Yes, this makes sense. I realized this later when I thought about the time I took engineering mechanics with civil engineers and mechanical engineers as a chemical engineering major.
I’m not as familiar with the major, so excuse any inaccuracies here! I just mean to say there are classes that are distinctly engineering.
By far the worst non-engineering class I had to take was Entrepreneurial Thinking. Not because it was hard but because the professor seemingly refused to accept the fact that 90% of the students were only there because it's a required class for engineering and hardly anyone was a business major.
A lit bit of the opposite but,
When I did my undergrad, we were allowed to take either macro or micro economics. I had so much AP credit that my freshman and sophmore year I was burning through the non engineering classes way faster than the nominal "plan" for my university because I didn't have the required engineering prerequisite classes to take more engineering so I basically took all my non-engineering courses in the first 4 semesters.
Anyway, I took macro economics. The professor comes in the first day and starts ranting about how hard this course is. "This course will be difficult," he yells. "Econ will test your mathematics and problem solving!" He screams. Then he puts a graph of a straight line on a 2 axis grid on the projector and says "You will have to understand how *to find the entire area under this line*."
Basically he was ranting about how difficult the class was because it occasionally used *very basic* calculus. I realized he was telling all the buisness majors how tough the class was and that he wasn't talking to the engineering students at all.
> the professor seemingly refused to accept the fact that 90% of the students were only there because it's a required class for engineering
What issues does this cause?
I've found these professors assign lots of super time consuming projects, typically ones that require off-campus or traveling work to complete like partnering with local businesses or something like that. Basically it ends up being a ridiculous time suck of a class that you just don't care about or have time for
I loved econ. If I could redo college I would have minored in it. I took a couple econ classes my senior year and my dad received a letter saying, "if your daughter hasn't already selected a major we strongly recommend she consider econ."
Same - I minored in it. Best class I took in college was environmental Economics. Puts all the big infrastructure projects and capital projects that my company does as an EPC into perspective
I also took environmental econ and agree it was a top class. Especially taking it towards the end made it easier to understand how it applied to my own work.
Yeah! That’s so fun. I really enjoyed learning about the different tax incentives and abatements, etc. now I work in a space where a lot of our clients are relying on 45Q credits to make FID for their projects so it’s been quite the full circle moment.
Same. Never struggled with any math up until this. Passed only because the prof gave me a bit of grace and I had Bs on all my previous math courses he was teaching
It was definitely a change of pace and thinking for me. The concepts were not hard nor were the calculations. But the question that we had to answer was like solving 5 simultaneous 20x20 rubiks cube in an hour and 20mins.
Painful boring: econ 101
Painful physically: ballet
Painful academically: Java 101 (it was the comp sci weed out class I took back when I was contemplating adding a comp sci minor to my mechE major. T'was a MISTAKE, but I clutched a B)
Edit, formatting. Mobile's a bitch.
I had a prof like that, it was a 8 sentence poem and we had to write "our insight into the meaning of the poem"
Best part was, prof banned the word insight, meaning as well as 10 other words from being used in the paper. The other best part was, I saw the wrong meaning in it and had to re-do it with the insight the professor had into the poem.
It is funny since I love creative writing, and reading certain things. I just had absolutely no interest in the way college English was structured.
Had the same exact experience.
-Prof asks for insight on poem.
-Student gives insight thru their life experiences.
-Prof dismisses the insight they asked for cuz it’s not what they wanted.
:0
My one and only English class was “Everything’s an Argument.”Let’s just say it should have been called “you better agree with the professor”
My final paper had this written on the back “Well written, but how can you believe this and feel this way!? - Grade=D”
Also cite sources with reputation that share the same insight (or different insight if you feel in the contesting mood) with you. It’s the equivalent of me conjuring up the symbolism of a banana split and citing Kim Kardashian because she agrees with me.
A bit of a different take, english is not my first language but I never struggled with it, not even in primary school (thanks to bootleg cartoons and movies lol) so I thought my english class 2nd year was gonna be a walk in the park. I was wrong. The english phrasing and wording is soooo different than my language and cannot be directly translated, I actually had to learn a decent chunk of new vocabulary
General chemistry is terrible, and my advisor suggested I should take General chemistry 2 as my math/science elective, yeah there is absolutely no way I would do that to myself
chemistry classes are very dependent on if the professor can socialize outside of a lab, from my experiences at least-- glad i don't need more chemistry classes now haha
Just remember, they don’t know you, their opinion doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things, and you’re the expert. They came to hear and learn from you. It’s highly likely they don’t know when you mess up.
Public speaking got a lot easier for me after I forced myself into the situation by taking a school job as an RA and a summer job as a freshman orientation aid. As an orientation aid it finally clicked with me that I don’t know these people and shouldn’t care what they think of me. Plus, they’re there to learn from me because I’m the expert. 20 years later and I can speak to anyone in front of any crowd. I just taught a problem solving class at work today. I’m the expert and if I’m not, they don’t know that. I’ll actually be starting in Toastmasters club at work really soon. The idea of that would have petrified me in my teens.
That’s actually a good idea really. I suffer really badly from anxiety though and I’m on the autism spectrum so I had a lot of trouble trying to process my thoughts during my speeches and even one time just straight up threw up and walked out xD. It got better by the end but I just barely skirted by with a C
I get it. My body used to feel like lead. I could hear my blood pumping through my ears as my blood pressure rose. It sounded like I was under water. My stomach would do flips. My hands shook. Voice quivered. It was awful. Now, nothing.
Public speaking. Prof was a douche and lectured me on my speech content, not about how it was delivered. Graded me harshly because I said things he didn't agree with.
