In grad school we were all forced to take 701 - Introduction to Librarianship. It was the worst waste of my time I can possibly imagine - it covered such bullshit topics as the Wheel Model of Ethical Decision Making (recall, this is grad school, and further, it’s a popular second career. Most of the people there were at least 40. If you can’t make an ethical decision yet, the wheel is not going to help you) and proper citation skills - remember, everybody in that class had theoretically gotten a college degree. It was AWFUL.
Eventually I started judiciously not going because I was afraid I’d get hit by a bus coming out of that class and have to tell St. Peter that I spent the last TWO FUCKING HOURS of my life in 701.
*English literature. *Read a book, echo the instructor’s opinion of that work back to him in either test or paper form, his choice. Anything else results in lower grades. I had three or four of these and the formal always works.
Now, I would dearly love to be able to speak Spanish. Living here in Austin I would have the chance to use Spanish several times a day. I took several semesters of Spanish in college. I took some of them twice, and not because I was having so much fun. But, in the end, I ended up switching majors from a BA program to a BS program because the BS program required fewer foreign language credits. I was more than happy to take additional math classes instead. Despite the 2 years I endeavored to learn the language, about the only phases I can remember have to do with saying hellos and goodbyes.
Ha! However, if you read closely, **friedo **got a “B” in the class. No grades at Antioch in the last 40 years or so.
Regarding to OP, for me (at Antioch btw) it was several Philosophy classes I kept thinking philosophy was something I should find interesting. I never did, and to this day, don’t understand what field the discipline is even trying to occupy or why. And I had world class professors, such as George Geiger.
Basically, general education requirements, aka “gen-eds”, are a basic set of courses that are supposed to give you a broad look at the world and make you a well rounded person. What, specifically, you take isn’t nearly as important as the fact that you took certain classes of courses. For example, people majoring in English need to take a certain number of credits of laboratory science. Whether or not it’s Physics, Chemistry, or Biology doesn’t matter a whole lot - what matters is the fact that they are learning how to think like a scientist and to perform experiments and whatnot. In a similar vein, science and engineering students need to take a certain number of credits of literature courses. Whether or not they’re taking Ancient Classics, Victorian Literature, Shakespeare, Golden-Age Science Fiction, or African-American Literature After 1950 doesn’t matter as much as the fact that they’re reading books, discussing them, and writing coherent essays.
I came in to say Introduction to Sociology. I’ve heard people talk about how much fun/profound their sociology class was, but that was the complete opposite of my experience. The course was boring, did nothing in the way of challenging you to think, and fostered absolutely no discussion.
I showed up for class about half the time, blew off the term paper, and still landed an A. I learned absolutely ziltch in that class.
Having taken the easy way out (2 year no gen ed requirement diploma!), I’d have to say Employability. Instructor went over our resumes and didn’t have any comments for mine. Well, I have more than two brain cells to rub together and had a job at the same institution, so the entire class felt useless. It was even funnier since the school also focused on re-training and updating skills, so there were people in the class who had been in the workforce for 10+ years already.
That actually sounds kinda cool in a way. I did a paper on the history of the piano though, so I’m just being a geek. Too bad he couldn’t play it…
As for the most pointless class ever…pretty sure my intro to jogging class fits that category. Half the time we’d just end up going on “runs” around campus that were “hey, let’s sneak out and grab breakfast.” Since it was early in the day, a lot of us didn’t carry our textbooks or bookbags on us. The professor didn’t care if we didn’t come back either.
Most useless class? Had to be a freshman Psych class. We just sat around in a circle and talked BS. At the end I got an A, but I don’t remember anything of value coming out of that class. In fact, I don’t remember any details at all about the class except for the arrangement of the chairs in the room.
It’s probably a good thing that I can’t answer this question. I’ve had some painful classes, and some horrible instructors, but I wouldn’t call any of the classes I took useless.
Oh, wait, maybe one. Creative writing. It was supposed to be this advanced concentration where you have one-on-one consultation with a professor - sort of an independent study thing. I love writing fiction and was hoping to get some real feedback instead of the mindless praise of high school English. What I got was minor corrections to my syntax and encouragement to ‘‘keep going!’’ My professor seemed uncomfortable with my writing. I figured, hey we’re all adults, he can handle a little sex and violence… but I think it was too weird for him. Our sessions lasted all of ten minutes and he wouldn’t even refer to specific things in the text. I honestly can’t think of a single thing I learned in that class, other than to keep my writing to myself.
I went to a university that emphasized a Well Rounded™ education, so plenty of science for the humanities majors (although I didn’t notice nearly as much humanities for the science majors). Physics and Chemistry were a half-year each, and I enjoyed those classes because they were taught by dynamic professors who were actually known in their fields. Labs produced predictable resuls which one could write up with some idea of what one was doing.
