (Jul 15, 2018)

Classical studies.  My classmates used to gang up on me so I struggled in that class.  Was eventually withdrawn from that class so didn't have to sit exams for it or anything.

That and psychology.  Did it for a semester at uni and struggled greatly.  I was never any good at science, so why I took that class I don't know.


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## Commander Keen (Jul 15, 2018)

UselessRubberKeyboard said:


> I'd forgotten the horror of Research Methods (and stats too).  Pure hell, as well as being dry and boring as fuck.  It was compulsory at my grad school and I only just scraped through, so I totally feel you on this one.  It doesn't help that it often feels like worlds away from the subject grad students are studying.



Research Methods was pretty easy for me in grad school, but I only got through stats by pure luck. In undergrad I took a few stats courses and got As, but my graduate level Stat I kicked my ass all over campus. Thank the LORD it was pass/fail for some odd reason. 

98 on the first exam (through luck, our exams were multiple choice), 88 on the second, 78 on the third. Some of my cohort liked the class and professor so much they went and took Stat II for an elective. Bitches be crazy.


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## neverendingmidi (Jul 17, 2018)

Heat Transfer and Fluid Flow in the military. Didn’t help that the teacher was so bad the class chased him out before finals review so we could self study, he was that useless.


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## Cripple (Jul 17, 2018)

Chemistry 121

Got an A in the lab class however, I'm just really bad at abstract math.


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## Pvt. Shitpost (Jul 17, 2018)

The very first class I ever took in my freshman year of college. Intro to critical thinking. It started off pretty straightforward but then eventually became very technical and very difficult. The professor was a chill dude and understood the class was hard and did what he could to help you pass. I remember asking other people about their critical thinking classes since that is something most freshman get out of the way at my university and they all said their class was extremely easy shit. My professsor's class was hard but I passed with a C-. Fuck yea.


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## GarthMarenghisDankplace (Jul 18, 2018)

Neurophilosophy like how to tie current understanding of neural systems to concepts of self, consciousness, free will and truth. Broke my little brain.


----------



## snuffleupagus (Jul 18, 2018)

Biology 101 and it was 100% the teacher. He was an old southern guy who looked and sounded like Colonel Sanders. He spent every lecture talking about his boyhood and youth spent as a picker during various harvest seasons and traveling the southern states. 

The worst part is that his stories were absolutely enthralling and awesome. I’d have loved his class if he was teaching Southern Culture (a sociology class I took that was excellent). 

Regardless, he’d spend our lectures chatting and labs were just the same thing in a lab setting. I think we completed one actual experiment in our whole semester. He’d pass out study guides which were completely useless after my first test. 

The only reason I got an A in that class is because I basically read and studied the entire textbook. 

When I got to the next level bio class my instructor actually asked who’d taken the first class with The Colonel (her words) and asked us to stay after our first class. Turns out he’d only taught about 2/3 of the textbook and we were woefully unprepared. She got us hooked up in a study group and even dropped into several of our meetings to help catch us up. I got an A in her class too but only out of sheer determination and some of the most stressful months of my college career. 

I later found out that he retired after one more semester.


----------



## Kiwi Lime Pie (Jul 19, 2018)

Two of my harder classes were:

*General Physics I*. One of my graduation requirements was a year of Physics. I chose General since it used non-calculus math. I bristled when a math professor that term referred to it as "Physics for Poets" because of how hard it was for me.  I'm not sure if it was the extensive theory or lack of interest in the lectures, but I got a C on my first exam. Knowing i could have done better, I bought the study guide and put more effort into it - and still got a C on the next exam. So, i conceded I'd get a C in the class (and did) and focused on doing better in my other classes. General Physics II  proved to be a little easier as I had a better time with studying electricity, magnetism, and optics. I even managed to get a B-minus.

*20th Century American Literature. *I took this class solely because i needed a fourth class and nothing else looked good that semester. I had American Lit in high school, but this was nothing like that. I was absent for a school function the day books were assigned for individual oral reports. So, I was stuck with a book I knew nothing about and nobody else wanted. Worst, the teacher was a feminist (this was before SJW but when PC was alive and becoming toxic), and no matter what I did, I couldn't get above a C on any assignment. Despite doing my best on my presentation and getting very positive feedback from my classmates - which was supposed to make up part of the grade - my teacher ripped the presentation to shreds in her written evaluation. Once again, I got another C. She must have been impressed by my final exam essay, though. My final grade was a C-plus.



dunbrine47 said:


> Academic Research and Writing (A.K.A Comp 2): Course was themed on horror and fairytales.



That sounds a bit bizarre. My Comp 2 class focused on written argumentation and research. As mentioned, this was before college campuses were too immersed in the PC/SJW movement, so our writing exercises included topics such as "Should the US have bombed Hiroshima/Japan." I also enjoyed my final term paper and the research I did for it.

If I was taking the same major now, I'd have to take Technical Writing instead of Comp 2. Needless to say, I'm glad I went when I did for that and other reasons.


