Dumbest/most useless classes you've taken

[snailslime]

Teen health and economics in high school

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

Advanced math in high school. Like, how in the hell are you going to be able to find x in real life?

I need $300 and I earn $15 an hour. How many hours do I need to work?
Let x be hours.

15x = 300

Solve for x. That's the hours you need to work.

 

[Jason Wynn]

I need $300 and I earn $15 an hour. How many hours do I need to work?
Let x be hours.

15x = 300

Solve for x. That's the hours you need to work.

You can get the same result through simple division though. 300 divided by 15 being 20. Algebra I never found particularly difficult, but I do find it needlessly complicates equations that can be solved in a much simpler fashion.

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

You can get the same result through simple division though. 300 divided by 15 being. Algebra I never found particularly difficult, but I do find it needlessly complicates equations that can be solved in a much simpler fashion.

Then congratulations, you're doing algebra and you don't even realize it.

Now try to build a bridge that won't fall down, or even just run a small business, without being able to work with equations.

 

[Jason Wynn]

Then congratulations, you're doing algebra and you don't even realize it.

Now try to build a bridge that won't fall down, or even just run a small business, without being able to work with equations.

Yeah, derp moment on my part. I've been drinking as my excuse

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

Yeah, derp moment on my part. I've been drinking as my excuse

It's okay man, I have a huge stick up my ass today and am just looking to argue.

 

[Niggernerd]

Economics.
They didn't even teach me the best way how to evade taxes.

 

[FakeishNamedicoot]

Spanish was a waste of time. Learned way more from my boricua niggas. If you want to learn a language make friends with people that speak it.

Had to take a remedial biology class because credits are fucking weird from state to state. Everything about that class was useless, but goddamn was it fun hanging out with tards.

Higher placement classes are fucking bullshit and for fart huffers. The classwork is the exact same shit but you have to do more and most of the students are pretentious faggots. I much prefer the tards, they at least know how to make and laugh at dick jokes.

 

[MysticMisty]

The most useless class by far was this "how to succeed at college" class that was required to graduate. I was told that I had to take this class after I'd already been in college for a year. Shit was humiliating, you had to take notes on every little thing, and got graded on how well you took notes. Including the video on how to take good notes. We were also required to buy the official school semester planner and fill it out every day with shit.

This was all made worse by the fact that I don't have the learning personality type that takes notes and uses planners; I pay attention by sketching in class, and write out my homework above my sketches. Luckily the teacher didn't demand to see notes from other classes, but she would complain about the fact that I never wrote down my homework assignments from other classes in the planner (but thankfully it didn't count against me, and if it did it wasn't enough to make a huge difference).

The second most useless class was Mr. Fatty's 6th grade math class. All he did was yell all period long and nobody learned anything. And he still had the nerve to assign homework and make us take tests. But the school was well aware of what a shit teacher he was because despite the 100% fail rate we all moved onto 7th grade anyways.

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

History C(or History 3), a 120 hour course about very local history that I got the highest grade in. There's not a single higher education program that requires it, absolutely none, completely useless. I took it for fun and it was fun.

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

Economics.
They didn't even teach me the best way how to evade taxes.

You know, I had this conversation with an Econ professor. I referred to it as being "common sense with graphs."

He told me that just because it's common sense to people like us, it doesn't make it common sense to most people.

I realized he's right...

 

[PrussiansMarchingOn1819]

I guess being a General Studies major at a community college gave me the opportunity to pick any classes I want . They were all basic 101 classes, but you were required to take a couple 200 level classes to obtain the degree. I hate math in general, but I had take the class to get the degree. I always make sure to pick the interesting classes. I would always feel out the class before it's to late, I didn't want to dig a hole that I can't get myself out of. I believe any class can be interesting, but its the instructor and their personality that will make you either like the class or hate it. Some of them will try to fail you or give you a satisfactory grade, but you know you deserve that B or A grade. They don't reply back to your emails, don't answer the phone or call you back, They'll ride your ass hard, but they'll go easy on the others.

 

[Agent Abe Caprine]

In middle school, computer class got replaced with this thing called Study Island. It was basically an hour of taking standardized tests. For three years. It had games that were just as soul crushingly boring as the multiple choice questions. No idea if this torture software is still in use.

Edit: It still exists.