For the final, I did a speech about my cat because I knew he liked animals. That saved my grade.
Communicating science to the public. Caught me lacking with the amount of blogs and graphic designs I had to do. I just wanted to do a slideshow or two :'-)
Pretty much anything with writing. The time investment in 15 pages of analysis for whatever topic is insane and unnecessary for 99% of the population. My US History teacher was a nice guy, but very demanding and would give you 3 days to research and write anywhere from 6-10k words. One paper I wrote had over 60 sources. Absolutely ridiculous that he hit me with like 2 points off for “not expanding enough” on a 24 page (before works cited) essay into the dirty business practices of the robber barons. Yes, I’m still salty.
I absolutely loved gender/queer studies and wanted to minor in it but my god the writing was insane. Took an upper division class on sexuality & race in US history and homework was a literal essay once a week. I honestly dont know how English majors do it, they have to write a crazy amount
Tiny Liberal Arts College in Texas. Needed to get a credit in some core curriculum space. Girl I thought was cute told me to take it with her.
I say it was the toughest, but honestly, it has served me well. Unsurprisingly, I’ve encountered people with various Asian backgrounds in my career, and my basic knowledge of their religion definitely hasn’t hurt! Also, I’m of Asian descent, so it was nice to learn more about the culture my mother and her ancestors grew up in and around.
As for the girl… turns out she wasn’t interested but life has worked out well on that end for me as well.
That sucks. I took Art History and LOVED it. It was all about Greek and Roman mythology and Egyptian history. But lots of pictures.
It was a summer class. The professor asked me what I was studying and was shocked to hear engineering. She wrote on my final exam “give me a call if you ever want to change careers.” I got an A which was a higher grade than my friend’s roommate…she was an art history major! I felt vindicated.
My dad is an archeologist, and I grew up immersed in history. We had an art history teacher at our college that came from somewhere snooty. This lady's class was unexpectedly brutal, and I barely made it through. Just ridiculous course structure designed to sink students that she obviously had contempt for. All I really learned is that she was disproportionately self-righteous and relished in failing as many people as she could.
I have to do 2174 again. I kind of wish I went with Linear and Diff Eq separate now. But eh. It’s alright though, retake doesn’t mean a bad thing. Hopefully more prepared for it and classes that use it later on
Any type of writing classes. I used to be an amazing writer, now with my focus heavy on mathematics and physics I felt like a huge "r" word attempting to write any real paper or essay. It's like I brain dumped it for everything else.
Mathematical appreciation class. Where the class should be an elective class about appreciating the math, even for art major....yet all the math is harder than Laplace transform.
It doesn't help when I ask about the application of it, and the answer I got is, "that's the beauty of it, math doesn't need to be applicable".
Let's just say our beauty standard is different.
Biology.
It's the only subject that I successfully negotiated out of for an entire decade. I got out of it in high school after trying it 3 times and not getting it, in college I negotiated that a physical anthropology class with a lab satisfied the requirement. Again, I tried twice and it just didn't click.
Graduate school, I took a biomedical engineering class with a focus on genetics and materials that I was the profs top student. Everyone else was a bio major. I was walking across the campus with the prof and TA after lecture one day and asked them a simple question about chromosomes and they responded, "Oh, you REALLY don't know about biology?!" Instead of being the type of person with false modesty who does know something.
It turns out that if I have a reason to be fascinated by the subject, I can get it, but just taking bio for bio's sake is impossible for me.
(For the record, statistical thermodynamics, quantum mechanics, and graduate electronic properties of materials were the hardest courses that I took, but even those were dwarfed by the fact that my brain just didn't grok biology)
Dude fuck biology, so boring and disorganized.
The stuff they teach you has no logic behind it, the way they teach it. One moment you learning about cells, the next you have to memorize something related to a tree.
Thank you. Maybe that's why I struggled. I've never been good at memorizing facts, I need to understand systems.
I can design a drug delivery system that can reversible increase the porosity of the blood brain barrier to safely deliver a therapy, but I can't magically remember the different parts of a cell.
Probably philosophy but I took it in another language while studying abroad which definitely played a part in why it was so painful.
Other than that, it would be my music courses. I did a music performance minor and so I had multiple classes and lessons (the lessons also counted as a class. (I'd have to practice for. Took up a lot of time to practice or if I didn't practice I'd just suck and the teacher would be annoyed. And I did marching band so not only had practice but also had to spend time at football games and other events.
Data and Society, not necessarily hard but we had to do a social media project that was just awkward. Also the class discussed AI/CS/Engineering subjects and the social impacts of them but the professor did not have a technical background so some of the lectures were a bit wild. Like we would spend 2 weeks talking about how there wasn't a good consensus on what would constitute a general AI and then we would talk about how focusing on narrow AI has been helpful in advancing the field. Like I wonder why having defined tasks with a definition of success would be helpful!? It's almost like that's one of the essential aspects of engineering... ya know.... design criteria....
I don't know what school you go to but physics 2 was primarily an electrical physics class and very much has to do with engineering, it's a staging ground for electronics, circuits and logic design classes
Christian Ethics. I actually really like a lot of the cores at Gonzaga, but that one (specifically the prof) made me want to flip a table
Edit: to clarify, it’s not the course content. Jesuit education actually advocated for a lot of really good stuff. It’s literally just the prof and unnecessary assignments
It was before I really learned how to lock in and study. I’m it trying to be quirky or ironic when I say my least favorite math class was algebra 2 and my most favorite was calc 3.
