I had an interest in making movies when I was in high school. I signed up for this video production course at the votech center my school sent students to. We did 4 blocks a day, and changed our classes at the end of the semester. This class was two blocks a day, both semesters. They promised me that we would be doing all kinds of great things, that it would count as college credit, and that any TV station in the area would hire us after taking this class.
My main question is, what is a class you took, because you really wanted to, that crashed and burned?
“The Book of Job and the Problem of Evil.” 9AM senior level philosophy class when I was a sophomore with a reasonably popular punk rock band and a burgeoning drinking problem. Only F I ever got in my entire academic career.
Oops.
I missed the edit on my OP, but we never did anything in my video class. The teacher was out 3-4 days a week because his wife was dying. He was the only teacher in the entire district of this, so we always had subs who would come in and tell us pointless stories, or we played games all day. I don’t think we even GOT grades. When I had a job interview at a TV station and I mentioned this class, they laughed at me. They also kept telling us, over and over that the class would count as college credit, and this was the only reason why I didn’t drop out of it. It didn’t count at the college I went to.
Bothering to take spelling bees seriously.
Stopping going to school.
Majoring in music performance WITHOUT a secondary degree or viable backup plan.
8th grade.
One Nun had a habit of standing right behind the boys to listen.
She wore little heels like they do which made her about a big as Henrietta …
I just finished talking to someone who was on a step above me so my eyes were looking up.
I turned abruptly and smooth walked right over her.
I thought I was going to die and then my parents would finish the job at home. “I had ran over a Nun & knocked her down on her butt.”
I am 71 & I can still see the look on her face. :eek:
A college poli sci course on comparative nationalism. It sounded great in the catalog. And then it was taught by an egotistical visiting prof who was poorly organized, assigned incredibly difficult readings, and then belittled and got angry with students who offered interpretations that were either incorrect or that he didn’t agree with. Needless to say, this completely destroyed any discussion, because nobody wanted to offer an idea that would result in them being ridiculed. Which got him even more annoyed when nobody wanted to venture a response to his questions. Destroying discussion is death for an upper-level poli sci class. Most sessions were spent in tense, awkward silence exchanging nervous glances and praying we wouldn’t be called on. Worst class ever and such a waste of a precious course slot in my schedule.
The only two positives were that I got an A due to 95% of the grade being based on one paper (I wrote several pages of credible-sounding crap about Spain and ETA and one week later a ceasefire that undermined my entire argument was declared, but fortunately it had already been graded), and the fact that since it was a college course, we got to absolutely savage him in the evaluation in the hopes that it would matter. He didn’t come back the next term.
Leaving after my Junior year and joining the Navy to get out from an abusive home environment.
Same.
Dropped out of college. While on a full-ride scholarship.
Switching my major so much, from Architecture to Philosophy to Fine Arts to Psychology to Math. After 7 years I had taken a ton of courses, but not enough in any one major to get a degree.
I should have stayed in Architecture.
Spent all of high school chasing the same girl, it never paid off.
I missed out on a lot of personal growth opportunities because of this.
I’m lucky enough to have very few regrets in life - this is one of my biggest.
I went into my last semester carrying a perfect 4.0 GPA. One of my courses in that semester was ridiculously easy, so much so that I had a 100% average going into the final exam. The grading scheme was that the final only counted if it improved your average score, and the overall grading was to be on a curve (25% As, 50% Bs, 25% C or F). I decided to skip the final. Turned out that more than 25% of the class had a 100% average and he used the final exam as the tie-breaker. My perfect GPA ruined. Twenty five years later I’m still annoyed with myself.
Junior year in college. Was taking a speech class (voluntarily) which was about 3/4 completed. We had an assignment to deliver in front of class a prepared “demonstration speech,” the idea was to describe and show some simple physical thing. For example, mine was how to break open a raw egg with one hand. (Useful for line cooks.) Anyway, my biggest mistake was to skip a class one night for no good reason. One of the demonstration speeches was presented by an exceptionally attractive woman. Her topic? The proper way to do a strip tease to music.
I can think of only one thing I did in school that I regret. When I took the third year of German, the young prof came in and talked only German to us. I switched section to a guy who spoke English and supervised our attempts to translate Thomas Mann, Franz Kafka and others. But I never learned to either speak or listen to German, which I now regret.
Grade 10 Auto Mechanics. I thought it would give me the basics on how to look after a car. Turned out the teacher just assigned pages from the textbook then fell asleep at his desk with his finger up his nose.
Didn’t study abroad in college. Would have been super easy. Don’t know why I didn’t.
Taking Latin in high school. Dead language. Shortly after HS I joined the military and was stationed in New Mexico. Taking Spanish in HS would have been much more useful.
First term freshman year – intro biochem. A really bad call because of the professor. He really didn’t want to teach; especially intro classes; his desire in life was research and maybe teaching a Masters level class or two. So the class before the final he announced that
- your grade would be based strictly on the midterm and final
- since no-one knew everything he would award no "A"s
- The top 10% would get B’s, next 10% Cs, next 10 Ds and 70% would fail.
Considering the class had a lot of last term seniors finishing their distribution of studies, much hatred was accomplished. I had a 78% average between the two exams and I failed.
Major protests and complaints were filed and a year or so later the University decided to change all our grades to “credit/no entry” but that was the best they could/would do. Although the Prof got his wish and was removed from the classroom by the next semester. Not a total disaster for me – I was first term and could wait out the fight. Several seniors I know got screwed out of jobs because their graduation was delayed until after the first summer term.
And people wonder why I hate Pitt.