 

[Kiwi Lime Pie]

The most useless class I took probably had to be the 20th Century American Literature class I took in college. I took it only because I needed a fourth class to be a full-time student and nothing else that semester seemed interesting once I enrolled in my required classes. Apart from having two papers, an oral presentation, a possible mid-term, and a final exam consisting solely of an essay assignment, I can't remember much about the class content or what got discussed during our class periods. What I can remember is that the professor was a feminist woman who felt that I as a male deserved a C for all assignments no matter how much preparation or effort I put into assignments. I must have impressed her with my final essay, however, because I got a C+ as my final grade. Seeing a passing grade on my semester grade report was all that mattered to me after what I went through. I got the credits I needed and a passing grade to keep my parents happy.

Spoiler: High School Equivalents

As much as I hate to say it, a class I took in High School titled Survey of the Social World (SSW) proved to be more useless than expected. I hate saying it because the teacher that taught SSW was well liked by the student body, a very easy grader, and made my World History 1 class both fun and educational at the same time. For whatever reason, she didn't have the same enthusiasm with SSW and we barely scratched the surface of any of the topics. Most days were largely a social hour where we could ask questions about what we covered/read or instead read the assigned chapters on our own. Otherwise, the class spent the hour doing homework from other classes or goofing off. Our final exam was to submit an outline of the final chapter in the textbook that we were supposed to cover but never did. It was probably one of the easiest A's I've ever received. Still, it was disappointing that we never really learned the useful stuff the class was supposed to cover -- namely financial literacy and personal economics.

Runner up for high school: Our required 2-3 week health module in Freshman PE. New that year was a state requirement that the health portion of PE include some sort of educational content about AIDS awareness and prevention. Although our health instructor threatened some unruly students with substituting AIDS instruction in place of basic first aid concepts, the most he ever did was have us watch a 15-20 minute video where some dating club claimed they started testing members for AIDS. He then criticized their policy by pointing out that the tests at the time could only tell whether people got infected six months earlier, so the tests were essentially useless for members that might have come down with AIDS and unknowingly spread it in the ensuing months. That one day was the extent of our AIDS instruction -- nothing about non-sexual means of transmission and nothing about prevention or precautions. Our grade for that quarter was based on a single, health-related assignment of our choosing (with his approval). I chose to do a book report on a book on High Blood Pressure that I checked out from the school library. I got an A despite the fact I put very little effort into writing the book report.

AP Computer Science Principles.

I didn't even get to take the AP test.

@BingBong, can you share why without sharing TMI?

Keyboarding.. hopefully they don't teach this anymore

When I went back to school to complete a community college certificate program, I believe they were offering up to four semesters worth of keyboarding courses. However, it seemed like demand for subsequent courses (namely Keyboarding 2, 3, and 4) was much lower because the course catalog always added a disclaimer for those courses that read, "This course may be combined with another keyboarding course."

(Edit) It looks as if this community college eliminated Keyboarding as part of its ongoing efforts to update course offerings to better serve students. Instead, I found a course for Medical Office Software Applications that focuses on keyboarding skills needed in the medical assisting field.

- Computer Applications in High School. This wasn't computer applications, it was a Microsoft Office class. 70% of the class was typing excercises in Word.

My first year of high school, I took "Introduction to Computers" which was later renamed "Computer Applications" to sound more important. The course should been titled "Computer Concepts and AppleWorks" because we spent the first week learning about the components of a computer and taking typing tests. The remainder of the semester was spent learning the basics of AppleWorks (basically Apple's then version of an office suite): word processing, database, spreadsheet, and mail merge.

On a similar note, My dad thought it would be a good idea to take a computer literacy course through the school district's continuing/night education department. He dropped out after the first night because it was mostly, "This is a computer, this is how you turn it on, etc." and it was going to cover Apple II's which would be useless when we had a PC-compatible computer at home. Had he told me of his plans, I could have told him about the latter part since I believe it was taught in my high school's computer room/lab. While I don't know if he was able to get any sort of refund, I do know he suggested that they make it clear in the course description what type of computers would be used so that people wouldn't be learning on computers they weren't actually using outside of class.
(Edits for Spelling & clarity)

 

[Niggernerd]

In middle school, computer class got replaced with this thing called Study Island. It was basically an hour of taking standardized tests. For three years. It had games that were just as soul crushingly boring as the multiple choice questions. No idea if this torture software is still in use.

Edit: It still exists.

