Was it physics, a 400 level chemistry course, anatomy & physiology, Calculus 6 (i think my brother is taking this next semester, sucker).
My classes haven’t been too hard as of yet. i’ve had anatomy & physiology I & II, both of which are supposed to be hard but i didnt have much trouble. Got an A in I and a B in II (however i wouldve gotten a B in I had it not been for the curve). the highest math ive had is pre-calculus, and that wasnt too bad.
I may have to take physics and alot of chemistry though so im trying to brace myself for a B or C in those classes.
As an undergrad it would have to be a toss up between Chemistry (BabyChem - the intro class) and Calculus. The combination led to my dropping the idea of being a doctor and led to my eventual major in history.
But it was probably a good thing in the long run.
As a grad student, with one semester left, it’s been Information Network Applications. Not that the work was so incredibly hard, but that it seemed overwhelming for much of the semester.
i just finished a pharmacology class, everyone said it was really hard but i had no problems. probably ended up with a 91% or so (i didnt check my grade).
Equity (which is an, uhh, offshoot of the common law). I think the 8 AM lectures three days a week had more to do with that than the actual content, however.
Other contenders include Constitutional Law (lots of reading and fierce competition for a decent grade)* and Trusts (easy in hindsight, but tough for a second year).
My law school scales all students in a particular class to a 61 per cent average with a predetermined standard deviation. Marks that could be awarded within a certain category (70%-79%, 80%+) were strictly limited and depended on the number of students sitting. :eek:
Still have not not finished (ten year plan), but so far it has been English 325 (I don’t remember the rest of the title). It was a six credit class requiered for all English majors, four days a week, for an hour and fifteen minutes. With a one page paper due three days a week, a longer one due on the fourth.
The teacher had required meetings with him outside of class to discuss the longer papers. The first time I met with him we discussed my paper a bit, and he said something along the lines of “Now that I think about it, I am going to lower your grade.” As my grade already sucked, it was an eye opener.
Regardless, I did ok. And now? No class scares me. (Humanities and Scoial Sciences that is…)
Hmm… the maths gave me some problems, Vectorial and linear Algebra were not nice. Neither was Differential Equations. Science of Engineering Materials was likewise hard. Hmmmm that’s about it.
Undergrad: Differential Equations. Took it twice. Failed it twice. Still don’t understand it.
Law school: Probably either Property or Criminal Procedure. Strangely, I excelled at Commercial Law, the ugly class all about the Uniform Commercial Code and secured transactions and negotiable instruments. It was strange, because I never thought that sort of thing would appeal to me.
Eight credits. Met every day at nine in the morning. Was so difficult that you are REQUIRED to take the first half of it pass-fail. Papers due every Saturday. Required participation in a play and a series of formal debates. Tackled everything from Aristotle to Mencius, Kant to Flannery O’Connor, Euripides to Shakespeare and everything in between. The last quarter of the program was an intensive study of a single core topic (Comparison of Boethius, Freud, and Toni Morrison for me) culminating in a 15-20 page research paper. This to a bunch of college freshman, mind you.
I got an A. It didn’t even look like I worked for it. But with that and the horrible relationship BS I was going through that year (which, fortunately for the other students, was NOT part of the required curriculum), it was just about the hardest course I ever took in college.
Now, if we can expand this this to include high school…AP Physics. I have trouble with spatial relations and visual learning. Not that I’m disabled in or anything like that…I just kind-of suck at it. Me and applied trig, for example, do not work. I also suck at jigsaw puzzles and those traffic jam games that they sell at Winston’s Games. I got through the class by barely scraping a B, and that was with me going to the teacher before many of the classes just so I could learn to apply the trig. I’m not dumb. I was fine with calc. I got a 760 on the SAT math section and the GRE quantitative sections. But I utterly suck at trig. Physics was therefore a living hell.
The hardest class I’ve ever taken was calculus in 12th grade. Nothing I’ve taken in college even comes close.
I’m an English major.
I think the hardest class I’ve taken in college would probably be social psychology, only for the sheer volume of essays we had to write. About 10 for the semester. Combined with my other classes, many of which contained a modest amount of writing, it nearly drove me completely insane.
Probably Data Structures (with a very tough teacher), though International Marketing’s 100 page research paper/marketing plan was a kick in the teeth.
But I used to work in the Ceramic Engineering library, which was probably the toughest course at my school. They all lived in terror of Differential Equations (and to a slightly lesser extent, Calc III). We may be coming to a bit of a consensus already with the DE.
Hmmmm, back in the day: well, pre-calc was really fucking hard. After that, calc was easy and enjoyable. I tell everyone I know that has trouble with algebra that calc is 100 times more fun and is just damn cool in general.
Then there was op-amps. Good lord all mighty, if I never see one of those things again, I will be happy.
Don’t forget Junior project. Not really hard, but if you had the group I had, you would be in the instructor’s office asking for an “F” so you could take it again with another group, just like I was. How I passed, I will never know.
Then there was every damn class that I hated the teacher in. Any class, no matter what subject (and I have taken a lot of subjects) is very very very hard if you dislike the instructor.
And then the king of all the shit classes: “weight lifting” It must have the highest failure/dropout rate of any class in JC.
BTW, I never had any trouble with differential equations. I thought they were the coolest part of calculus. Nothing like having physics teacher teach it. “So class, if you jump out of a plane and your parachute does not open, how far will you have to fall to reach your maximum velocity? In other words, how far up do you have to be before distance fell stops making a difference?”
About 3000 ft if I remember. Coolest question I ever had.
Economics. Ok it doesn’t sound so hard but I started it at College level and had never ever done a second of the subject in my life before. I LOATHED that subject - however, I worked really hard on it and it became my favourite one, oddly enough.
Now how dorky do I sound? Economics is cool :rolleyes:
2nd vote for Economics. Specifically Accounting. Ugh terrible thing it is to have to construct a Balance Sheet / Income Statement from scratch in under an hour. shudders
Mathematical Logic (missing two prereqs) and Vector Analysis. Some of the third year physics subjects are apparently completely terrible, though (not that I’ll ever take them, luckily).