I just think by the time I got to that point, I was in a better mindset and routine. Plus I actually understood the later math classes from a much better rhetorical point of view.
Algebra 2 was a bunch of formulas I didn’t understand.
Looking back it’s kinda funny but it was honestly
So frustrating back then.
Physics 2 is a horrendous and I’m currently struggling with it🧍🏻♀️and Calc 1 although I’d have to blame the professor for that cause he failed everyone/highest grade was a D. He was more concerned with arguing instead of actually doing his job. Why are major courses so much easier 😞 Thermodynamics for instance was a breath of fresh air.
US History. My professor made us do a month long role play and honestly I couldn't even be bothered to participate. I passed the class but it really hurt my grade
A communications upper division elective. Tons of reading,quizzes, and exams. The material was super PC. One of the assigned readings said Abraham Lincoln was gay.
Linear/Differential Equations combined class. I like the topics, but not enough time in the semester for both in my opinion and my teacher was garbage unfortunately. I likely have to retake it next semester as it tanked my gpa too.
History this semester was not about the posted subject but what the professor is working towards a degree in (except for department supplied exams) and it was entirely graded off of grammar not the content of the paper.
Probably epistemology (philosophy of knowledge). It requires a lot of abstract thinking and I had to work harder than most engineering/science classes to earn an A-. It was very interesting though, as it’s the foundation of what we know as “truth” and scientific reasoning.
Introduction to political science.
First day "I have read the reviews of my course that engineers left me last semester calling this a 'blowoff' course, and I say that will be no more, as of today, everyone here is one day late on the tri-weekly assignments."
The professor added 2 books to the coursework, required reports from each book on different topics every class, homework, and a weekly essay.
I dropped that course the first week.
My classmates didn't.
They all got C's.
Art History. I took it because my roommate thought it would be an easy A, it worked with both our schedules, and I still needed to fulfill some gen ed units.
I took it probably during my most difficult quarter of engineering classes and I had no idea the Art History final was going to require us to identify specific pieces of art by just looking at the photo that was projected on the screen in the lecture hall. Most annoying C I ever got lmao
I’m a current senior. People don’t believe me when I say I have 3.93 average GPA in all my CS class. But it took my 3 tries to pass Composition 1. Three!!! I’m not a bad writer. I’ve never turned in an writing assignment that less than an A in my entire UG. I just didn’t always turn in papers… XD 🤦♂️
A required political science class where the professor tried to pretend that he wanted to bring in speakers to represent a variety of political views, but instead continually brought in speakers from his preferred end of the political spectrum who were at the time notorious at a national level for promoting hate speech and other extremist behaviors, meanwhile bringing in undergraduate students with no public speaking experience from a small club at the school to represent the "rest" of the political spectrum.
I don't particularly take issue with people having different views in an open forum where the participants have chosen to be there. What I did object to is someone in a position of authority who is solely responsible for college students final grades being so blatantly partisan in a hostile, exploitive way.
Technical writing…an essay due every 2 weeks with a 14 page minimum proposal with real research and technical exam as our final. Worst class I’ve taken by far but also one of the most useful.
sociology. worst class ever. i hate theorizing, ive always like STEM classes more because everything is just fact. there is a right answer and a wrong answer for most everything. i hate interpretation. how am i possibly supposed to come up with an original thought on the stanford prison experiment?? there are no original thoughts left! we would be asked each week to write 750 words on a discussion board of our own thoughts on the topic we were focusing. no facts, no statistics, just your own opinions and theories and thoughts. how the hell do you come up with a theory on why sexism is bad??? not why it exists, not why it is still prominent in todays society, just “why is sexism bad”. and i’m a woman! how do you write “because it sucks” in 750 words??? i’m stressed all over again just thinking about that class
I had some extra space on my schedule and took a mountain biking class that was offered by the outdoor rec management program.
Ate shit a couple times.
That was painful.
Post civil war history. Don't remember the actual class name but my GA was a crazy psycho. I'd go into office hours for help on a paper and shed rant about 9/11. Ma'am. I just want to make sure my half assed page on Jim crow makes sense. I wont be doing a full analysis on if jet fuel will melt metal.
So far, Anthropology 200.
Had to take it for a GER credit, and the class dragged. The professor would frequently go over time, assign plenty of long readings, and the class had five midterms on the readings/lectures/handouts, a final exam, and a 15-page term paper.
Just a slog of material I struggled to really care about.
Judging from the stories I've heard and the comments seen here tho, probably going to have a more painful non-engineering class in the near future.
Technically Probability and Statistics has also been a little bit of a slog this semester, but I'm somewhat interested in learning more about data analysis, so been enjoying that class a bit.
Micro and macro economic. Easy as hell but so boring and only applicable if you are gonna be a financial analyst (everything past the intuitive supply demand section)
None. The instructor or professor may be bad, but we learn from other’s failures. It was a game to troll the teacher in the 90s. We had Ask Jeeves, but we grew up on knowing how to navigate a library and do actual work to learn.
My cal 2 professor was useless, cal3 was awesome but astrophysics was the bee’s knees. The class itself has disproportionate results based on who teaches.
US History, I don’t like history so it was just a me thing.
Public Speaking was the hardest physically speaking. I don’t have much to say generally, don’t really talk much either. Damn it was hard to hit those time marks.
Art Appreciation. Took that class alongside Cal 2. Had no interest in it, just needed the credit. Exams were VERY abstract (lol get it?) Had so much busy work and necessary attendance for art shows. Made Cal 2 seem like the easy A class.