Then came a full year(!) of biology. This is my nominee for most useless (to me) class I was ever obliged to take. Being biology, the labs were messy and produced fuzzy results, and I could never seem to get the knack of writing them up to get anything better than a C. The lecturers were all TAs who didn’t particular care if we were interested in (let alone excited by) the subject matter. The curriculum was ridiculously intense (memorize the Krebs cycle? Please!). This was the single reason I ended up dropping out of that school.
In my next school, because it was loosely affiliated with a church, philosophy majors were obliged to take a Philosophy of Religion class. I could tell the professor was not sympathetic to the material, but she had to tread lightly because it was a requirement. I wrote down why the arguments in favor of religion did not impress me, and got an easy A, but I didn’t learn anything.
Roddy
The most useless after the fact was calculus. I had to take a sequence of 4 courses and have never touched it since. I dropped or took a “withdraw/incomplete” at least 4 times. I spent about as much time on calc as on my major and I still have no idea how I passed or how to do any of it. The most galling part is that it underpins a lot of what I do for a living and all I can say is “some smart guy came up with these equations and stuck them in this software so we don’t have to think about it”.
Most useless because it was covered elsewhere was historical geology. I’m not sure what we were supposed to learn: the history of geology? the chronological history of the earth? They never said. It was a rehash of geo 101, in slightly greater depth, and all of the new material would be covered, in detail, in next semester or two. Maybe they wanted us to be absolutely sure we knew what we were getting into with this major.
The liberal arts requirements, on the other hand, were interesting and still useful.
Wow. That is all kinds of unintentionally hilarious.
I’m trying to think of the most useless class I took. There were several generally useless ones. I think Sociology 101, where the professor missed the first week of class - we were told she was in a horrible car accident so we’d probably have a sub from then on. Then she showed up the next week with nary a scratch. She never mentioned it all semester long, either.
She wrote the book on teen pregnancies (which was the focus of 90% of the class oddly enough) yet really didn’t delve into the actual economics of easy access to welfare and WIC and Medicaid. She was terrifically condescending to the white students. I think she thought she was more qualified because she herself was a teenage mother.
Others have mentioned getting a Well Rounded Education. I agree with that idea too. It doesn’t hurt a science major to take an Art Appreciation Class, Music, Literature etc. We all need classes like that. I had a great teacher for Art Appreciation. Twenty years later I can identify a Gauguin, or Renoir painting at a glance.
I work at a university as a staff IT person. I know now that funding drives a lot of the degree requirements. For example, there’s really not that many students that major in music. The music department has to pay their way and justify their budgets. Intro to Music is a required core course for all majors at the university. It brings in a lot of money for the music department and helps justify the salaries of their Faculty. The same is true of Art, History, Theater etc. All those departments teach a core intro/survey course that every student takes. More importantly, it ensures that the university can afford to offer a fine arts degree in Art, Music, Literature etc. Without those core courses those departments probably couldn’t exist.
Which is all well and good for the faculties of Arts, Music and Literature I guess but seems a mite unfair to students dragooned into course they have no interest in. It’ll be interesting to see whether this model survives as studying continues to become more and more expensive.
Back to the OP, I’m finding it hard to think of a completely useless class - I guess Intro to Stats was the most useless to me as I’d already done most of the topics at High School.
I always thought it was unfair that students had to pay a fee to support the gym and sports equipment and stadiums, when most of them didn’t USE the gym or the equipment. I don’t know what the fee is now, but back when I was in college, I was paying the equivalent of another couple of courses per semester in “activity” fees. I always felt that the school shouldn’t put that fee on everyone, just apply it to the people who actually used the gym, like a regular gym membership.
When I was in college, I was walking just about everywhere, and covered quite a few miles a day.
I would hope that if Intro to Music is a required course for all majors, it’s because the University faculty/Trustees/administration believe (mistakenly, IMO) that it is an essential part of a college education and not simply because the courses are profitable. A lot of thought goes into what the core curriculum should be at every institution of higher learning. While finances are part of the discussion, I cannot imagine that a course becomes required for all students primarily on that consideration. None of the professors I have ever met would go along with such a scheme. They would, however, be eager to impose their own ideas of a “well rounded liberal arts education” on students who don’t think they can buck the system.
Old Testament Studies - what a PITA. The professor got so pissed at the class b/c we HAD to take a religion at my college, but nobody was that into it. However, the professor was MAJORLY into it and yelled at the class constantly.
The great part of it? A couple years after I graduated, she (the professor) was my cashier at Office Depot!