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## dunbrine47 (Jul 19, 2018)

Kiwi Lime Pie said:


> That sounds a bit bizarre. My Comp 2 class focused on written argumentation and research. As mentioned, this was before college campuses were too immersed in the PC/SJW movement, so our writing exercises included topics such as "Should the US have bombed Hiroshima/Japan." I also enjoyed my final term paper and the research I did for it.
> 
> If I was taking the same major now, I'd have to take Technical Writing instead of Comp 2. Needless to say, I'm glad I went when I did for that and other reasons.


Research and written argumentation were apart of the course. The primary sources we were using for the assignments were fairytales and horror. For example: one of our assignments involved arguing about if Jack Torrance (The Shinning) and Hermann (The Queen of Spades) were being manipulated by an outside supernatural force or everything driving these characters was happening in their minds. Our quotations had to come from the movie/story and from other authors commentating on the subject. 

The only other "themed" Comp course I remember off the top of my head was "American Alternative Cultures" but there were others. Fun fact: after I graduated English Writing was restructured. That course is now called: Comp 2: Research and Argument. From what it looks like on the website, the themed sources look like they have been replaced outright or given less emphasis.


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## Derp Potato (Jul 19, 2018)

Biology 101.

Professor barely spoke English. Quickly regretted I picked that class.


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## Un Platano (Jul 20, 2018)

I haven't ever had to take the class but soil mechanics is one of the most brutal subjects I've ever encountered. The math itself isn't very difficult and only requires entry-level calculus at the most, and just looking at the variables you start with it also doesn't seem terribly complicated. But it gets much, much worse as you go on, and to top it all off the class it about the most boring substances known to man. 

Rock mechanics though, that's where it's at.


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## Kiwi Lime Pie (Jul 20, 2018)

dunbrine47 said:


> Research and written argumentation were apart of the course. The primary sources we were using for the assignments were fairytales and horror.



Thanks for the clarification, @dunbrine47 . I can't help but wonder how much of a struggle it might be for people who dislike horror for any reason. For those into it, this was probably a fun way to explore their interest through writing.


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## MerriedxReldnahc (Jul 20, 2018)

For some ungodly reason, the basic entry level health class that everyone is required to take at my college ended up being very difficult to get a good grade in. The homework was stupid easy but the tests often were much harder and the teacher required really specific answers that didn't show up in the homework. The grading was super steep also. I feel like she had some weird system where we all started with Fs and had to work our way up? I'm probably misremembering but getting an A was just about impossible. You actually could tell how the other students were doing because my teacher had a chart printed out with all the grades and a codename that we picked for ourselves. So you could see that BigBoner420 had a 15% along with half the class.  To be fair the reason so many people were failing is because they were genuinely too fucking stupid to do their homework, but at the same time the five people who were trying to get A's were unsuccessful. Me and one other person were right at the top of the grading scale, competing to be the one and only A grade in this basic goddamn health class that realistically your average chimpanzee should be able to handle. At the end of the semester the other person got the coveted A with me getting a high B, and 14 others failing. 

I do have a funny story about a study session though, we did a unit on sexual health and got to learn about all sorts of spicy, erotic, subjects like anal sex and chlamydia. The guy I was studying with was going down these terms for the test and was confused on what oral sex was. and needed an explanation. 19 year old dude. No idea. I was so flummoxed that I had to actually explain that to an adult that I gave a really clinical explaination and jumped to something else. That poor guy, though!


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## Coleslaw (Jan 30, 2020)

In middle school I had a math and a history teacher who made my life absolute shite.


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## Shield Breaker (Jan 30, 2020)

Mine was actually in high school: Calculus 1. However, it was only because the teacher was terrible at her job. I can't remember specifics, but the way she taught it was very confusing, and the lessons took up the entire hour because no one understood her crazy methods of solving the equations. After the first week,  I stopped paying attention to her and read the textbook to understand what to do. 

Sounds fine, right? Well, I couldn't ask for help with anything I didn't get, because she considered the textbook 'flawed' and would try to force me to use her methods. This meant I had to sometimes work backwards and develop from guesswork, which inevitably bit me in the ass down the line, and I would have to re-evaluate what I had just gotten down.   

I basically taught myself calculus, without any assistance outside of an old textbook, and I still ended up with the highest score in the class.


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## Dwight Frye (Jan 30, 2020)

Sociology in college.

Not because the actual work was difficult, but because the professor used the class to push a political agenda. Students that parroted his rhetoric and agreed with him got high grades, while those who either didn't agree or tried arguing a neutral perspective or sticking to discussing what we actually were supposed to be learning got low marks and ridicule. This was around the time I started to notice a far left agenda being pushed over education in college. I'm surprised I made it out of the class with a low C.

In high school, Trigonometry was my worst because I just couldn't seem to grasp it that well.


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## Mr. Skeltal (Jan 30, 2020)

- Mineralogy (lots of systems and rote learning, very tedious)
- Petrology (extremely abstract when trying to determine metamorphic pathways for a given rock and extrapolate formation conditions)
- University Physics 2 (Calculus 2 based physics, never took Calc 2)
- Calculus (higher math brainlet)
- Geology Senior Seminar (my research was turbo fucked because my research partner dropped out and didn't give me the data I needed to draw any real conclusions, managed to pass out of circumstances beyond my control.)