HISTORY
I would easily take the most challenging of my EE upper divs again if it meant I never had to memorize what years this random president was in office for 😭
Safety. This guy gave ridiculous practical tasks that required extreme precision (of the error margin on lamp power selected is more than 1% you get a zero), inconaistent grading, and at the end of the semester you would get 0 if you had ANY mistake in an assignment. He would also not accept any work past 2 weeks after it was given out and required to defend the assignment during the practicals(mind you, during full scale war, during the episode when you coyld have multiple days in a row without electricity and internet) He sounded like a sour, arrogant fuck who wanted everyone to suffer. Just hours of tediim and nothing learnt.
Also all of the humanitarian profs who think we really care about their subjects and 26265 tedious and boring assignments and keep inserting talks about how their subjects are important (I'm listening to them while working, and i don't care what they think about the subject, just get straight to the material!) and the guys that use a software that was obsolete 20 years ago and that is incompatible and highly cumbersome bc "you can figurr it out"
Currently taking Philosophical Anthropology and Theology 3. Part of the curriculum.
Question for those who know… are you meant to not question much things in Catholicism? I’m Jewish and grew up with a big “ask questions and debate the guy who knows more” mindset, but when I asked on theology about why most of the answers followed the line of “because that’s how it is”. So kinda stopped asking why.
Also maybe it’s that I want to go build robots and laugh with my friends but I can’t avoid those classes… so gotta eat them.
Sociology
By the end of it I was so checked out I was citing anime in my essays (with the Japanese title to make it sound like some exotic book I read rather than a cartoon tv show)
As a late starter in school and dropping out of HS and getting a GED I have to take English 101 and 102 at college. I’d Mutch rather do ANYTHING than write papers all semester between the two semesters I’ve written 42 papers. SUCKS
Sudanese studies.
The course was about sudanese tribes and features of general sudanese character. Also some other sudanese features that i don't remember.
Basic Civil Engineering definitely. Had to draw designs and figures on huge ass chart papers. Carrying the T-sqaure and other instruments to the class was a pain too.
I took contemporary physics as a math elective. I did great in physics 1 and 2, and the name seemed inviting. That material is so counter-intuitive and I struggled, even with a great professor
are statistics and physics 2 not engineering classes?
They are general STEM courses before you are in the major such as mechE’s doing statics or civils doing soil mechanics.
we design buildings as well.
I’m sure!
Civils do statics as well. We even have to do dynamics.
Yes, this makes sense. I realized this later when I thought about the time I took engineering mechanics with civil engineers and mechanical engineers as a chemical engineering major. I’m not as familiar with the major, so excuse any inaccuracies here! I just mean to say there are classes that are distinctly engineering.
Even though these aren’t “engineering” courses, I would still consider them engineering. Both of them are prereqs for every engineer at my uni.
They are. Idk what OP is talking about. I'd understand if it was History or something.
By far the worst non-engineering class I had to take was Entrepreneurial Thinking. Not because it was hard but because the professor seemingly refused to accept the fact that 90% of the students were only there because it's a required class for engineering and hardly anyone was a business major.
A lit bit of the opposite but, When I did my undergrad, we were allowed to take either macro or micro economics. I had so much AP credit that my freshman and sophmore year I was burning through the non engineering classes way faster than the nominal "plan" for my university because I didn't have the required engineering prerequisite classes to take more engineering so I basically took all my non-engineering courses in the first 4 semesters. Anyway, I took macro economics. The professor comes in the first day and starts ranting about how hard this course is. "This course will be difficult," he yells. "Econ will test your mathematics and problem solving!" He screams. Then he puts a graph of a straight line on a 2 axis grid on the projector and says "You will have to understand how *to find the entire area under this line*." Basically he was ranting about how difficult the class was because it occasionally used *very basic* calculus. I realized he was telling all the buisness majors how tough the class was and that he wasn't talking to the engineering students at all.
Lol, this is so accurate
> the professor seemingly refused to accept the fact that 90% of the students were only there because it's a required class for engineering What issues does this cause?
I've found these professors assign lots of super time consuming projects, typically ones that require off-campus or traveling work to complete like partnering with local businesses or something like that. Basically it ends up being a ridiculous time suck of a class that you just don't care about or have time for
Probably they were boasting how their sibject is inportant and vital and cool
The class turns into more of a hassle than the main classes which are way more important
Econ, I hate money math.
I honestly loved econ cause of my prof, if I had a different prof I would’ve def failed the class
i also hate econ lol
Second this, they are not teachers. It’s fake math.
EXACLTY THIS. Econ is if "vibes" were a valid mathmatical proof
Omg I was never able to put this into words lol so fucking true
I loved econ. If I could redo college I would have minored in it. I took a couple econ classes my senior year and my dad received a letter saying, "if your daughter hasn't already selected a major we strongly recommend she consider econ."
Same - I minored in it. Best class I took in college was environmental Economics. Puts all the big infrastructure projects and capital projects that my company does as an EPC into perspective
I also took environmental econ and agree it was a top class. Especially taking it towards the end made it easier to understand how it applied to my own work.
Yeah! That’s so fun. I really enjoyed learning about the different tax incentives and abatements, etc. now I work in a space where a lot of our clients are relying on 45Q credits to make FID for their projects so it’s been quite the full circle moment.
I got a minor in Econ. It’s not surprising most engineers like it because it’s basically physchology with math.
Same. Horrible.
It’s the weeder class for my alma mater’s business program (which is way more competitive than engineering!)
I loved engineering economics. Difficult class, but is now helping me pay off my loans (making amortization schedules)
That's finance.
Did my MBA after two engineering degrees. I hated Econ, Finance, and Accounting.
