Dumbest/most useless classes you've taken

[BIG BILL HELL'S]

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.

To be slightly fair toward the teacher, this might have been more of a diagnostic tool to see what the kids actually know so that the teacher could lesson plan accordingly.

(Probably not, though, it was probably just busy work because the teacher was too hung over to listen to 30 kids bouncing basketballs or whatever)

 

[Niggernerd]

Probably not, though, it was probably just busy work because the teacher was too hung over to listen to 30 kids bouncing basketballs or whatever

It usually is or an easy cop out to get paid for doing nothing.

 

[Lucifer's Rectum]

I had to take a class on Ubiquitous Computing in my last year of college. What is Ubiquitous Computing? Fuck if I know. The class structure had us split into groups of 3 and doing presentations on a different topic each week. There were no actual assignments or content besides having to read 2 - 3 40+ page unrelated papers as prep. I won't name him because powerlevel but the prof was this dude who's apparently regarded as a visionary in my field but honestly he was a huge cunt. I could go on forever about how bad this class was but for now I'll just say that Ubiquitous Computing is a very new concept, and shouldn't have classes built around it until it's something we actually start finding ways to implement.

 

[MerriedxReldnahc]

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.

My high school P.E teacher who I'll call Mr. Swastika (because I have on good authority that has been his nickname for 30 YEARS) assigned tests because who fucking knows why. He blew a gasket at us once after a multiple-choice test because of how we all wrote our answers down. We used notebook paper for our answer sheet and because we aren't insane, we formatted our answers as:
1. B
2. C
3. A
and so on.
He shouted at us once he started getting tests back because he claimed that he told us to format it as:
B 1.
C 2.
A 3.
He most certainly did not tell us to do that beforehand because we would have remembered something that bass-ackwards.

8th grade P.E teacher though? Same lady who I got a 17% from? Assigned HOMEWORK in P.E. I actually refused to do it because I was swamped in 5 other classes of work to do. She also had the brilliant idea of assigning me a "5 ways I was active" paper when I was out of school for over a week. With bronchitis. I mean, hacking up phlegm is probably an ab workout.
She was also heavily pregnant when I had her that year which might have been why she was more of a turbocunt than the year before.

 

[Kiwi Lime Pie]

8th grade P.E teacher though? Same lady who I got a 17% from? Assigned HOMEWORK in P.E. I actually refused to do it because I was swamped in 5 other classes of work to do.

I suppose I'm glad I took PE when I did. Someone I know is a PE teacher and the syllabus for both middle school and high school PE in that district allows for the occasional written assignment/homework. I'm not sure what to think of that because there are tasks such as tracking activity outside of class that would make sense in terms of PE "homework." However, in-class exams or assignments seem to be a bad idea given America's overall current fitness rates are as poor as they are. Students need as much active time as they can get.

 

[Win98SE]

In the category of useless/infuriating:

In uni there was a required class for CS majors called "Languages." The fucking thing was just "here's a bunch of weird-ass programming languages, learn them." I thought, OK, fine, at least it's online so I can stay home.

Semester starts. I log in expecting to see content and there's nothing. I message the prof and say, "Hey, I'm not seeing any lessons uploaded. Is this on my end?" An hour later I got a notification that there'd been a bunch of Powerpoint slides uploaded. Great. This goes on for weeks - someone has to message the fucking guy to get him to upload lessons, so at some point we stopped emailing him and hoped he'd just forget he was in charge of the class and get an easy A. That's exactly what happened. Occasionally he would realize he fucked up and would send out hurried emails claiming there'd be quizzes and tests over the lessons so far. Well, what lessons? The fucking Wikipedia-sourced Powerpoints? Nothing ever happened.

At my school, if a prof had an online class he/she was required to hold office hours each week. These were hours where they had to be on-campus to upload lessons and have in-person meetings with students. I eventually had this realization: If this dude is holding office hours each week for this class, what the fuck is he doing with that time if he isn't running the course?

Weeks later, after the class had completely stalled, I logged onto our school's social media platform during his "office hours" and saw it: "Women are better than men at programming". It was a link to an article and the absentee professor had posted it proudly with the caption: "Men, pay attention. A lot of you just don't have what it takes. We need more women and less men in this program." Within minutes the comments went nuclear. But instead of issuing an apology, backing up his arguments, or whatever, the guy says "What I've learned is that you're all sexist pigs." I screencapped immediately and cross-posted it to every comp-sci group on campus. Specifically, I linked it to every student who had his useless online class. He later went into DFE mode and denied it happened. Regardless, we never heard from him again and I got a nice, shiny A for doing jack shit.

Later I found out the professor had given As to everyone except the single female student, who he gave a C. She was a straight-A student and the C had thrown her graduation w/ some kind of honors into limbo.

That's right, Mr. "Women are better than men" gave the ONLY female student a C for a class he released zero gradeable assignments for. Fucking LMAO. She immediately contacted the higher-ups and nuked him from orbit.

 

[Shield Breaker]

Advanced Calculus II. The teacher would go on long tangents about entirely pointless shit about why we use certain terms and not bother explaining the actual calculus. She would also sound like she was getting sexually aroused when solving a problem, and it was pretty gross.

