Boy this is a tough question. It is a toss up, but here are some candidates.
Communication Theory- I had to write nearly 300 pages in that 8-week class. Nothing like having to crank out nearly 40 pages a week to break a fear of writing. Given that I was taking a reporting class and communication law class at the same time I got to know my word processor very well that quarter.
Applied Statistics- Knowing how to finesse numbers is a useful skill everyone should have. And knowing that most of the numbers in the real world have been produced by people who are even better at finessing numbers than I am is invaluable. I take everything I hear now with a grain of salt.
Easy. Radio/TV. Three years during high school. I’m fully FCC certified for any radio/TV station in the US (not that there’s much to the certification). It enabled me to start expressing myself in humorous contexts with an audience, and I now do stand-up comedy because of it.
This is a tough question. I’ve taken a lot of worthwhile courses, and a lot of worthless ones (most of the latter pertaining to my major/profession). I’m going to have to go with Survey of Western Civ class–the very first class I ever attended in college.
It was tough–it alternated one hour lectures with 1.5 hour discussion groups (no more than 10 student per group–everyone had to contribute) and had four professors (one each for history, art, literature, and religion). The very first class–my first-ever lecture in college–the history professor spent the entire hour talking about a possessed washing machine he once owned (it actually was sorta relevant, believe it or not) and finished with: “Read the Iliad for discussion tomorrow.”
We bloody well discussed the Iliad the next day. That was the first truly challenging class I ever had. More importantly, the discussion portion of the class involved a great deal of writing–around a dozen fairly hefty essays. I developed a great deal of my current writing style in that class. Thank the Lady for professors that encourage students to write entertaining essays.
When in college, I took the NYS Emergency Medical Technician Course (plus, it was good for 6.5 credits). The course gave me a good grounding in reality and personal responsibility.
Financially, the best thing I did was take computer courses at Baruch College. It led me to the job I now have (and the courses have since more than paid for themselves).
Like a lot of people it was typing…my handwriting is atrocious and I knew I needed it for University, it has served me well and I know I can enjoy the Internet a hellava lot more being able to type with more then two fingers.
It’s hard for me to say which is the most WORTHWHILE class I ever took, because there are so many that I simply loved. I loved Biology 534 and Math 436 in Highschool, mostly because of the teachers and the friends I had in those classes - I just simply had a good time. I think more worthwhile classes came later, in Cegep and University. I loved the chemistry teacher I had in Cegep for 3 out of 4 chem classes - I still email him occasionally, and visit him when I go home during the school year. Although I hated general chemistry, he taught Organic Chem in a way that totally got my interest, only I didn’t realise it until a year later! In university, I took another (mostly review for me) Org class and found that I was so much more interested than I had been. I also took a great intro to Biochemistry class in my first term at Uni, and LOVED it - so much, that I changed majors from Animal Biology to Biochemistry. I now don’t particularly like just plain biology in comparison (and I used to think I loved it).
So I suppose I have Drs. Draper, Lange, Mellors and Keates to thank, because they all started me on the road to becoming a biochemist - Dr. Draper especially!
When I was still at Fullerton Junior College I took a class in mythology from an English professor. It was my first introduction to the work of Joseph Campbell who is very …. um… interesting. But looking at the themes in myths and how they developed fascinated me and I still don’t read stories in the same way I did before. It also seriously changed they way I look at most religions.
Of all things…FORECASTING - as in economic models or stock charts.
Straight out of college I went to work for a large insurance company (Beagle and a Blimp) dealing with financial products. The customers found me very informative and the actuaries were even fairly impressed that someone outside of their circles could explain an ARIMA (Auto-Regressive Integrated Moving Average) model with complete confidence.
Costume Design and Construction (a theater class in college) – cause I learned how to sew, read patterns, modify patterns, take measurements, adjust finished garments, etc.
Or possibly Stagecraft (another college theater class), because I learned how to build stuff, buy lumber, use power tools safely, make my own paint, read blueprints, measure twice cut once, “glue without pressure is like no glue at all,” etc.
Typing was certainly worthwhile, but golly, it seems so dull to list it!
Other candidates:
Symbolic Logic. It was good for my mind and I use similar reasoning quite a bit now when I am writing syntax for statistical software and for queries.