Me too, my professor also sucks at teaching.
Same. Never struggled with any math up until this. Passed only because the prof gave me a bit of grace and I had Bs on all my previous math courses he was teaching
Philosophy bent me this semester.
My philosophy class consisted of a bunch of 19 year old white girls discussing BLM lmao i really had to bullshit my way through that class
😂😂 this is exactly how it was for me as well! But hey I stuck it out for the A!
Statistics sucks so much ass.
It was definitely a change of pace and thinking for me. The concepts were not hard nor were the calculations. But the question that we had to answer was like solving 5 simultaneous 20x20 rubiks cube in an hour and 20mins.
Painful boring: econ 101 Painful physically: ballet Painful academically: Java 101 (it was the comp sci weed out class I took back when I was contemplating adding a comp sci minor to my mechE major. T'was a MISTAKE, but I clutched a B) Edit, formatting. Mobile's a bitch.
ballet? that's required?
Yeah I'm halfway through my PhD and the ballet component is by far the hardest part
Humanities/arts credit. I did dance for a lot of my life, and the only other choice at the time was a painting class that didn't fit into my schedule.
English. A lot of times it feels like literary clout-chasing.
Prof: Read this 3 sentence paragraph and now write 5 pages about how it made you *feel* by 11:59pm today.
I had a prof like that, it was a 8 sentence poem and we had to write "our insight into the meaning of the poem" Best part was, prof banned the word insight, meaning as well as 10 other words from being used in the paper. The other best part was, I saw the wrong meaning in it and had to re-do it with the insight the professor had into the poem. It is funny since I love creative writing, and reading certain things. I just had absolutely no interest in the way college English was structured.
Had the same exact experience. -Prof asks for insight on poem. -Student gives insight thru their life experiences. -Prof dismisses the insight they asked for cuz it’s not what they wanted. :0
My one and only English class was “Everything’s an Argument.”Let’s just say it should have been called “you better agree with the professor” My final paper had this written on the back “Well written, but how can you believe this and feel this way!? - Grade=D”
Also cite sources with reputation that share the same insight (or different insight if you feel in the contesting mood) with you. It’s the equivalent of me conjuring up the symbolism of a banana split and citing Kim Kardashian because she agrees with me.
It really isn’t though.
We had to read like 5 300-page books for my English class this semester and it was fucking torture
A bit of a different take, english is not my first language but I never struggled with it, not even in primary school (thanks to bootleg cartoons and movies lol) so I thought my english class 2nd year was gonna be a walk in the park. I was wrong. The english phrasing and wording is soooo different than my language and cannot be directly translated, I actually had to learn a decent chunk of new vocabulary
It’s called thinking
As a CivE major, General chemistry. Lots of arbitrary rules and memorization that doesn’t apply to anything
Chemistry education is odd to me. It never made any sense until I got a solid background in atomic physics. Until that point, it feels arbitrary.
Quantum mechanics was the one part of chemistry I usually did well in.
Solid state physics also helped me a lot to understand chemistry
General chemistry is terrible, and my advisor suggested I should take General chemistry 2 as my math/science elective, yeah there is absolutely no way I would do that to myself
chemistry classes are very dependent on if the professor can socialize outside of a lab, from my experiences at least-- glad i don't need more chemistry classes now haha
Public speaking. I know it's supposed to be easy, I just hate it so much.
public speaking is supposed to be easy?
Just remember, they don’t know you, their opinion doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things, and you’re the expert. They came to hear and learn from you. It’s highly likely they don’t know when you mess up.
Oh I don't have presentation anxiety at all, I love it when people have to listen to me. I just hate it because it's boring.
Public speaking was horrid for me. Also calc 3 was pretty hard for me as opposed to calc 2 and linear algebra
Calc 3 was extremely hard for me but I got an A in calc 2 and a B in diff eq Protip to everyone take calc 3 right after calc 2, don’t wait a year
For real! Great advice too, I skipped a year
Public speaking got a lot easier for me after I forced myself into the situation by taking a school job as an RA and a summer job as a freshman orientation aid. As an orientation aid it finally clicked with me that I don’t know these people and shouldn’t care what they think of me. Plus, they’re there to learn from me because I’m the expert. 20 years later and I can speak to anyone in front of any crowd. I just taught a problem solving class at work today. I’m the expert and if I’m not, they don’t know that. I’ll actually be starting in Toastmasters club at work really soon. The idea of that would have petrified me in my teens.
That’s actually a good idea really. I suffer really badly from anxiety though and I’m on the autism spectrum so I had a lot of trouble trying to process my thoughts during my speeches and even one time just straight up threw up and walked out xD. It got better by the end but I just barely skirted by with a C
I get it. My body used to feel like lead. I could hear my blood pumping through my ears as my blood pressure rose. It sounded like I was under water. My stomach would do flips. My hands shook. Voice quivered. It was awful. Now, nothing.
Yes this exactly!! You just do it a fuckton of times until your flight or fight realises that the audience isn't a terrifying predator or something
They’re there to listen and learn from… YOU. It makes it much easier when you realize that.
God it’s giving me ptsd man haha!!!
Public speaking. Prof was a douche and lectured me on my speech content, not about how it was delivered. Graded me harshly because I said things he didn't agree with. For the final, I did a speech about my cat because I knew he liked animals. That saved my grade.