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## Massa's Little Buckie (Jan 30, 2020)

Calculus 1 and believe or not, Accounting 1 and 2.


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## Grotesque Bushes (Jan 30, 2020)

Hell0 said:


> the class that is my dick, inside ya mom


So it's easy for you to take dick?


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## ToroidalBoat (Jan 30, 2020)

There was a stupid English class where the grading was either pass or fail, and the teacher was very picky as to what passed.

Unsurprisingly, I dropped that class.

As for actual hardest, I almost always struggled learning math.


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## Sexy Peach Emoji (Jan 30, 2020)

Geochemistry. Mrs. Emoji graduated top of her class in chemistry with a math minor had a hard time helping me and two friends study for that class, and she aced her inorganic chem classes.


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## BridgeTroll (Jan 30, 2020)

I always had issues with programming. I'm more into the Network side of things, so Coding 101 is already challenging.
Or maybe I'm just challenged.


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## Kideo Hojima (Jan 30, 2020)

College Chemistry I and II. It was all fun and games until you got to Thermochemistry/dynamics and Kinetics. I was never the best in algebraic-esque math and I had to retake both classes at one point. For Chem I, I had to find loopholes just to pass with a B-.


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## Spunt (Jan 30, 2020)

Philosophy of mathematics, Peano Postulates and such things. That shit turned my brain to cheese.


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## byuu (Jan 30, 2020)

Computational theory.
Having to do formal proofs in an exam sucks since it's difficult to focus in a hall with 50 people and a narrow time limit.

I got a barely passing grade but I was still something like top 3 of my class since most people failed it.


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## Kiwi Lime Pie (Jan 31, 2020)

Since I already posted my hardest college classes, I'll post my hardest high school class. AP English: This wasn't because of the course content, though.

TL;DR - Our original, very mean, teacher had a brain aneurysm one night just before the first quarter ended. Due to the school district never finding a permanent replacement for her over the next three quarters, we had a revolving door of subs and we never learned all that we needed to know in order to have a fighting chance at passing the AP English exam at the end of the year. Very few of my classmates scored well enough to earn the corresponding college credit even though I believe we all passed each semester of this year-long class.

The worst part is that the one sub who taught us the longest should have been allowed to finish the year with us. She actually had a plan to get us back on track with what we needed to learn, and she quickly earned our respect. Unfortunately, she was replaced about 1-2 months before the AP exam with one last sub who did little in the way of picking up where she left off.


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## John Waters Art Bong (Jan 31, 2020)

Calculus- I hated math and only took it as an AP class because I didn't want to have to take it in college. I found out later that the college class was far easier judging by what other students told me.  Second place is Organic Chemistry, hated it too, but not as much as calculus.


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## Doctor Placebo (Jan 31, 2020)

So one time we did a DnD campaign where we all played as commoners and died fighting a group of damn housecats.

Oh wait, not that kind of class.


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## Observerer (Jan 31, 2020)

In my country we have a compulsory course called Ex-Phil which is a philosophy course dating back to the 19th century. Doesn't matter what you study, you have to pass this course. It is filled to the brim with useless shit and usually around 50% fail the class. It is hard because no one except philosophy students want to take this course and it is boring as fuck.


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## Disheveled Human (Jan 31, 2020)

The hardest class I had was when I got placed into the sped class because the teacher hated me, I would fuck around and distract the other students by talking joking and passing around funny pictures drawn on top of lesson art. So I get placed with a bunch of kids who clearly belonged in the sped class. This was in grade 4 other classmates in said sped class cannot even spell the word "bike". They had to remove me from the class because I was being so nasty to them because of their stupidity it was so hard not to comment on the girl who couldn't spell bike or the kid who was chewing on his pencil, You know the dumbass type of people that write letters 2-3 times the size of normal folks. After about 2 weeks the teacher realized I clearly didn't belong in the class and sent me back to regular class. All in all it was fun and helped me be a better asshole in society. So technically it was the only class i failed.


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## CivilianOfTheFandomWars (Jan 31, 2020)

This will sound very autistic, but Art.
It was a college class about art practices, and my main issue was being creative and learning what the teacher thought was and was not ‘good art’. Basically, I don’t have a creative bone in my body and the teacher thought that Dada was great.
My autistic ass does shit by recipes and plans, not so much ‘art’ as ‘craft’. Not good for impressing the failed painter teaching the class.


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## mr.moon1488 (Jan 31, 2020)

It should have been one of the easiest classes, but English 1 (English 2 was actually fun and easy).  Oh God, where to start with this class.  

1:  Constant homework.  I'm talking like 2 hours a night, and every night homework

2: Tongue tied teacher that only spoke in ebonics (yes this is literal, and yes very ironic) 

3: Confusing as fuck instructions that caused almost everything to need to be redone at least twice

4: Group projects with dual enrolled students that didn't do anything productive

5: Focusing more on format than basic writing quality

6: Never posted any important information online


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## MerriedxReldnahc (Jan 31, 2020)

Disheveled Human said:


> The hardest class I had was when I got placed into the sped class because the teacher hated me, I would fuck around and distract the other students by talking joking and passing around funny pictures drawn on top of lesson art. So I get placed with a bunch of kids who clearly belonged in the sped class. This was in grade 4 other classmates in said sped class cannot even spell the word "bike". They had to remove me from the class because I was being so nasty to them because of their stupidity it was so hard not to comment on the girl who couldn't spell bike or the kid who was chewing on his pencil, You know the dumbass type of people that write letters 2-3 times the size of normal folks. After about 2 weeks the teacher realized I clearly didn't belong in the class and sent me back to regular class. All in all it was fun and helped me be a better asshole in society. So technically it was the only class i failed.


