I’m currently taking a class called “The Story of Medicine,” which is basically a survey of the history of medicine. I don’t want to be a doctor, I’m not researching a book, and unless I’m a Jeopardy contestant one day, this class will probably not ever do me any tangible good.
Except that it’s really, really interesting and I’m enjoying the heck out of myself. The class has only a handful of people in it and the professor is perfectly happy to let our questions and discussions guide the focus of the lectures. This week, I learned quite a bit about sympathetic magic and how I can use my roommate’s toenail clippings to give him a horrible disease. We also analyzed the Old Testament for sound medical advice. I’m looking forward to next week: Greco-Roman Rational Medicine!
What was/is your favorite class that contained no practical value for you whatsoever?
I have a bunch of classes like that on my transcripts. Probably the most fun, and most useless, was a class in “The History of the Fantasy Film.” Or maybe “The History of the Western Movie,” both of which I took at Anchorage Community College back in the late 70s. We’d watch movies, then sit around and talk about them. For this they gave me college credits.
While in college I took a class called “History of Native American Art”. I was a biochem major, so needless to say this class had nothing to do with my major or any subsequent jobs I’ve had. Very cool class.
I also took a WWII history class that was among the best classes I’ve ever had at any level, mainly due to the prof. He was an older man who had lived through the war. Best teacher I’ve ever had. He would lecture for an hour and it seemed too short.
I still audit classes here at UW from time to time, just because it’s interesting.
As an engineering major, I didn’t have the time or opportunity for a useless class. My girlfriend took a History of Rock and Roll class in college. Near as I can tell, the professor would go over lyrics of a few songs each lecture and explain that they were really about drugs.
I never got to take any useless classes because there weren’t any truly useless ones available.
Sure I took Intro to Film and The Novel when they had nothing to do with my major, but those are entry level classes for film students and English majors, so they don’t really qualify as “useless”.
For part my humanities credit, I tried to take flower arranging. Unfortunately, the class schedule for one of my engineering classes didn’t mention a required lab, which clashed with the flower arranging class.
Well, one could also say that’s it never useless to learn something new.
Or at least, that’s what I said when I was explaining to my mother why I was taking “The Sociology of Deviance.”
Some classes are perfectly useful to some people and absolutely useless to others. A soon-to-be doctor would probably find a lot of value in my “Story of Medicine” class. Me? I already have a degree. I’m just there to know weird stuff.
I didn’t get to take any “useless” classes in undergrad. Our requisites pretty much filled the curricula. However, since I’d had all math and science and no business classes whatsoever, I sucessfully lobbied my grad department to pay for a Masters level Entrepreneurial Finance course for me to take. Man, was that ever a hoot.
I knew several people who took a course like “Intro to Non-Western Music” our senior year of college. Two Computer Science Majors with Music interests (I don’t recall whether either had a formal Minor in the subject) and two Football-Playing Chemical Engineering Majors with no previous instruction in music.
It was fascinating hearing them talk about the class, because the two duos didn’t know each other, and had nothing in common, but what they got out of the course was so much the same and yet different.
And when one of the football players said that it was a fascinating, but useless course, in front of one of our Chemical Engineering professors, the professor said "No, not at all. Imagine someday you are at a cocktail party. Which makes better conversation, work-related chemical engineering chat, or Non-Western music is cool because . . . . "
And thus, your History of Medicine may be of use to you yet.
Nor did I take any. There weren’t any. I did take Intro to Pascal Programming, which was not related to my major, but it was not a favorite nor fun nor useless.
My favorite useless class was probably philosophy. I had to take several pointless classes like that to graduate, even with a science degree, and I think I would have killed myself if I had to sit through two semesters of art history.
Philosophy was fun, it was hard to get anything but an “A” if you showed up and spoke up. It might have helped if I actually worked in an Environmental Science field, but since my degree and my job are totally unrelated, I don’t know.
My favorite wasn’t “useless” per se, because it filled my upper division religion requirement, but I enjoyed the hell out of Jewish Faith and Practice.
Considering this was at a Catholic university, I was an accounting major and an athiest, it was mostly what I chose because I thought it would be neat.
Later this semester I’ll be taking a .5 credit bowling class. I really wanted to take Yoga, but it filled before I could register for it. While physical education credit is required for my degree, I consider a 7 week class in bowling to be pretty useless.
I took Theater 101 to fulfill a fine arts requirement while getting a biology degree. I learned how to walk like an 18th century fop, so I guess it wasn’t completely useless.
I, too, needed a PE credit in college. I took a class called “Basic Camping And Survival”.
It was shit like how to put up a tent. The whole class went on a camping trip to some campground for girl scouts. All these college kids spending a lame Friday night with people who weren’t their friends.
My senior year, I took a class called Bones, Bodies, and Disease. It was an Anthropology class taught by one of the most prominent experts on mummies. He specialized in South American mummies and I still see him pretty often on TV documentary shows and science magazines. The class had a specially built classroom that housed countless mummy parts and skeletons. We learned how to diagnose all kinds of diseases and causes of death by looking at ancient bones. The final exam simply consisted of passing around real skulls and other bones, giving a diagnose, and then writing up quickly what else we could infer from it. It wasn’t an easy class but I loved it.
I majored in chemical engineering for my undergrad degree, but I was also interested in history.
I thought about getting a double major in history (my university didn’t have minors), but it would have been too much, since I was already taking all of the Navy ROTC classes in addition to my major. So, I would sign up for history classes, then inevitably have to drop them as I couldn’t keep up with the work, since the history classes were the low priority.
But for three classes, I convinced the prof to let me continue attending class even after dropping the class, so I basically audited them. I attended a whole year of “History of Warfare” and a semester of “Intro to British History.” I eventually read most of the texts in the classes, but not until years after graduation.
I also took a non-credit ballroom dancing class my senior year. At least part of the attraction was that it was offered by Lovett College (one of the residential colleges at Rice University), so the course showed up on my official transcript as “LOVE 101.” (Also, I talked a cute girl into taking the course with me. Unfortunately, from the first day of class, we continually switched partners, so I didn’t get to spend much time with her at all.)
(Also, I talked a cute girl into taking the course with me. Unfortunately, from the first day of class, we continually switched partners, so I didn’t get to spend much time with her at all.)