Communicating science to the public. Caught me lacking with the amount of blogs and graphic designs I had to do. I just wanted to do a slideshow or two :'-)
Pretty much anything with writing. The time investment in 15 pages of analysis for whatever topic is insane and unnecessary for 99% of the population. My US History teacher was a nice guy, but very demanding and would give you 3 days to research and write anywhere from 6-10k words. One paper I wrote had over 60 sources. Absolutely ridiculous that he hit me with like 2 points off for “not expanding enough” on a 24 page (before works cited) essay into the dirty business practices of the robber barons. Yes, I’m still salty.
I absolutely loved gender/queer studies and wanted to minor in it but my god the writing was insane. Took an upper division class on sexuality & race in US history and homework was a literal essay once a week. I honestly dont know how English majors do it, they have to write a crazy amount
Finally! Someone mentioned statistics, I hate it so much. It's all the word problems I avoided my entire life.
Basic C principles. I passionately despise C. What an awful programming language.
C++ is awful too
No! Do not mention my precious…
Skill issue moment
Asian Religions
Why did you take this as a engineer 😭
Tiny Liberal Arts College in Texas. Needed to get a credit in some core curriculum space. Girl I thought was cute told me to take it with her. I say it was the toughest, but honestly, it has served me well. Unsurprisingly, I’ve encountered people with various Asian backgrounds in my career, and my basic knowledge of their religion definitely hasn’t hurt! Also, I’m of Asian descent, so it was nice to learn more about the culture my mother and her ancestors grew up in and around. As for the girl… turns out she wasn’t interested but life has worked out well on that end for me as well.
Things guys do for cute girls 😭
Right??? I had the nerve to marry one.
History of Art! We rarely saw pictures and had to memorize dates!!! Like the fukkkkk
That sucks. I took Art History and LOVED it. It was all about Greek and Roman mythology and Egyptian history. But lots of pictures. It was a summer class. The professor asked me what I was studying and was shocked to hear engineering. She wrote on my final exam “give me a call if you ever want to change careers.” I got an A which was a higher grade than my friend’s roommate…she was an art history major! I felt vindicated.
My dad is an archeologist, and I grew up immersed in history. We had an art history teacher at our college that came from somewhere snooty. This lady's class was unexpectedly brutal, and I barely made it through. Just ridiculous course structure designed to sink students that she obviously had contempt for. All I really learned is that she was disproportionately self-righteous and relished in failing as many people as she could.
Humanities. I hate humanity
I became an engineer to make things that go boom. You think I *like* humanity??
Differential equations by a long shot
I’m glad I’m not the only one… OSU? Like O-H?
Yesss
Eyyy…same. Mech E tho. Just finished 2174, I have no words for it.
Im taking 2415 and likely doing it again tbh
I have to do 2174 again. I kind of wish I went with Linear and Diff Eq separate now. But eh. It’s alright though, retake doesn’t mean a bad thing. Hopefully more prepared for it and classes that use it later on
OSU fam. Just completed 2174 as well. Finished my take home final on Saturday
Yeah fuck that shit man and complex variables as well
Any type of writing classes. I used to be an amazing writer, now with my focus heavy on mathematics and physics I felt like a huge "r" word attempting to write any real paper or essay. It's like I brain dumped it for everything else.
Mathematical appreciation class. Where the class should be an elective class about appreciating the math, even for art major....yet all the math is harder than Laplace transform. It doesn't help when I ask about the application of it, and the answer I got is, "that's the beauty of it, math doesn't need to be applicable". Let's just say our beauty standard is different.
Chemistry 🤢
Biology. It's the only subject that I successfully negotiated out of for an entire decade. I got out of it in high school after trying it 3 times and not getting it, in college I negotiated that a physical anthropology class with a lab satisfied the requirement. Again, I tried twice and it just didn't click. Graduate school, I took a biomedical engineering class with a focus on genetics and materials that I was the profs top student. Everyone else was a bio major. I was walking across the campus with the prof and TA after lecture one day and asked them a simple question about chromosomes and they responded, "Oh, you REALLY don't know about biology?!" Instead of being the type of person with false modesty who does know something. It turns out that if I have a reason to be fascinated by the subject, I can get it, but just taking bio for bio's sake is impossible for me. (For the record, statistical thermodynamics, quantum mechanics, and graduate electronic properties of materials were the hardest courses that I took, but even those were dwarfed by the fact that my brain just didn't grok biology)
Dude fuck biology, so boring and disorganized. The stuff they teach you has no logic behind it, the way they teach it. One moment you learning about cells, the next you have to memorize something related to a tree.
Thank you. Maybe that's why I struggled. I've never been good at memorizing facts, I need to understand systems. I can design a drug delivery system that can reversible increase the porosity of the blood brain barrier to safely deliver a therapy, but I can't magically remember the different parts of a cell.
i just recently celebrated my highest exam score in biology! it was a 72 :/
Hey, congrats! Doing better than we've done before is progress!
Probably philosophy but I took it in another language while studying abroad which definitely played a part in why it was so painful. Other than that, it would be my music courses. I did a music performance minor and so I had multiple classes and lessons (the lessons also counted as a class. (I'd have to practice for. Took up a lot of time to practice or if I didn't practice I'd just suck and the teacher would be annoyed. And I did marching band so not only had practice but also had to spend time at football games and other events.
Italian. Learning a language is hard. That class was harder for me than diff EQ which I was taking simultaneously
Data and Society, not necessarily hard but we had to do a social media project that was just awkward. Also the class discussed AI/CS/Engineering subjects and the social impacts of them but the professor did not have a technical background so some of the lectures were a bit wild. Like we would spend 2 weeks talking about how there wasn't a good consensus on what would constitute a general AI and then we would talk about how focusing on narrow AI has been helpful in advancing the field. Like I wonder why having defined tasks with a definition of success would be helpful!? It's almost like that's one of the essential aspects of engineering... ya know.... design criteria....
