What was the hardest class you passed in undergrad? - Page 8

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[ARCHIVED THREAD] - What was the hardest class you passed in undergrad? (Page 8 of 10)

Posted: 4/10/2019 11:14:54 PM EDT

[#1]

Programming in R

I was taking computer science classes for my minor. After mid terms it all began to click and I soaked through it, but I was pulling my hair out at first.

Posted: 4/10/2019 11:17:24 PM EDT

[#2]

Financial Derivatives. Was a course for one of my undergrad degrees. Was tough material but the professor was also a major douche. Grading was composed of 4 tests only. Tests where 2 questions long. Right or wrong answers, no partial credit. That dude was a miserable fuck.

Posted: 4/10/2019 11:22:44 PM EDT

[#3]

Statistical thermodynamics, it was an upper level course for my physics major and the teacher was terrible. A few quantum mechanics classes were bad too.

Posted: 4/10/2019 11:24:53 PM EDT

[#4]

Thermodynamics. Still not sure how I passed.

Posted: 4/10/2019 11:25:33 PM EDT

[#5]

On the flip side I took a class in leisure travel and tourism. I couldn't believe people majored in that.

On topic, embryology. It was an upper division class that started at 730am. First day the prof said we have to move it to 6am. I stopped going after a while. Got a D.

O chem with a shitty prof sucks. Withdrew from o chem 2 the first time around. Second time with awesome prof, I set the curve on a few of the tests.

Another fun note. Took elective poli sci classes with a prof who had to step out a couple times because the local conservative am talk radio station called him for his opinion on the air.

Posted: 4/11/2019 12:00:15 AM EDT

[#6]

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What is with all the hate on thermodynamics? Is it from chemical or non-chemical engineers?

My ChEg profs were very clear with us at the start of the semester (fall, sophomore year): if we did not love thermodynamics, steam tables, the Redlich-Kwong equation, etc, we were to change majors ASAP.

But then, we had another prof spring of junior year for Heat & Mass Transfer who was the former dean, he refused to allow repeats, and was the only one to teach that class. If you were performing poorly, he would fill out your change-of-major form, get it signed by the current dean, and leave blanks only for your new major and your signature when he stapled it to your returned test. He would include a post-it with suggestions of majors he thought best suited you. The dude gave zero fucks in his quest to keep the quality of the program's graduates high.

Kharn

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ChemE. I didn't hate thermo, thermo 2 was just hard as hell. I also find it interesting that a lot of schools have mass and heat transfer together. We had thermo 1 and 2 then heat transfer and mass transport as 2 separate semesters. Not like it matters bc I don't remember much from either anymore

Posted: 4/11/2019 12:10:41 AM EDT

[#7]

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My intern was surprised when I told him the most advanced software he would ever touch for the rest of his career would be Excel.

Kharn

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Engineering calculus and I have never once used t post college

My dad was considered the brightest guy in college, aced all the math classes, never used calculus once he left college and became a PE.

My intern was surprised when I told him the most advanced software he would ever touch for the rest of his career would be Excel.

Kharn

I graduated at the wrong time and had to work for a piss poor company/industry that couldn't afford process simulators. Pretty much made all my own line and heat exchanger sizing tools in excel/VBA. You can do just about anything in it if you have the will and time... crane manual and Perry's FTW.

Now I just use hysys/unisim for everything... feel so lazy.

Posted: 4/11/2019 12:12:35 AM EDT

[#8]

Philosophy of Religion

give me science or math any day

Posted: 4/11/2019 12:17:42 AM EDT

[#9]

I need an art credit so I thought History of Art would be easy. BS, you had to learn the name, date, artist name, style, the meaning of the art, and the significance of the piece. There were about 30 a week you had to know. It sucked.

Posted: 4/11/2019 12:22:25 AM EDT

[#10]

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At NDSU, they call it Calc 2 cause you take it twice

Actually calc 2 wasn't that hard...understanding the Russian instructors and TAs, on the other hand

(This was a generation ago...it's probably Indians or something by now)

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My Dad took Calc 2 a hundred years ago and the TA was Hungarian. No one could understand this dude. He kept talking about Geerohs. Finally, someone asked him, "What's a geeroh?"

He got pissed, scribbles a whole bunch of circles on the board and shouts, "GEEROH! GEEROH! GEEROH! You get a Geeroh, you plunk!!"

Posted: 4/11/2019 12:23:51 AM EDT

[#11]

Fluid Mechanics II, taught by a professor who was a terrible teacher. I’m confident in saying that about the prof because everyone except one Chinese dude was lost in the sauce. It was a 300 level tech elective.

