I don’t know why I’m thinking about this now, but I am.
I absolutely hated German lessons.
I had, rather foolishly, done well in a French exam when I was 12, which put me in the top stream, which was terrible for me because I was desperately shy and hated speaking up, and modern language learning demands that you do so. Plus it meant I was with the brainiest people in my year who all seemed fluent.
Then it got worse. We all had to take a second modern language, and top group French took German (lower streams did Spanish, or extra English lessons). It was a crash course, the teacher never spoke a word in English - literally day one, she turned up speaking German (I realise now she was just saying things like ‘Das ist ein buch’ to ease us in, but I was so terrified I just heard nonsense). I was at a loss from start to finish of that two year course. I still shudder to think of it. To this day, I don’t know how I ultimately passed that subject. I can hardly recall a single word of German.
I’m with you on the language lessons. The liberal arts requirements for the college I went to stipulated taking 3 semesters of a foreign language. I chose French. I liked the idea of learning another language, in theory, but in practice the homework was so involved, and the learning curve so steep, it detracted from the work I was trying to do for my actual major (not to mention my partying and college social life ).
As a result I got ‘gentleman Cs’ in my first and third semesters of French, when I had more easygoing professors. But my second semester French prof would terrorize us-- he’d ask rapid-fire questions in French and randomly point to one of us to answer it. When we’d fumble over our answer, he’d act disgusted with us and insult us. “Go back to sleep, Mr. solost”. Can’t argue with the results though-- I actually got a B+ in that class.
In high school I hated Spanish because at least half of the students in my class were Hispanics which gave them a considerable advantage over me. OTOH, I suppose I had an advantage over them in English class so maybe it all balanced out.
In college I absolutely hated Philosophy because I had no interest in it and you had to remember what some philosopher said, why they said it, and what it meant to the world. I was earning a hard science degree where you learned scientific facts and were asked to regurgitate them back. I suppose they wanted us to be more well-rounded students, but it didn’t work..
Algebra 2. One was no picnic either, but I just didn’t get it. They wouldn’t let me drop it (the teacher and principal said that my PSAT scores were extremely high, implying that I just wasn’t trying). I should have replied “fine, give me multiple choice tests with one or two choices I can easily eliminate.” It took daily after school tutoring for me to pull out a D-.
Wrestling in PE. I’m a male and I was 5’2" and 85 pounds until I was 17 (I’m now 6’3" and 185). So, in high school PE I was always paired with someone much larger than me for wrestling. And while I was strong, being strong doesn’t help you from getting picked up by someone that sees you as their little brother to toss around.
I entered college as a prospective math major, and got an A in freshman calculus. So far, so good. Flunked Differential Equations as a sophomore, and switched to Computer Science.
I dreaded classes that required extensive research and writing lengthy papers, and limited my curriculum to courses with multiple choice exams. In hindsight, I chose poorly…as it turns out I like to write and do it quite well.
I hated History because it was merely memorizing and regurgitating dates of events and battles. There was never any context beyond “In the Battle of…” And it didn’t help that most of my history teachers gave the impression that they were stuck teaching it.
It wasn’t until relatively recently that I’ve been watching documentaries and realizing how much better the material could have been presented and how interesting it really is. Thanks for nothing, Mr. Carey (and the rest who I can’t remember.)
I hated gym in high school because it was stupid and pointless. Also it was supposedly graded on how hard you tried, not how athletic you were, and I’m sure it was just pure coincidence that athletic students got high grades and unathletic students got low grades.
Though I assume failing in gym is impossible, I never liked gym class. Regardless of what we were doing I always felt as though I was in some modern day iteration of the Roman Games, despite the fact that none of my classmates were evil or violent.
Beyond that, the maths and sciences caused me to have to do my last year of high school (Ontario grade 13 back in the day). Despite that, I actually really like science at a pop science level.
Throughout grade school and high school, I absolutely hated hated hated any lesson, and any class, that required rote memorization in order to do well in it. Which means I hated things like history and foreign languages, and much preferred math and physics.
I remember when we had to memorize all the U.S. presidents, vice presidents, and their political parties, in chronological order, when I was in the eighth grade. I though it was pointless, and did very poorly on the test. 43 years later, and I still think it was pointless.
The farther away I got from straight arithmetic and into.algebra, geometry and trig the more I struggled, the more I worked and the more I fell behind. By the time I was a junior I didn’t get gentlemen’s C’s, I actually got gentlemen’s D’s.
Hmmm. In high school Spanish was my least favorite, but I can’t say I hated and feared it. I just wasn’t very good at it.
In college differential equations. I was okay, not great, at Calculus 2, (I placed out of Calc 1 thanks to the AP test like half my college class) but I did not get differential equations at all. I passed only thanks to it being pass fail, and to the 1970 student strike. I went to class during the strike, and I think my professor rewarded me with a pass because I showed up.
Thankfully I never have had to use it.
I absolutely hated Euclidean geometry. It was the only field of math where, instead of math-ing, it felt like you had to make esoteric arguments for the obvious rather than actually mathing.
X’s and Y’s in algebra? Okay. But this class - and especially the way the teacher taught it - felt more like arguing, “Here is a red apple, now please prove to me that it is red and an apple even though it’s obviously a red apple.”
Fucking calculus. Didn’t understand it and still don’t.
Thermodynamics and heat transfer (and most all physics-related classes): I always felt like the dog in a Far Side comic. I hear them talking, but it makes no sense.
Latin: Why the hell did I pick Latin instead of Spanish? WHY?
And of course PE class, which is every weak kid’s nightmare.
).