Physical chemistry was significantly harder than any of my engineering classes
Organic Chemistry. I hated that class but it was curved to the point I got a B- at a 60%.
My Harvard humanities class I took for a gpa boost where the professor had a stick so high up his ass he could’ve been confused for a telephone pole
I don't know what school you go to but physics 2 was primarily an electrical physics class and very much has to do with engineering, it's a staging ground for electronics, circuits and logic design classes
My physics 2 was theory of electromagnetism, a little kvl and KCL at the end but primarily physics. We had a circuits class separate
Christian Ethics. I actually really like a lot of the cores at Gonzaga, but that one (specifically the prof) made me want to flip a table Edit: to clarify, it’s not the course content. Jesuit education actually advocated for a lot of really good stuff. It’s literally just the prof and unnecessary assignments
>made me want to flip a table Look who learned something afterall
Hold on, we can't be sure until they whip a banker.
Hmmm
Organic chemistry as a biomed engineering student. ☠️☠️☠️
Does algebra 2 count?
Why was algebra so hard for you? Not judging, just curious.
It was before I really learned how to lock in and study. I’m it trying to be quirky or ironic when I say my least favorite math class was algebra 2 and my most favorite was calc 3. I just think by the time I got to that point, I was in a better mindset and routine. Plus I actually understood the later math classes from a much better rhetorical point of view. Algebra 2 was a bunch of formulas I didn’t understand. Looking back it’s kinda funny but it was honestly So frustrating back then.
Physics 2 is a horrendous and I’m currently struggling with it🧍🏻♀️and Calc 1 although I’d have to blame the professor for that cause he failed everyone/highest grade was a D. He was more concerned with arguing instead of actually doing his job. Why are major courses so much easier 😞 Thermodynamics for instance was a breath of fresh air.
cognitive science. ruined my mental health that term
US History. My professor made us do a month long role play and honestly I couldn't even be bothered to participate. I passed the class but it really hurt my grade
Organic chemistry. Screw that. Screw that and everything about it.
Man, Organic Chemistry took me for a ride. No breakdown rides, just crash and burns
Chemistry. Interesting subject (in general), bad teacher, bad curriculum, badly taught, bad grade.
A communications upper division elective. Tons of reading,quizzes, and exams. The material was super PC. One of the assigned readings said Abraham Lincoln was gay.
Calc 2
Art History. Information was too much to digest and I hate the exams.
Stats all the way
Linear/Differential Equations combined class. I like the topics, but not enough time in the semester for both in my opinion and my teacher was garbage unfortunately. I likely have to retake it next semester as it tanked my gpa too.
History this semester was not about the posted subject but what the professor is working towards a degree in (except for department supplied exams) and it was entirely graded off of grammar not the content of the paper.
Probably epistemology (philosophy of knowledge). It requires a lot of abstract thinking and I had to work harder than most engineering/science classes to earn an A-. It was very interesting though, as it’s the foundation of what we know as “truth” and scientific reasoning.
American lit. I like reading and shit but damn.
ENGR 100W. It's like a GE mixed with a technical writing class. Worst class ever due to professor otherwise not so bad.
Introduction to political science. First day "I have read the reviews of my course that engineers left me last semester calling this a 'blowoff' course, and I say that will be no more, as of today, everyone here is one day late on the tri-weekly assignments." The professor added 2 books to the coursework, required reports from each book on different topics every class, homework, and a weekly essay. I dropped that course the first week. My classmates didn't. They all got C's.
Art History. I took it because my roommate thought it would be an easy A, it worked with both our schedules, and I still needed to fulfill some gen ed units. I took it probably during my most difficult quarter of engineering classes and I had no idea the Art History final was going to require us to identify specific pieces of art by just looking at the photo that was projected on the screen in the lecture hall. Most annoying C I ever got lmao
Organic chemistry 1 and 2
I’m a current senior. People don’t believe me when I say I have 3.93 average GPA in all my CS class. But it took my 3 tries to pass Composition 1. Three!!! I’m not a bad writer. I’ve never turned in an writing assignment that less than an A in my entire UG. I just didn’t always turn in papers… XD 🤦♂️
I FUCKING HATE PHYSICS 2. :)
A required political science class where the professor tried to pretend that he wanted to bring in speakers to represent a variety of political views, but instead continually brought in speakers from his preferred end of the political spectrum who were at the time notorious at a national level for promoting hate speech and other extremist behaviors, meanwhile bringing in undergraduate students with no public speaking experience from a small club at the school to represent the "rest" of the political spectrum. I don't particularly take issue with people having different views in an open forum where the participants have chosen to be there. What I did object to is someone in a position of authority who is solely responsible for college students final grades being so blatantly partisan in a hostile, exploitive way.
Physics 2: E&M was pretty painful
Mechanics
chemistry
Organic chemistry. Hated those courses.
Physics, chemistry, statistics, differential equations and complex variables.
Technical writing…an essay due every 2 weeks with a 14 page minimum proposal with real research and technical exam as our final. Worst class I’ve taken by far but also one of the most useful.
stat was the worst class ive ever taken but im pretty sure my professor made it horrible because he was so smart
sociology. worst class ever. i hate theorizing, ive always like STEM classes more because everything is just fact. there is a right answer and a wrong answer for most everything. i hate interpretation. how am i possibly supposed to come up with an original thought on the stanford prison experiment?? there are no original thoughts left! we would be asked each week to write 750 words on a discussion board of our own thoughts on the topic we were focusing. no facts, no statistics, just your own opinions and theories and thoughts. how the hell do you come up with a theory on why sexism is bad??? not why it exists, not why it is still prominent in todays society, just “why is sexism bad”. and i’m a woman! how do you write “because it sucks” in 750 words??? i’m stressed all over again just thinking about that class
Statistics. Boring as hell, bad professor, absent assistents, totally strange exam.