Posted: 4/11/2019 12:36:27 AM EDT

[#12]

I’m surprised at all the responses saying calc 3. Everyone I’ve discussed the matter with agreed that the toughest problems were in calc 2.

Posted: 4/11/2019 12:46:29 AM EDT

[#13]

Modern Control Theory. Had no problem with Diffy EQs or Thermo II. But Control theory

Posted: 4/11/2019 1:11:58 AM EDT

[#14]

All accounting and COBOL

Posted: 4/11/2019 1:13:19 AM EDT

[#15]

Research statistics. Required for degree.

Posted: 4/11/2019 1:34:44 AM EDT

[#16]

Microtechnique. The entire process from preserving the specimen to making the tissue slides. After fixation, more art than science. My professor was a master and genius. Said it would take 40hrs/week just to get a B in 3 unit course.

I thought he was BSing....I got a B and was happy to get it.

I've attended postgraduate school twice since then (two master's), never came close to that level of work.

Posted: 4/11/2019 1:35:55 AM EDT

[#17]

Discrete math. The professor was an idiot. He'd read the wrong things off the slides then start making up an explanation for why he said different numbers than what was literally printed on his slide and no one understood wtf was going on. I ended up just ignoring him and watching youtube videos about it.

The weekend before our final I asked our TAs if they had made it yet and they were like no, the professor is going to! I laughed at them. That sunday, the professor called the TAs and told them to make a final for us. I asked the TAs about it before the test and they were fucking pissed.

Posted: 4/11/2019 2:49:40 AM EDT

[#18]

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I never understood the language requirements to graduate. I had to have 9 credit hours of a single foreign language (could not take 3 different culture classes). My three semesters of German has been so helpful to my biology major ass.

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Japanese language and culture. Teacher's first job and he was trying too hard, ended up requiring something like learning 1000 Kanji in 10 weeks, on top of vocabulary and literature (mostly poetry). Fought damn hard to get a D-.

Not required for my major, but it did fulfill my language requirement to graduate.

I never understood the language requirements to graduate. I had to have 9 credit hours of a single foreign language (could not take 3 different culture classes). My three semesters of German has been so helpful to my biology major ass.

Back when an undergrad degree was had by about five percent of the population,
A true liberal arts B.A. meant someone could converse in a foreign language and take some senior year courses requiring reading texts in their original language. A true B.S. meant someone could converse in a foreign language, or read pertinent articles in their field in French, German, or maybe Italian journals.

Posted: 4/11/2019 3:04:47 AM EDT

[#19]

Intermediate financial statement analysis

Made QBA, Calculus and my Series 7 exams look easy

What made the test difficult were they were all long form, essay questions, you had to remember the ratios and formulas and then both explain and defend your answer

I made a B in the course

Posted: 4/11/2019 3:29:23 AM EDT

[#20]

Constitutional Law, a million SCOTUS cases to memorize and I suck at names.

Posted: 4/11/2019 4:55:38 AM EDT

[#21]

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When I was an undergrad, I took some grad classes. Advanced Game Theory in the econ department was definitely the toughest. I was taking 21 credits (7 classes) and that one class took more time and effort than the six other classes combined.

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21 hours in a single semester?! No wonder you say “lol” every other post; you’re insane!

Posted: 4/11/2019 5:06:49 AM EDT

[#22]

Orgo 2 for me , fuck that class , the highest score on the ACS final was a whopping 37/70

Runner up was physics research I completed over compact objects, I got to learn how to do advanced calculus, code in Fortran and Matlab , but I have never learned more from a class in my entire life

Posted: 4/11/2019 5:34:09 AM EDT

[#23]

Electromagnetic Fields 1 and 2. Hated both.

Posted: 4/11/2019 6:13:20 AM EDT

[#24]

So in a nutshell : programming, thermodynamics, and organic chemistry... Or you really didn't take a hard class.

Posted: 4/11/2019 6:23:44 AM EDT

[#25]

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So in a nutshell : programming, thermodynamics, and organic chemistry... Or you really didn't take a hard class.

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One post college interview:
"Why did you pick chem e?"
"Because I was told it was hard"
Non-engineer interviewing me:

No call back, he must have thought I was bonkers.

Another interview had a chem e on the panel, ater the same answer he asked if I could make a site visit the next day.