Hell, I wanted to be in one of the Sped classes back in Middle School. I always sucked at math while being great at everything else and no one ever thought that dumping me in the highest level math classes was a terrible idea. By 8th grade I was so behind everyone else and had no idea what was going on, but knew that I desperatly needed to go back to the basics. A few of my friends were in special ed for learning disabilities and we would hang out in their class in the mornings before school started. Their teacher was a very nice man who seemed calm and patient and not an utter cunt like the lady I had. The school wouldn't have allowed it, they just thought struggling kids were "lazy" or "had a bad attitude". Just let me learn my baby math, ok.


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## Kiwi Lime Pie (Jan 31, 2020)

CivilianOfTheFandomWars said:


> This will sound very autistic, but Art.
> It was a college class about art practices, and my main issue was being creative and learning what the teacher thought was and was not ‘good art’.



This sounds almost like the poetry class I took in college. Needing to take one humanities-related class for whatever reason (probably to make us "well rounded" or whatever BS), Intro to Poetry seemed like the most appealing option to satisfy the requirement. While the class itself was interesting, our professor expected us to know and parrot back his own interpretations of the poems for exams. It was as if he was oblivious to the fact that different people can have different yet equally-valid interpretations of the same poem. Once I figured out he wanted us to key in on his interpretations, I was able to finish the class with a decent grade. Still, it sucks when instructors expect students to accept their subjective opinions as authoritative -- something that can make a fun class quickly become frustrating.


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## Womanhorse (Feb 1, 2020)

Gifted classes/school in general. Not so much for the work, but the environment itself. I was only there for 4th Grade, but every other kid in those courses was up their own ass and insufferable to be around. As a result, I could never actually focus on having more challenging work laid out for me and lost interest in doing any of it. You couldn't even ask for help with anything without feeling like a dumb peasant and it completely soured any effort I wanted to put into getting good marks. Didnt help that none of the kids wanted to even hang out or even be your friend unless you were some child prodigy so you were 100% on your own there. Ended up going back to normal elementary school the next year because I'd rather have a normal school and normal friends than be around pieces of wet cardboard all day.


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## queerape (Feb 1, 2020)

There was this one pharmacology course where the prof was this old coot who did nothing but push his old research papers from the 70s and didn’t believe in power point slides. He was no help to anyone at all and made you feel stupid for asking a question. Half the class always fails. The program will be a better place whenever it is he is fired (unlikely as he’s tenured), retires (hopefully soon), or croaks (at latest).


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## Kiwi Lime Pie (Feb 1, 2020)

Womanhorse said:


> Gifted classes/school in general. Not so much for the work, but the environment itself. I was only there for 4th Grade, but every other kid in those courses was up their own ass and insufferable to be around. As a result, I could never actually focus on having more challenging work laid out for me and lost interest in doing any of it.


I had a similar experience. My private K-8 school's gifted program consisted of students meeting anywhere from weekly to monthly for an hour in lieu of one of their normal class periods. The only problem was none of the work we did ever seemed advanced in any way and there would be the occasional project where students seemed more interest in outdoing each other. In 7th grade, our group was given homework even though the gifted stuff we did was never graded. That's where I lost interest, and I was eventually asked to leave the program for the rest of the year.

The next year, we were largely inactive for the first semester due to low interest/numbers in the gifted group. As a result of our low numbers, the junior high group decided to spend most of our meeting time during the second semester tutoring first graders needing assistance with academic subjects. Although we finally had the chance to do something with a meaningful sense of accomplishment, it would have been nice if we had the chance to do some high school-level assignments that year to see how gifted we really were.



queerape said:


> There was this one pharmacology course where the prof was this old coot who did nothing but push his old research papers from the 70s and didn’t believe in power point slides.


While changing careers, my Intro. to Business class instructor - as decent as she was - showed us videos from the 80s featuring Asian auto companies and their corporate philosophies. She seemed averse to showing or teaching us anything that was more up to date and reflected the facts that technology and manufacturing changed drastically in the 25 years since her favorite videos were first released.


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## Chan Fan (Feb 1, 2020)

College algebra, which I had to pass to get my degree.  I went to the lab for tutoring every day after class and met with the instructor a few times for one on one help.  She was a good teacher but it was frustrating knowing I'd never need to use what I was learning ever again.

Also philosophy was difficult, like I understood the work but the teacher graded essays REALLY hard.


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## Papa Adolfo's Take'n'Bake (Feb 1, 2020)

Transport phenomena was easily the most work-intensive, but hands down bar none:

Reactor Design and Model Predictive Control nearly killed me.