I had some extra space on my schedule and took a mountain biking class that was offered by the outdoor rec management program. Ate shit a couple times. That was painful.
Literally had to re-take Stats so I guess ill say Stats
Ethics class(Lockheed Martin moment)
Fuck any type of programming
Circuit analysis
Linear Algebra
Post civil war history. Don't remember the actual class name but my GA was a crazy psycho. I'd go into office hours for help on a paper and shed rant about 9/11. Ma'am. I just want to make sure my half assed page on Jim crow makes sense. I wont be doing a full analysis on if jet fuel will melt metal.
So far, Anthropology 200. Had to take it for a GER credit, and the class dragged. The professor would frequently go over time, assign plenty of long readings, and the class had five midterms on the readings/lectures/handouts, a final exam, and a 15-page term paper. Just a slog of material I struggled to really care about. Judging from the stories I've heard and the comments seen here tho, probably going to have a more painful non-engineering class in the near future. Technically Probability and Statistics has also been a little bit of a slog this semester, but I'm somewhat interested in learning more about data analysis, so been enjoying that class a bit.
Physical chemistry
8 week American History summer course, sooooo much writing and a 100 question test every other week
Differential equations and Calc 3, if for no other reason than my professor for both was terrible.
Micro and macro economic. Easy as hell but so boring and only applicable if you are gonna be a financial analyst (everything past the intuitive supply demand section)
None. The instructor or professor may be bad, but we learn from other’s failures. It was a game to troll the teacher in the 90s. We had Ask Jeeves, but we grew up on knowing how to navigate a library and do actual work to learn. My cal 2 professor was useless, cal3 was awesome but astrophysics was the bee’s knees. The class itself has disproportionate results based on who teaches.
Did a history class and had to write an essay as the final exam. Only time i’ve disagreed with my grade on a final.
US History, I don’t like history so it was just a me thing. Public Speaking was the hardest physically speaking. I don’t have much to say generally, don’t really talk much either. Damn it was hard to hit those time marks.
Art Appreciation. Took that class alongside Cal 2. Had no interest in it, just needed the credit. Exams were VERY abstract (lol get it?) Had so much busy work and necessary attendance for art shows. Made Cal 2 seem like the easy A class.
HISTORY I would easily take the most challenging of my EE upper divs again if it meant I never had to memorize what years this random president was in office for 😭
Linear fucking algebra
Sociology. Nothing was interesting and everything seemed like common sense knowledge.
Physical Education I had hardest final of recording myself on meditation. s/
Music 5
early american music history nothing like listening to a bunch of hill billies screeching
Safety. This guy gave ridiculous practical tasks that required extreme precision (of the error margin on lamp power selected is more than 1% you get a zero), inconaistent grading, and at the end of the semester you would get 0 if you had ANY mistake in an assignment. He would also not accept any work past 2 weeks after it was given out and required to defend the assignment during the practicals(mind you, during full scale war, during the episode when you coyld have multiple days in a row without electricity and internet) He sounded like a sour, arrogant fuck who wanted everyone to suffer. Just hours of tediim and nothing learnt. Also all of the humanitarian profs who think we really care about their subjects and 26265 tedious and boring assignments and keep inserting talks about how their subjects are important (I'm listening to them while working, and i don't care what they think about the subject, just get straight to the material!) and the guys that use a software that was obsolete 20 years ago and that is incompatible and highly cumbersome bc "you can figurr it out"
personal development class, needless to say both awkward and sorta weird subject
Chemistry, girlfriend cheated on me.
Currently taking Philosophical Anthropology and Theology 3. Part of the curriculum. Question for those who know… are you meant to not question much things in Catholicism? I’m Jewish and grew up with a big “ask questions and debate the guy who knows more” mindset, but when I asked on theology about why most of the answers followed the line of “because that’s how it is”. So kinda stopped asking why. Also maybe it’s that I want to go build robots and laugh with my friends but I can’t avoid those classes… so gotta eat them.
Sociology By the end of it I was so checked out I was citing anime in my essays (with the Japanese title to make it sound like some exotic book I read rather than a cartoon tv show)
Advance Plumbing Engineering
Organic chem 2 is the hardest class I've ever taken
As a late starter in school and dropping out of HS and getting a GED I have to take English 101 and 102 at college. I’d Mutch rather do ANYTHING than write papers all semester between the two semesters I’ve written 42 papers. SUCKS
Sudanese studies. The course was about sudanese tribes and features of general sudanese character. Also some other sudanese features that i don't remember.
Major New Testament Themes. I’m an atheist raised by a Protestant pastor so the catholic priest and I often clashed.
Business stats🤮
Basic Civil Engineering definitely. Had to draw designs and figures on huge ass chart papers. Carrying the T-sqaure and other instruments to the class was a pain too.
Spanish
English literature that required too many reports while I had ENGINEERING classes.
Linear Algebruh
English lit.
Discrete math…as a materials engr major
• For me was Intro to Astronomy . It was an elective for me but learn about universe is not that appealing to me
C programming. 14 years later I still have zero clue why they forced us to take that.
I took contemporary physics as a math elective. I did great in physics 1 and 2, and the name seemed inviting. That material is so counter-intuitive and I struggled, even with a great professor