Kharn

Posted: 4/11/2019 8:29:36 AM EDT

[#26]

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Been there... engineering was a bitch. I remember once getting a test back and I got a 9. A 9/100... the average wasn't much better

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I don't understand the point of classes/tests like that. My thermo final was kind of like that - I had pulled my grade up from a D on the first test (wake-up call, idiot, you can't phone this one in!) to having a low B going into the final, felt like I knew the material fairly well, studied... there were four or five problems and I'm not sure I completed any of them. But somehow I got a C in the class? If we were actually supposed to be able to solve them all, then I shouldn't have passed and neither should most of the class. To me that's like a failure by the school, because obviously they are filling classes with people who are missing prerequisite knowledge, they crammed too much into one semester, or they have a really bad professor. I can kind of understand a curve that gives everyone a 5 or 10 point bump, but 50 points is ridiculous. Or, conversely, if we're not expected to know it, then what's the point, because you don't even really get a chance to show what you DO know.

I know we have some profs here, I'd be curious to know what they think about it.

Posted: 4/11/2019 8:47:56 AM EDT

[#27]

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A basic biology course at a junior college during the Summer.

The teacher was of the type that knew people took Summer classes at a junior college because they were easy and wanted to dispel that notion. So she loaded us up with a ton of classwork. At one point she started chastising students that complained about the heavy workload. Something about the real world will load you full of work.

We did the equivalent of 9 course hours.

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Signed up for a summer class one time. Don't remember what the class was. But the teacher has this big ass stack of books on her desk. She said we were going to read all of them and there will be SPELLING TESTS. This was on of those short three/four week summer classes. I got up right in the middle of her class and went straight to the drop/add and dropped that mother fucker.

Maybe it was a bluff to get people to drop. Maybe it wasn't.

Posted: 4/11/2019 8:51:17 AM EDT

[#28]

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Differential Equations

I squeaked through it with a D

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I've been told Diff E isn't that hard. But I was working full time and schooling part time and by the time I got to Diff E calculus 1 was a faded memory and I wasn't about to go relearn cal 1 one all over again.

By that time I was working full time in IT anyway.

Posted: 4/11/2019 8:52:27 AM EDT

[#29]

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Public speaking, followed closely by intermediate accounting. Calc 2 & 3, Diff-eq, and statistical theory were all cake in comparison. Calc was fun. I guess that just makes me weird.

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Yep you're a sick bastard...

Posted: 4/11/2019 8:58:50 AM EDT

[#30]

I worked the hardest in PChem, but that B in Differential Equations was the 8th Wonder of the Modern World!

Posted: 4/11/2019 9:03:43 AM EDT

[#31]

Took meteorology as an elective thinking it would be a fun one and relatively easy. It was fun, but more so as the prof was The Japanese Nutty Professor Slapstick Show. Poor guy bumbled through everything and made no sense. Every demonstration or experiment he tried failed and one literally blew up. Fortunately he had two smirking grad students with fire extinguishers close by that helped him out and prevented any major, campus-clearing incident from happening. The end of every class had the students staring at each other in disbelief with "WTF did I just sit through?" looks on their faces. Needless to say, my average for that class was a 33, which on the curve netted me a B+. It was a true ventilation/perfusion mismatch if there ever was one.

Posted: 4/11/2019 9:04:16 AM EDT

[#32]

Electricity and Magnetism. I just could never figure out a basic model for how anything in the subject worked, so I could never develop an intuitive feel for how to tackle problems or what the answers should look like.

Posted: 4/11/2019 9:07:19 AM EDT

[#33]

Two semesters of Organic Chemistry, course was used to thin out pre vet students.

Posted: 4/11/2019 9:10:04 AM EDT

[#34]

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Research statistics. Required for degree.

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My undergrad was in English & my advisor told me to take a stat class to satisfy both a math and science requirement. Turns out that it was the weed out class for stat majors. Man that sucked.

I aced my research stat class I had to take for my doctorate though, go figure.

Posted: 4/11/2019 9:12:16 AM EDT

[#35]

So far none of them have been hard, but one of my history classes this semester is a real kick in the dick.

Posted: 4/11/2019 9:13:00 AM EDT

[#36]

Calculus 251 252 253..

that was butt fuck gang rape hard.

Posted: 4/11/2019 9:15:02 AM EDT

[#37]

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Don't drop your stack of cards walking into the computer lab....LOL

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That's why you put them in a properly sized box and closed the lid well!

Posted: 4/11/2019 9:16:05 AM EDT

[#38]

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Engineering physics and it's not even close. Ever scored a 35% on a test? Ever been average with that score?