Economics of Education, Poverty, & Crime. Great professor, interesting topic, forced us to use (really and truly apply) economic theory to current real-world social problems. We picked apart a lot of “common sense” notions that people had about resources and their relation to problems and successes in education, poverty, and crime. I really had to think very hard in there, and it made me a skeptic about the way the media (not to mention lawmakers) think problems develop and what the solution should be.
General College Physics (from my Junior College days). I took an introductory physics course when I first started at the JC, and I just didn’t get it. I took General Physics course a bit later, and suddenly, everything clicked. The instructor had everything to do with that, and he taught me much about how to think my way through things, rather than doing everything by rote. His tests were positively brutal (he gave no less than three final exams: one written, one oral, and one take-home), and his classes were among the most feared in the college for that reason. No-one got an easy grade - if you got an “A”, you damn sure earned it with blood, sweat and tears! I loved it so much, I went on to take another year and a half of calculus-based physics from him.
At UCB, I took a Principles of Paleontology class which was also very much worth the effort. Even though many students took it because it satisfied the ‘natural sciences’ requirement, the professor made it clear that he had expectations and no-one was going to just glide through class; no grading on a curve. Easily one of the most fascinating classes of my acadmeic career. And I got to meet Jack Horner
Physiology: how everything works!
A close second is two-step lead and follow: the man is responsible for any mistakes made and with a strong man, anything is possible. It’s important to choose a man who can use both hands and one who has a feel for how you move. And looks can be deceiving—the best man for the job isn’t always the tallest, the most buff or the youngest man in the room.
“Death, Dying and Religion”…very interesting curriculum covering the ways various cultures deal with death and peceive the afterlife. I had to interview my dying Grandmother which helped me to deal with her passing better and get to know her in a way I had never known before.
The computer elective I had to take for 6 years in elementary school(yes, that is from first grade to sixth grade). We learned typing the correct way(with all the fingers instead of just one by one) and gradually learned how to type faster.
The Advanced Math I and II(Algebra II) I had to take as a requisite in tenth grade. It was with the best math teacher I’ve had so far, and while the class was tough she explained the concepts so that they were easy to understand. It also made me took more math courses, eventually taking up to Calculus II in my senior year.
The craft course I had to take as an elective in my senior year. It made me practice the concepts of patience and imagination and creativity, plus it was a very relaxing class. I liked it so much I took it the second semester also.
Hands down it would be first grade language arts where I learned to finally read! Use it everyday.
As far as electives go, definitely typing followed closely by accounting. And occasionally I even whip out my rusty espanol to impress easily impressed friends.
An art class I took last winter called Working With Diverse Materials; it was basically a class on found object sculpture. It was the first sculpture class I’ve taken, well, ever, and I really took to the medium. It was taught by a guy that is more of a “real artist” than any of my other profs, and for the first time in my college career I started to get some real, professional feedback on my work. The class really helped me develop a discerning eye towards both my own and other people’s art.
A close second is either Creative Writing: Poetry or Writing the Environmental Essay. Both classes damn near killed me while I was taking them, but they’ve both improved my writing at least 10 fold, and I wouldn’t change things for the world. (Well, okay, one disadvantage is that I’ve gotten really picky about blatantly bad writing, especially nature writing–because in class we would sometimes read specifically bad stuff, so that we knew what not to do–and my god, is there a lot of bad nature writing out there.)
Also great is my school’s big liberal education requirement. Everyone here has to take two science classes, one math class, one writing class, one philosophy class, two social sciences classes, one art class, two phy. ed./outdoor ed. classes, and three cultural/global environment classes, in addition to whatever they need for their majors or minors. I would so, so, so much rather get the broad, well-rounded education I am getting here than some highly specialized get-a-degree-and-get-out thing from a university. I was miserable in high school, and in my one year at a state university, but since coming to Northland I’ve decided that I’m definately going to grad school and am even considering teaching as a career.
In college: Humans and the Environment, with a lab (field trips to wetlands, sewage treatment plants, the nearby foothills, etc.). This course’s content has stuck with me for 18 years.
Second and third year high school biology. My teacher for these two classes was a great teacher with some innovative ways of presenting material.
Second year was anatomy, it was amazing to learn how the body works, and it helped me understand some surprising things about life .
Third year was genetics, and I was impressed by the breakthroughs that seem to be coming in the near future in this field. We also had some discussions about ethics in this class.
