I took a course on Ingmar Berman during a Winter trimester in Minnesota. It really should have come with its own mental health counselor.
I took shorthand in high school. Even when I took it it had been pretty much replaced by Dictaphones - but the high school I went to offered almost no academic electives and I needed credits - shorthand at least helped with taking notes in college. Although, in retrospect, auto shop would have been handy.
Not a class, but a book for my class.
In college I took a physics/engineering course devoted to nuclear engineering.
The text book was titled “Basic Nuclear Engineering”.
When I think of a “Basic” book it brings to mind beginner things that a hobbyist might do like -
Basic Carpentry
Basic Small Engine Repair
Basic Aquarium Operation
So I immediately imagined myself sitting in my garage and using my “Basic Nuclear Engineering” book to build my very own nuclear reactor.
That was a blast, and I also took ‘Relaxation Techniques’, mainly because one of the techniques was biofeedback, just so I would have access to the little room off the library that had a great couch and a biofeedback setup
Hm, high school - Eastern Studies. Not cultural, but wars, treaties and goodies like that. It was trippy when mrAru was stationed at the shipyard in Kittery Maine, I got to see the room where a treaty was signed that we studied in high school =)
I took a college class called “Evil and Decadence in Literature”. We read the Satyricon (and watched the movie), The Torture Garden, La Nouvelle Justine and some other de Sade, Myra Breckenridge, and some other books I don’t remember. The professor lived next to my fraternity, so a lot of us took his class. We’d occasionally go to his place to talk about the books and drink vodka. Good times.
in hs I took "reading for pleasure " class that was intended to get kids reading … you just read a book and did a report no big deal
Class had its normal jocks trying to pass off comic books airheads and knuckle draggers and people looking for an easy a
the joke was the entire English department knew I read several novels a week and was skilled in literature (its technical English past the 7th grade I have no clue on )
But I almost failed it because no one informed the teacher that my handwriting skills are slightly above being able to legally write and of course he couldn’t read the 12 reports I did the first week so I read them orally
it just ended up id just explain what I was reading that day …but he was blown away when I read lonesome dove in 2 days … he planned on it being my semester project …he was sad when I graduated … he really wanted to see what id thought of war and peace …
I asked my mom why they never let me take any art classes in high school, since that’s what I was best at.
“Well, you had to take nothing but College Preparatory classes!”
So as soon as I could get my required Pre-Med classes done with, I spent my senior year of college talking Sculpture, Logic… and A History of Furniture.
Gotta say, being able to pick out a Shield-Back Hepplewhite chair (with a Queen Anne leg) is of dubious value in my local bar…
My high school had a planetarium. For three years I took the “class” as an elective. The director/teacher took two students each period, so it was just me and one other student in the “class.” We ran shows for elementary school kids on field trips, did maintenance on the equipment, and all sorts of other fun stuff.
The last quarter of my sophomore year, my English teacher decided to buck the curriculum and just have us do our own creative projects. So my big one was creating a show using videos and effects to side one of Marillion’s Misplaced Childhood (their latest album at the time) in the planetarium, and putting it on for the English class.
Sadly, the school shut down the planetarium about ten years ago. I was there in 2010 for a friend’s kid’s graduation; it was the first time I’d been to the school in almost 20 years. I almost cried when I looked through the windows of the planetarium lobby and saw it was being used as storage.
Not nearly as exciting, but in college I satisfied the PE requirement with two semesters of Bowling.
In college I took “Sociology of Death”, aka Death. The professor had spent a year’s sabbatical in the NYC coroner’s office taking pictures of death/murder/suicide scenes and autopsies. These slides comprised the bulk of the class sessions–there was probably some academic reading required, but I do not remember it. I do remember the Tuesday/Thursday, post-lunch gore show.
That same year, I took “Psychology of Human Sexuality”, aka Sex. Slide shows documented the huge range of sexual behaviors humans engage in. (Lots of frat bros took that course.) It met Tuesdays and Thursdays in the same academic building as Death and immediately following, but in a bigger lecture hall.
I amused myself the whole semester by telling people that I could confirm that there is Sex after Death–every Tuesday and Thursday from 1:00-4:00.
This was at a highly respected and expensive northeast liberal arts college.