 

[Jet Fuel Johnny]

I took a Gender Studies class back in the 90's at the education center. This was actually a good fucking class, going into the differences between the genders and the different needs of each gender, and all that. Taught by a feminist, who went into the different types of feminism, the different schisms within feminism. The original definition of toxic masculinity and the theory of the disposable man and how 'patriarchal norms' came about as well as the reason matriarchal societies always fell due to infighting and outside pressures. It was a fascinating course and I took her level II course. (Funny thing: I was the only enlistedman in the course, the rest were all officers) Pulled an A in that one. Hell, we had to do real life shit in that course. She even had labs where we looked at (then current) military doctrine through a (90's) feminist lens to find anything too archaic. (Funny thing number two: She was virulently against women in combat arms) I would have taken her Level III stuff but things came up, which I kind of regretted.

2014 comes around, I go back to do some more college and update my education. Mandatory Gender Studies class. Can't get out of it even though I got an A in the original two. Which I thought was weird, but hey, the college said that the theory I'd learned was out of date by 20 years.

First thing I heard: "There's no way this was a valid Gender Studies Course, you're a man and got an A." I told her the class was entirely male, which she scoffed at.

It was the most useless shit I've ever seen. She actually cited fucking Tumblr blogs. Of course, the coursebook was some shit written by her.

I pulled a C out of the class and was frankly amazed. Every guy in there she treated like shit. It was fucking worthless and if anything created whole classes of misogynists because of the stupid shit she said and encouraged.

 

[Jonah Hill poster]

In university, it was Gender Identity.
I still have no clue what this has to do with majoring in Communications and Media Production.

 

[Kiwi Lime Pie]

Later I found out the professor had given As to everyone except the single female student, who he gave a C. She was a straight-A student and the C had thrown her graduation w/ some kind of honors into limbo.

That's right, Mr. "Women are better than men" gave the ONLY female student a C for a class he released zero gradeable assignments for. Fucking LMAO. She immediately contacted the higher-ups and nuked him from orbit.

That's actually horrifying. i hope the female student appealed her grade to see if it could be changed seeing how the professor clearly singled her out when everyone else in the same situation earned an A.

Sad part is, I believe I took the same class for CS that was an overview of various languages, their similarities and differences, and what each language was best suited for. With the right teacher, it can be a useful theory class and even fun. It's a shame you had a professor that acted disinterested and left you rightfully feeling gypped -- especially with what most universities now charge for 300 & 400-level course tuition these days.

I pulled a C out of the class and was frankly amazed. Every guy in there she treated like shit. It was fucking worthless and if anything created whole classes of misogynists because of the stupid shit she said and encouraged.

Sadly, I'm not surprised. When I still lurked here, a Kiwi -- who from context appeared to be a white male -- started a thread about their experiences in a mandatory diversity/gender class they were taking that semester. A tl;dr version of that thread would be confirmation of everything you said about your own class experience. It's not surprising that classes intended to encourage diversity end up having the opposite effect because of how white students are treated in them. As I said elsewhere on the 'Farms, it's an 180-degree turn from my college experience where incoming students were told, "People are going to have opinions different that yours, and that's OK!" Now, it's more "You're entitled to your opinion, so long as it matches everyone else's."

Such a diversity class requirement at my alma mater (thankfully adopted after I graduated) played a role in my decision to not pursue a second bachelor's degree and instead opt for an exam-based professional certification.

 

[Niggernerd]

Theater in highschool. I never participated in shit, it was just an easy class to sit through. But watching the others made me cringe and ofc we had a flamboyant gay with a unibrow there.

 

[MysticMisty]

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.

I don't know about that, it depends on the "game" in question. Everyone loved Odell Down Under because it looked good and you could play as a motherfucking shark. The "solve math questions to win" game however was almost universally despised. The typing game in 5th grade (pretty sure it wasn't Mavis Beacon) was weird because we hated the game, but almost everyone was super competitive with it to have the highest wpm for bragging rights.

 

[Guts Gets Some]

Accounting taught me literally nothing about how actual accounting works. It was just more boring math.

 

[Crankenstein]

I didn't take it but someone I know took a class called something like "Rock and roll study" that specifically focused on popular rock bands from the late 70s to the mid 80s.

 

[Retarded Forever]

The entire business admin / accounting degree.

 

[Professional Lurker]

I had a Science Fiction class in 7th grade. It was a fun but totally useless time killer.

 

[Molester Stallone]

When I was in college I needed 3 gym credits. My options were a nutrition class, or walking. They would seriously bill you for 3 credits and expect you to show up and just wander around campus for 2 hours a week. I figured if I'm paying for this shit I'm at least going to learn something, so nutrition it was. Turned out to be a great learning experience, and has helped me avoid the dreaded dad bod so far.

 

[The Cunting Death]

Any class where I had to suck off Karl Marx to pass

 

[BlackWaterSails]

I adored the class but, realistically, Hydroponics was pointless to my specific educational goals. I do plan on using it but it was dumb to take and waste time on.

 

[BlaireWhitesBottom]

Diversity in education. The teacher was a qween but to her credit she graded fairly and easily. I liked her legitly regardless of difference of opinion. The class itself was kinda useless considering just how fucking diverse the city I was in was.