Holy fuck i hated study island mini games. I had more fun waiting in line for the shitty square pizzas and frozen mashed potatoes.

 

[Winged_Fool]

Philosophy. It was a very free, laidback class. I was expecting it to be a serious class but it really wasn't. I'm not exactly complaining though because it was a nice break in between all of the other classes I had to take seriously.

 

[Exist0]

Philosophy. It was a very free, laidback class. I was expecting it to be a serious class but it really wasn't. I'm not exactly complaining though because it was a nice break in between all of the other classes I had to take seriously.

How philosophical, it appears to have left a mark. Just use more pretentious language when writing your description and you can get published. No snark or sarcasm, you nailed it.

Like the old tale of the philosophy test which was just one question, "why?". The acceptable answer being "why not"

 

[BingBong]

@BingBong, can you share why without sharing TMI?

I didn't finish a research paper beforehand. We didn't know that it was required until the last minute, so I didn't have time to complete it.

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

In middle school, computer class got replaced with this thing called Study Island. It was basically an hour of taking standardized tests. For three years. It had games that were just as soul crushingly boring as the multiple choice questions. No idea if this torture software is still in use.

Edit: It still exists.

We had Study Island, but I can't remember a thing about it besides its name. I think most of the kids liked it? But elementary school kids are stupid enough to like anything that's reskinned as a game, while middle school kids are smart enough to tell the difference.

Had this Government class in high school where the professor, this old hippie-like guy (was probably gay, too) did a mixture of showing us movies/documentaries, having us play edutainment games, class discussions, and very rarely actual lectures. He was the exact opposite of everything I stand for but he had such a delightfully positive/fun personality that I felt/feel nothing but goodwill towards him, although the class was still a waste of time and could be a real drag. Games in that class were great. There were two he had us play, one where you run a presidential election campaign (meant to teach about the electoral college), and another where you run a law firm specialized in constitutional law (meant to teach the Bill of Rights). Best "educational" games I was ever made to play, because they weren't the shitty kind of "answer the question right and we let you play for a minute." Instead, the learning was actually in the mechanics, like having to construct (from a set of choices) your legal argument for the defendant based on your understanding of the Constitution. It gave me a real appreciation for the potential of video games in education. It's just that most edutainment is complete dogshit.

 

[Kiwi Lime Pie]

I didn't finish a research paper beforehand. We didn't know that it was required until the last minute, so I didn't have time to complete it.

A research paper for an AP CS course seems a bit odd/unexpected. The only time I ever had to do any sort of research paper was for a then-new course at my University in Software Engineering where our professor asked us to write a very short paper where we made recommendations for course-appropriate CASE tools given a small list of requirements and constraints. On the surface, it felt like we were giving him free research, but he was an an awesome professor and the class figured it was intended to help familiarize us with the kind of research & recommendations we might make as professionals. So, nobody minded.

But elementary school kids are stupid enough to like anything that's reskinned as a game, while middle school kids are smart enough to tell the difference.

In sixth grade I think it was, my K-8 school was able to open a basic computer lab consisting of 10-15 Apple II Computers, a couple of shared printers, and a limited amount of educational software appropriate for that age level. With each grade getting one hour a week to visit the lab and use grade-appropriate software/games, I'm pretty sure we all liked the idea of playing around on computers once a week instead of spending it in class.

In junior high, even though simple BASIC programming was introduced once a week for one semester for both 7th and 8th graders, the attitude definitely shifted. I still recall a classmate who thought it would be cute to use the crossword puzzle maker to create a puzzle about farting and other crude subjects. Her antics earned us a reprimand from the proctor the following week about responsible/appropriate computer usage.

Edutainment has to be presented the right way in order to be a good, and sometimes fun, way for students to learn. Otherwise, it turns into little more than a computerized free for all.

To further the thread topic: PE itself wasn't useless, but the fact our PE teacher gave my 8th grade class a written test about volleyball was. All of us looked on in shock because we had never received a written test in PE before and never did again for the rest of the year. I'm pretty sure nobody passed the test because we didn't expect it, some of it involved terminology we never learned, and we figured it had to be some sort of joke. The following year, my first semester of 9th grade PE featured a 20-question true/false quiz on basic PE concepts. Even though it was easy to pass, it still seemed dumb and useless. Thankfully, those were the only two written PE exams I ever experienced.
(E: Spelling)