In college, I took two semesters of Inuttut, which was then just called Eskimo, at the only university in the world that had that language in the catalog, Memorial University of Newfoundland. As an individual study project, I translated “Peter Rabbit” into Inuttut, and I heard years later that it was still being used as a reader in Labrador schools.
My high school had a full vocational section and I took Printing, Drafting, Wood & Metal shop, Auto shop and so on. Printing was cool, because as one poster above mentioned, it was old style typesetting with lead type.
I also took typing, which today allows me to make mistakes with lightning speed. The typing teacher was GORGEOUS and would come to your desk and hover over you as she helped you fix mistakes. I made many mistakes.
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My high school had a full vocational section and I took Printing, Drafting, Wood & Metal shop, Auto shop and so on. Printing was cool, because as one poster above mentioned, it was old style typesetting with lead type.
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My high school was an odd mix - part tech school as you mentioned, part arts school, part gifted. I was in the gifted stream, but in addition to my academic load I managed to take Electronics, Graphic Arts, Photography, and Technical Theatre over my 4 years. The first two were tech, the second two arts.
Learning how to operate an offset printing press, develop film, design a power supply, and build a prop bed that is higher in back so you can see the occupant from the audience were all great skills to have.
Can’t remember anything particularly unusual in high school, but in middle school, Music class was really more like Music Appreciation class. Mrs. Hanna introduced me to The Beatles, Babyface (a graduate of our middle school), and lots of Vietnam War protest songs.
I also took fencing at my university. We had no PE requirement but I took it just for fun. Also took karate, judo, scuba, racquetball, etc. I figured it was a nice break from my engineering studies and a way to meet “normals” i.e. non-engineering students.
I used to tell people I studied “Rhetoric for Large Groups”, as I was majoring in Mass Debating.
“The Films of Ingmar Bergman-Formal and Freudian Approaches”
Nothing like reading Freud and applying his theories of sadism and masochism to Bergman films-in New England-in February. The entire class was depressed.
In addition, I was a Chemistry major in with a bunch of artsy English majors why basically spoke an entirely different language.
For fun, I also took weather (wish I remembered some of what I learned because it was actually useful), and candlepin bowling (because regular bowling is just too much effort for a required PE credit).
I also took medical anthropology, which was actually a great course but by that time I was so frustrated with trying to apply to medical school and being on crutches from January to May of my senior year that for the final paper (“take an anthropologic view of some aspect of the American medical system”) I basically just vented and ripped apart the medical school admissions process. The teacher’s comment:
I hope this isn’t true-A
(I also took that Canada course that SpoilerVirgin mentioned but unlike her, it apparently did not stick because I cannot name the Canadian provinces and have little to no idea what the War of 1812 was about except that the St. Lawrence river had something to do with it and I think they burned the White House.)
A political science course was required the last year of primary education I had in the former (communistic) Yugoslavia. Nothing dreamed of by Timothy Leary could equal the bizarreness of that class.
That is hands-down the coolest class I have ever heard about.
For me it was Nietzsche. I had an entire freshman seminar on Nietzsche (Final exam question: Would Nietzsche have supported fascism?" I said no.) Then I had an existentialism class, which included Nietzsche.
But the grand slam was a course entitled: "1889: Nietzsche’s final year and descent into madness." It was entire course on one year in Nietzsche’s life, featuring The Will to Power and a million anecdotal stories about his life, his slow deterioration due to syphillis, and the ultimate betrayal of his sister-in-law Elizabeth Forster Nietzsche.
U of M was full of random classes like that. Another one I had was ‘‘LGBT Communities in the Carribean and their Diaspora,’’ taught entirely in Spanish. (I was a Spanish major.) The entire course was devoted to the experiences of gay people in various parts of the Caribbean, the different standards of masculinity and cultural definitions of queerness, and then what happened to people once they immigrated to the U.S.
This is a true story:
I had an elective in my Junior year so I decided to take Movies 101. First day I am sitting in class and think to myself, “This isn’t bad. I’ll sit back, relax, watch a couple movies and maybe write something about them. Easy.”
The professor (actually a TA I am 90% sure), walks in and puts down his bag and says, “If you think ’ This class is easy. I’ll sit back, relax watch a couple movies an maybe write something about them’, you are WRONG!”
Yep he literally echoed exactly what I was just thinking almost verbatim. It was freaky.
As it turned out the class was pretty good but there was no further evidence of Mind Reading 
Possibly; I never actually looked at his feet that I remember. I believe it was Dr Janis. I had Neuman <sic?> for one of the more serious physics classes; his claim to fame was coming up with an equation to prove black holes couldn’t exist and making a small mistake in the math ---- which when corrected not only proved they did exist but where one was. :smack:
Like I always say ---- I couldn’t afford a college education to I attended Pitt. 
At the U of Chicago, that’s a four-year degree.
(In his column on blue balls, Cecil Adams calls this “Brandeis freshman’s disease”).
That is totally cool.
In college I took what was listed as an introductory course in philosophy. It turned out to be an intense study of of existentialism. As a result I can manage to talk convincingly about why World War I may have been the pivotal point in western civilization, but I have no idea of what Plato’s Allegory of the Cave is – and not much of an idea of who Plato was.
An Aside:
I transferred from a 3 credit school to a 4 credit school and (and because of awesome planning ahead, didn’t lose a SINGLE credit) and had to make up a few, freebie credits.
I took a semester of golf. I think it was maybe twice a week for 5 or 6 weeks. In that short time I managed to get a ball stuck in a tree! Hit it right up into the (what? crotch? armpit? crux?) space between the trunk and branch and that sucker was STUCK! What are the odds?
Shame we didn’t know each other back then.
In college, I needed a high-level History course to complete the Humanities requirement for my degree, since I’d entered school with some history credits already. The only class that fit my schedule was “History of Women from the 1700s to the Present”.
It was our (female) professor, a half-dozen women who were History or Women’s Study majors. And me… the male Chemical Engineering student.
It made for a weird dynamic. I think they basically regarded me a wholly alien creature - male and involved in the weird logic of the sciences. We’d be discussing, oh, the Suffragette movement, and they’d be going on about the horrors of “the Evil Patriarchy (not you, Lightray)”. But I don’t recall anyone asking me to defend my gender, or explain it, or whatever. It was a trip.
Second strangest was when I took a Creative Writing elective in college, and blew their minds by writing about sciency stuff. I’d have to read my story, then spend time describing what a distillation column was; no one knew that separating alcohol from water was a thing.
I used to tell the other engineers that those classes were like visiting an alien planet.
I took Rock & Jazz as part of my HS arts requirement. Not playing rock & jazz, that wouldn’t have been oddball. Just listening and analyzing it. I think I was the only one in the class who didn’t routinely wear a black t-shirt with a heavy metal album cover printed on it. Not a bad class, though.
I signed up for auto repair in high school, but the guidance counselor changed it to 20th Century Chinese History, as it would look better on my transcript. I was able to take plenty of real courses on China when I got to college, but I never learned how to fix an engine.
Yeah they just love the war of 1812.
I too took fencing courses in college – third and fourth years. After the introductory course I was hooked and took the remaining two. The instructor had been a competitive fencer, and if you continued you were expected to learn the history, theory and various “tools of the trade.” These were not slouch courses. But the best part was the second half of the last course: swordfighting techniques! Combatants wore heavy garb to simulate armor and we used blunted swords of various types in our matches. What a blast.
I haven’t fenced since then but you would not want to take me on if I had a sword handy.
A minor aside: all three courses were well attended by women so as a bonus I picked up a few dates.