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Very common average in a bunch of the classes I had

Posted: 4/11/2019 9:17:08 AM EDT

[#39]

Differential Equations. I had no idea what I was doing. I don't know how I managed a C in that class. I think just showing up and doing my work was all that was required to pass maybe?

I also failed Dynamics of machines 2- I think that's the only class I had to retake.

Posted: 4/11/2019 9:18:14 AM EDT

[#40]

Toss-up between C++ programming horseshit I was forced to take, even though I was Mech Eng, and 3rd year Thermodynamics with an exam loaded with questions that forced you to use steam and enthalpy tables. I honestly still have for-real nightmares where I wake up thinking “Fuck, I never studied for Thermo exam!”

Posted: 4/11/2019 9:20:21 AM EDT

[#41]

FPNI

Posted: 4/11/2019 9:20:51 AM EDT

[#42]

I think another interesting poll might be What made your hardest class(es) the hardest: The Material, The Professor, Class Logistics (time of day, length, frequency), Other.

Posted: 4/11/2019 9:21:25 AM EDT

[#43]

Intermediate accounting 2 was my worst grade, part of that was the professor but it was still a hard class.

I took an options futures and other derivatives class and that sucked. Ended up with an ok grade but I never really felt I knew what was going on.

Posted: 4/11/2019 9:26:20 AM EDT

[#44]

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I'm surprised at all the responses saying calc 3. Everyone I've discussed the matter with agreed that the toughest problems were in calc 2.

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Hands down, no comparison. Calc 3 was dead easy.
Now ADVANCED CALCULUS (or Real Analysis), that sucked. It didn't help that I took it 25 years after Calc 3.

Posted: 4/11/2019 9:28:20 AM EDT

[#45]

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At NDSU, they call it Calc 2 cause you take it twice

Actually calc 2 wasn't that hard...understanding the Russian instructors and TAs, on the other hand

(This was a generation ago...it's probably Indians or something by now)

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Circuits. Fucking hated it.

Calc 2 took me two tries, but somehow everything clicked during Diff-Eq and I walked out with a B without much frustration.

At NDSU, they call it Calc 2 cause you take it twice

Actually calc 2 wasn't that hard...understanding the Russian instructors and TAs, on the other hand

(This was a generation ago...it's probably Indians or something by now)

I took Calc 2 at NDSU in 2009 (I think) from Dr Boyton, who was a Jamaican dude with elbow length dreads and a beanie hat who always invited the class to his bands gigs over the weekend.

Posted: 4/11/2019 9:33:07 AM EDT

[#46]

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Invertebrate paleontology was the most labor-intensive

Final exam was: here's a random hunk of fossil-bearing rock from somewhere on the planet. Identify the species of fossils and the facies from which the rock was taken.

Was in 1997, so you couldn't just Google (or Lycos, Webcrawler, etc) it. Weeks in the library poring over journals dating back to the 1800s, in the lab chipping away at fragments of shells, etc.

I don't know why, but all the other geo courses were comparatively easy...low temp geochem, mineralogy, all the petrology classes, structures, etc. For some reason, I had a tougher time with this invert class.

IIRC, the rock was from the Devonian Haragan Formation of Oklahoma. I remember having a tough time differentiating between various species of brachiopods.

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I don't know how that one wasn't the hardest for you. I heard horror stories from the professional guys that took it. Luckily I was environmental and got out without having to take it. For me my hardest class was geophysics. The final was a paragraph long question and after my professor handed out the test he said "Oh by the way, there is no correct answer, good luck"

Posted: 4/11/2019 9:35:46 AM EDT

[#47]

English……..I sucked at it.

I still cannot define an "adverb" for example...…...I just have a TOTAL mental block for that stuff.

People have told me the definition probably a GUZILLION times for an "adverb" for example but I can never remember it.

Adverb is just one example.

Posted: 4/11/2019 9:50:21 AM EDT

[#48]

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I think another interesting poll might be What made your hardest class(es) the hardest: The Material, The Professor, Class Logistics (time of day, length, frequency), Other.

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Go for it; teachers hands down here

Posted: 4/11/2019 10:01:45 AM EDT

[#49]

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Go for it; teachers hands down here

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Quoted:
I think another interesting poll might be What made your hardest class(es) the hardest: The Material, The Professor, Class Logistics (time of day, length, frequency), Other.

Go for it; teachers hands down here

Going to class hungover too much

Posted: 4/11/2019 10:06:54 AM EDT

[#50]

My hardest class was Human Sexual Activity 404.

[ARCHIVED THREAD] - What was the hardest class you passed in undergrad? (Page 8 of 10)

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