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## ??? (Feb 1, 2020)

I'm pretty average all around, except for an excellent memory, great verbal skills, and a machine-like, inhuman work ethic when I care (obsess) about something. Even those are mostly the result of years of practice rather than natural talent, and a healthy dose of the 'tism.

I didn't need to take any remedial writing or reading classes in college, the ones I did I always did essays the night before it was due and got 95/100. Chalk that up to reading and writing for fun most of my life.

My mistake with math was memorizing the book and doing everything by rote. I tested into middle school algebra and just chinked my way through everything - 3 hours of practice problems and 3 hours of copying the book a night - up until trig/precalc, where I needed to actually think for a change. I got a C the first time, retook it and got an A. Trig identities was torture until it finally clicked.

I'm sure I could have passed calculus by retaking it with different teachers, but I was running short on time and money so I gave up. Same with discrete math. I didn't have the 12 hours a day it would take to brute force my way through the practice problems and rote-copy-memorize the book.

I need a lot of time to think to understand a subject. Taking accelerated summer courses in networking and relational database management systems was a mistake. Failed both, but the professor was excellent and gave me incompletes instead. Retook them later and got Bs.

Other than that I did fine in college until I burned out and became cynical at the scuminess of it.

I tried taking 200 level Chemistry and Anatomy/Physiology, but it was too much for even me to memorize so I dropped them. If I was 15 IQ points smarter I could've done it easily, but my dad had to marry a dummy.


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## Jewthulhu (Feb 1, 2020)

Developmental biology was one of my hardest courses in terms of the sheer volume and complexity of information. Mesoderm organogenesis could be a course all on its own, and memorizing signaling pathways is a bitch. That said, it probably was still one of my favorite courses.

My current calculus class is also pretty difficult. The subject matter isn't too bad, but what makes it hard is the professor. She's a nice lady, but really strict on notation. You need to write down every step in order to get full credit, and heaven help if you forget a symbol somewhere; she'll go on for 5 minutes about how that's wrong and no one will be able to tell what you're trying to do.


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## He Who Points And Laughs (Feb 1, 2020)

Organic Chemistry and Statistics.   Also, English 101 just from the homework load.   I despised English 101.   Nothing but pointless busy work.


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## lurk_moar (Feb 1, 2020)

Medical Microbiology I because I got a B.


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## Chan Fan (Feb 1, 2020)

Jewthulhu said:


> she'll go on for 5 minutes about how that's wrong and no one will be able to tell what you're trying to do.



Tell her she's being antisemitic


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## Gingervitis (Feb 2, 2020)

I struggled with Spanish in high school, so I don’t know why I thought taking German in college was a good idea despite everyone on my dad’s side of the family telling me not to. Between the horrible professor and the tough subject matter, I ended up with a D.


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## Smaug's Smokey Hole (Feb 2, 2020)

My high school forgot to schedule gym until the third year, along with some other things. We had to take three years of gym class in 4-5 months. The school didn't have a gym so they contracted a local fitness/aerobics studio to do it and told them how many hours were required. I'm not ashamed to say that I, like many others, puked during the pause between hour one and hour two the first day. That was a tough class.


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## FuckedUp (Feb 6, 2020)

AP Physics C: Mechanics in senior year of high school was probably the hardest class I've taken thanks to the teacher. She wasn't bad at teaching, but she went way more in depth than what was actually on the exam. She also made all the tests out of old FRQs that AP teachers have access to, and didn't scale the raw scores despite only needing ~60% for a 5 on the real thing. I got a D+ in the class but a 4 on the exam.

What's sort of ironic is that I complained about having to learn to derive moments of inertia of various objects when the official exams _never_ required deriving it from anything more than rods. That year's exam ended up having an FRQ about deriving inertia from a cone.


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## Dolphin Lundgren (Feb 9, 2020)

Anything involving math. I suck at math. I'd like to add psychology as well. I did a course in psychology and I'm never doing that again. The teacher I had ruined any interest I had in that subject.


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## Ughubughughughughughghlug (Feb 10, 2020)

Hard to say. It would probably be Differential Equations, but the longer it's been since I've had the class, the more I think the professor was actually just bad (I thought he was a genius, at the time, and just talking over my head). We had these insane curves were I once made an F on a test and ended up with a high A. But, conceptually, Complex Variables (arithmetic and calculus of complex-valued functions) and Advanced Calculus I (an introduction to topology and real analysis) were death marches.

I will tell you this: Principles of Managerial Finance, for business majors, is NOT a joke class. It's not like doing a STEM class where half the class fails, but by non-STEM standards, it's awful.

I never did actual science, just electives in things like astronomy (as in, a survey for general audiences, not heavy-duty, applied-physics astronomy) and biology-for-retards.


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## FuckedUp (Mar 3, 2020)

I think Machine Learning may be a contender now. Here's a question from the sample first exam:


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## The best and greatest (Mar 3, 2020)

FuckedUp said:


> I think Machine Learning may be a contender now. Here's a question from the sample first exam:
> View attachment 1171192


Trying to read this actually made my vision blur.


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## FuckedUp (Mar 3, 2020)

The best and greatest said:


> Trying to read this actually made my vision blur.


Literally every question is like this. I just picked that one because it had the most steps.


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## Pee Cola (Mar 3, 2020)

Marketing 101, as part of a Bachelor of Business.  Or, as I prefer to call it, "Introduction to Professional Bullshitting".



Spoiler: Powerlevel alert



I barely passed this unit.  Meanwhile, I completely smashed the Corporate Finance and Economics units, hence I ended up majoring in Economics.  I have no regrets.


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## Glad I couldn't help (Mar 3, 2020)

Databases, because the instructor was awful and plagiarized assignments off the Internet. It's hard to give a fuck about a class when it is clear that the instructor doesn't. Software Engineering was pretty bad and has left a bad impression of software engineers as a bunch of try-hards who really need to be validated as "real" engineers, and the instructor was even worse. Programming II was also bad, but that was because C++ is a goddamn mess of language (at least to learn), at least the instructor was competent and actually gave a shit.

Pragmatics was also bad, but then again it's not surprising given that it was philosophy course thought by an Italian who idea of English intonation was complete randomness. Most language classes have a lot of memorization, obviously.


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## FuckedUp (Mar 3, 2020)

Icasaracht said:


> Is the answer for (b) False?


No, it's true.


----------



## JambledUpWords (Mar 3, 2020)

History major. Here’s some of the classes that were hard:

*Late Middle Ages History:*
The papers weren’t too bad (so long as you actually cared about your grade), but the tests were difficult. Here’s a sample of what a test would look like:

Joan of Arc
Alexander Nevsky 
Thomas Becket 
St. Roch 

(Name the century they lived, a little bit about the person, and how all terms are related to each other) 

The other half of the test was like this:

[section from primary source document]

(Name the author, time period, title and why it’s important) 

There was no multiple choice and no hints. You had to write everything in by hand from memory.

*Romanesque Art History*

The grading was very subjective, which made it hard to know how well you actually did on a test. In a test, you had to name the piece of art/where it’s found, and your analysis of the art.

*Russian Revolution (capstone course)*

You were required to write a paper (roughly 10-15 pages) about something relating to the subject. The final paper counted for 60% of the grade. You had to have at least five primary sources and one monograph. Part of what made it hard was how tough you were graded. Unsurprisingly, at least five people dropped the class before it ended.


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## Pina Colada (Mar 3, 2020)

Robert Sanvagene said:


> Marketing 101, as part of a Bachelor of Business.  Or, as I prefer to call it, "Introduction to Professional Bullshitting".
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Funnily enough, I got a C in that class (named Intro to Marketing), but aced Consumer Behavior with a well-liked professor who made everything easier for us to understand. I partially blame myself for goofing off in the former class, and the jargon took a little getting used to.


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## Doug_S1 (Mar 3, 2020)

Gingervitis said:


> I struggled with Spanish in high school, so I don’t know why I thought taking German in college was a good idea despite everyone on my dad’s side of the family telling me not to. Between the horrible professor and the tough subject matter, I ended up with a D.


What letter grade did you receive?


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## UtadaWasabi (Mar 3, 2020)

Discrete mathematics.


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## Gingervitis (Mar 3, 2020)

Doug_S1 said:


> What letter grade did you receive?


D. On the plus side, Im taking Spanish now, and I have an A so far.


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## DocHoliday1977 (Mar 5, 2020)

Advanced Business Decision Making
Masters level statistics

It was a bitch to take but I got an A.

It was harder than my doctorate qualitative, quantitative, and methods classes.


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## Bad Gateway (Mar 5, 2020)

The hardest class I ever took focused on using the texts of Foucault, Hardt & Negri, and a handful of other postmodern critical theorists to interpret current social movements. This was during occupy, so pretty much everyone in the class would sperg out every fucking week about the importance of Anon, and how they were the most important social movement of all time, blah blah blah justice, blah blah 1%, all that faggotry. I was the only person in the room who had ever even BEEN on the hacker known as 4chan. How did that work out for you, motherfuckers? Mostly the class was hard because after midterm papers, the prof who was also the head of the department stormed in and said that he wished he could fail us all.


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## Gar For Archer (Mar 5, 2020)

Hardest class I’ve ever taken is Advanced Linear Algebra, simply because it’s completely different from every other math class you would have taken up to that point as a non-math major in that there was very little computation and a whole metric fuckton of proofs. Took me a long time to wrap my head around the basics of vector spaces and their related concepts. 

That being said, it’s definitely a very useful class simply because a lot of higher-level engineering classes like advanced controls or anything vaguely related to robotics depends on at least a passing knowledge of linear algebra, and having a deeper understanding of those basics does make the material built on it a bit easier to comprehend.


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## GaryGrey (Mar 5, 2020)

Electromagnetics by far.  Vector calculus + differential equations + physics + circuit analysis + signal analysis all rolled into one class.  Even with a good professor it was rough, was at office hours weekly.  Homework problems took 2+ hours to finish each if one knew what to do and were very math heavy.  Exams were 25-30 questions multiple choice (only 55 minutes to finish) more concept centered where one had to know the rule that cut down most of the work.  Being multiple choice did not help since that meant no partial credit.  Each question was a-e with the right answer, the two most likely wrong answers, all of the above, or none of the above.  Seemed like the none of the above was to cover in case the professor made an error when solving the problem.  This all was made worse by having been out of school for 8 months at a co-op.  Never take a theory heavy right after having taken a 6+ month break from school.


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## Massively Strong Greed (Mar 5, 2020)

So far it’s Honors Anatomy & Physiology. So many different questions and different types of questions crammed into each test. The worst was one where you had to memorize the functions of various bones and muscles in the body; we were told that there would be no word bank, so I ended up studying in a mostly ineffective way. Didn’t help that a bunch of the descriptions were nearly identical.
Homework assignments were also incredibly long and barely made an impact on your grade. Teacher would track your elapsed time and percentage to see if you were cheating, too.


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## DocHoliday1977 (Mar 5, 2020)

dotONION said:


> The hardest class I ever took focused on using the texts of Foucault, Hardt & Negri, and a handful of other postmodern critical theorists to interpret current social movements. This was during occupy, so pretty much everyone in the class would sperg out every fucking week about the importance of Anon, and how they were the most important social movement of all time, blah blah blah justice, blah blah 1%, all that faggotry. I was the only person in the room who had ever even BEEN on the hacker known as 4chan. How did that work out for you, motherfuckers? Mostly the class was hard because after midterm papers, the prof who was also the head of the department stormed in and said that he wished he could fail us all.




Lol interpreting social movements.


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## AMHOLIO (Mar 5, 2020)

For high school the hardest was probably Algerbra II honors, the class most AP kids take right before AP math classes are available.  I had a lot of gaps in my math education, so I ended up dropping down to regular Algerbra II and suddenly I got As in it without even doing the homework.  Second hardest was chemistry, but that's because my adhd ass couldnt focus on memorizing anything like elements rout style, and i had a messy ass binder he graded us on that kept getting me Cs.  Last is anatomy and physiology, the most challenging study wise but I still got good grades on the test.  Honorable mention to AP art for its breakneck paced schedule.

While I've only taken 5 classes so far at my college, the hardest right now is English Comprehension not because I'm bad at English, but paying attention is nigh impossible.  The teacher speaks in a monotone voice with run on sentences and 90% of the lectures are on grammar principles I already know, so I space out like a motherfucker.  Boring is it's own flavor of difficulty. 
The actual hardest was introduction to psychology, but I was engaged in it so I had no problem passing the class with an A.  We read about 30-40 pages each chapter with 1 chapter being learned aweek, we had to write a 500 word research essay on a subject every week except exam weeks, and each exam had about 120+ vocabulary terms to learn.  Had a blast doing it all though.


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## TiggerNits (Mar 5, 2020)

I hated Calc 2 and Chemistry.

Loved physics, thermodynamics, econ and meteorology, though, which a lot of guys in my major hated


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## Duncan Hills Coffee (Mar 5, 2020)

I took four classes of Spanish in college. It sucked because my first couple of professors were garbage and I learned absolutely nothing. Then I get to the "Intermediate" class and realize I didn't learn a single damn thing and everyone else in that class could string together sentences perfectly while I struggled to say sentences that were more than 2 words. Thankfully that professor was sympathetic and completely understood that I was behind everyone else.

I have no desire to learn Spanish now.


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## Nazbowlgang (Mar 6, 2020)

Probably business law class, because I actually had to read.


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## Grundlejungle (Mar 7, 2020)

Fucking statistics. It didn't help that the professor was hung over every class.


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## Molester Stallone (Mar 7, 2020)

Any math class. I'm absolutely rubbish at remembering any of it.


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## Shield Breaker (Mar 7, 2020)

Accelerated Calculus II, mostly because the teacher would go into way too much detail on the mechanics behind the formulas and why they worked.


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## DocHoliday1977 (Mar 7, 2020)

Grundlejungle said:


> Fucking statistics. It didn't help that the professor was hung over every class.



My teacher was a sweet knowledgeable lady that was 8 1/2 months preggers and nearly popped while teaching us, but she always had the grades on time.


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## JosephStalin (Mar 7, 2020)

Korean, at a military school, many years ago.  Six hours a day, five days a week, for 47 weeks.  You could also count on a couple of hours studying at night.  Course is now 63 weeks long.

Our class was made up of forty students, broken up into four sections of ten students each.  All the instructors were civilians originally from Korea, except for one Army sergeant we had from time to time. 

To say the course was intense would be an understatement.  We sat down for the first time in our classroom, and a smiling Korean man said to each of us, "Annyong hashimnikka?", meaning hello, in the formal form.  And off we went.

You got a weekly grade.  If you got below 70 for a few weeks you would either be recycled to a class at an earlier part of the course or just removed from the school.  If that happened, the student would leave, and be doing any job assigned by his/her service. 

The only easy part of learning Korean was learning Hangul, the native alphabet.  Ten vowels, fourteen consonants.  No stroke order, unlike Chinese characters.  Words are written in syllablic blocks of from two to five letters, and are spelled as they sound.  Learned it in a couple of hours.   Seemingly everything else, difficult.  Korean has virtually nothing in common with English.  Sentence structure is different, grammar different, two different numbering systems, and several different forms of the language depending on the relative status of who is speaking.  Unlike Chinese, Korean isn't really a tonal language.  You will have a rising tone at the end of questions and a flat tone at the end of declarative statements.

Korean is one of the five most difficult languages for Americans to learn.  The others are Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, and Pashto.   Once again, none of these languages have anything in common with English.

Attrition in our class was high.  From a class of forty believe 23 of us graduated on time.  The course was later worth forty quarter hours (27 semester hours) when I started back to school after separating from the service.



After this Korean course, every college course, undergraduate and graduate, after separating from the service was easy by comparison.


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## Ughubughughughughughghlug (Mar 8, 2020)

Gar For Archer said:


> Hardest class I’ve ever taken is Advanced Linear Algebra, simply because it’s completely different from every other math class you would have taken up to that point as a non-math major in that there was very little computation and a whole metric fuckton of proofs. Took me a long time to wrap my head around the basics of vector spaces and their related concepts.
> 
> That being said, it’s definitely a very useful class simply because a lot of higher-level engineering classes like advanced controls or anything vaguely related to robotics depends on at least a passing knowledge of linear algebra, and having a deeper understanding of those basics does make the material built on it a bit easier to comprehend.



LOL

I have the second part of that class right now and I'm freaking out because the professor makes each test a third of the grade. It's really easy shit* except for that some of the material isn't in the book.

Did you ever have proofs classes before? How did those go? Proofs is what separates the Mathematics Chads from the Engineering Virgins. It's a completely different skillset. You can even suck at computation (I'm not good at it) but still be good at proofs. But most people suck at proofs because they suck at the extremely abstract thinking.


*Thinking about it now, it is pretty easy, but more so by proofs-based standards. If you haven't had topology, real analysis, or advanced statistics/probability theory, those are all way worse. Everybody hates topology and real analysis.


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## Lucifer's Rectum (Mar 10, 2020)

The morons that ran my program decided it was a good idea to put us through Theory of Computation in our last semester, rather than in our second like every other Comp. Sci program has. The result was an absolute mess of a class that shat up a lot of peoples' capstones without really providing anything beyond a really hard class that doesn't do anything other than pad our semester out to waste our time.


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## Retarded Forever (Mar 10, 2021)

Daddy's Little Kitten said:


> Calculus 1 and believe or not, Accounting 1 and 2.


Accounting is a shit major, with shit pay and no jobs. If you find accounting hard, then you are not fit for college and good majors like Engineering which is the only good major and the only thing people should study. Also you need a 3.9 to enter the Big 4 where the real money is made and going there is not worth it the risk. People trash business admin for being the liberal arts of business, but in reality accounting and the other BS management biz degrees are exactly the same as business admin just with a different name.

You only have 12 semesters to pick the right major, there is no second bachelors, there is no trade school. Especially not in California. It is one life and one type of degree unless you live in Europe where tuition is cheaper. Anyone who is saying you can join the trades after college is memeing and should not be taken seriously. If you are deep in a business major, leave as soon as you can and enter tradesmen work or go to another college where your units will reset because you also do not want to reach the unit cap or else there would be plenty of problems. You will thank yourself that you left hell before the fires of hell burned at their worst.

Middle management and accounting are not careers, they are dead end jobs. In fact you should look at any major and ask yourself, how many degrees produced millionaires.

Hint: It wasn't business, in fact I can argue it produced more communist millennials than any other degree despite what the stats say because those stats are fake news. It was engineering because they actually build tangible stuff and their labour has value.

The people who say do accounting for a job are morons who are too dumb to realize that cs + math gives you more in return and better jobs with less units than the SHIT degree I took in my college.  I can even go as far to say if the degree can be taught online by hundreds of colleges, it is likely complete garbage and not worth your time.

The truth about college is that if the major doesn't have Cal 2 or any rigor, that major is likely a load of bunk and not worth your time. Just replace finance with accounting, and I feel exactly the same way.

Compare these two:

Engineering: You get actual job skills for CAD, designing systems, and actually learn how to use math to build tangible things.

Accounting: You learn bookeeping shit, GAAP statements, and stuff that can be learned on the job. So not only is it trash, but the construction laborer who makes similar pay with a HS diploma will not get automated because that job is a skilled trade. IT IS NOT THE LANGUAGE OF BUSINESS. The language of business is doing something you like and having people pay for your services because they want you. Accounting may be taught in some trade schools, but it is not a real skill or a skill that is needed in the real world because computers can do all the work.

Math + CS: You get jobs in data and might work for google. There is so many options with this degree.

The hardest thing in an accounting major is not the major, but living with the idea that what you are doing is wasting your life on a worthless degree and have to go to college all over again for a field that is legitimate. You might as well call business admin and accounting, the cucks who couldn't make it to STEM and REAL DEGREES, but want a safe job that isn't even real.

Engineering / CS / Trades is for CHADs. Biz cancer is for beta males and lazy rich kids.

As for me, I can say that the hardest class is life itself. I wasted so much time in undergrad and wished I had gotten a real degree instead. By the time I went STEM it was too late. I wished I had ditched the biz cancer much earlier and went into the skilled trades.


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## Curt Sibling (Mar 10, 2021)

The lower classes can be quite hard. But that's why we keep them in slums.


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