worst class ever encountered as a pre-med

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anomalous738232

anomalous738232

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what was the worst class you've yet to take as an undergrad? doesn't have to be a science/math class- just any course you remember as being horrible

for me, it would have to be an art history course. had absolutely NO interest in the material, went to lecture and fell asleep 3/5 days. people are impressed with pre-meds? some of the art majors in my section could literally write 20 pages about 1 sculpture. crazy- i would never be able to do THAT.
 
Introduction to Biological research. I thought it would be interesting and helpful. Boy was I wrong, it was basically just busy work, and the lowest grade ive ever gotten.
 
Latin American Politics. At least 100 pages of journal articles to read each week, and extremely specific quiz questions that would have had answers buried in a single sentence somewhere in that reading. Median on the midterm was an 82, which doesn't sound so bad except for the fact that you needed an 80% to pass the class, so essentially half the class was failing (and he has a no-curve policy).

Needless to say, I (along w/ over 2/3 of the class) dropped it.
 
Introduction to Inorganic Chemistry (serious)
 
I made the mistake of enrolling in this Spanish literature class that featured some of the densest things I've ever read in any language. Needless to say I got sick of it quickly and dropped the course.
 
So far my Biology I class is the worst, but it's not the material. Our professor is a joke who's always late and like one poster above mentioned, structures his test questions over one sentence buried in the material rather than over concepts.
 
there were very few I ever truly hated going to, but chapel was a waste of my time and I wasn't interested at all in going to religion class.
 
Hmm so far i'd say either introduction to anthropology or english II .. i hate english.

oh or organic.. not that the material is that boring once you learn it just the learning part sucks 😀
 
linguistics. i spent more time on that than gen ed class than history, psych, and anatomy combined [my other courses that quarter]. horrible memories...
 
anomalous738232 said:
what was the worst class you've yet to take as an undergrad? doesn't have to be a science/math class- just any course you remember as being horrible

for me, it would have to be an art history course. had absolutely NO interest in the material, went to lecture and fell asleep 3/5 days. people are impressed with pre-meds? some of the art majors in my section could literally write 20 pages about 1 sculpture. crazy- i would never be able to do THAT.
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Oh wow. Yeah. Art history. Completely forgot about that. What a shame, too, considering that I thought it would be interesting. It was, instead, taught by the most pedantic blowhard I've ever had the misfortune to encounter in my studies. She actually took off points for using the phrase "due to" as opposed to "because of" in something I wrote for the class.

Here I was, an unapologetic grammar nazi, out grammar nazi-d. And I still to this day don't know if she was off her rocker with that, but I still use "due to" without regret.
 
English 102 - Argument and Persuasion

We don't get to pick our own topics. I can usually only find research for one opinion on the topics that are chosen for us, which generally is the opinion that is opposite to my own. And to top it all off, at the beginning of class, we were told to completely forget about the ways that we knew how to organize an essay - we must organize our essay with this weird way that she came up with that generally makes no sense in writing an argumentative or persuasive essay.
 
nevercold said:
I made the mistake of enrolling in this Spanish literature class that featured some of the densest things I've ever read in any language. Needless to say I got sick of it quickly and dropped the course.
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ditto.....except I didn't drop it. Boy was I sick of analyzing poems and other junk by the end of the semester
 
For me it was by far Zoology. The class was so fricken BORING.
 
inorganic chem 1

it's really not fair when our professor has exams that only HALF the class finishes in the allotted time (not saying anything about getting the questions correct) and the other chem professor's exams have a b+ average...
 
I'm feeling particularly callous toward 2nd-semester physical chemistry (thermodynamics, kinetics, mechanics) right now.

I also had a strong dislike of microeconomics.
 
hated orgo2 and calculus 1 and 2. oh yeah and biochem.. but that's cuz he wrote on the chalk board and no one could ever follow his train of thought with the diagrams of how the insulin response pathway worked.

funny cuz my bcpm gpa is a 3.5, but my non-bcpm gpa is a 3.9, go figure...
 
'Real Analysis'

It's just as opaque as its name. Proofs are the most incomprehensible things ever. And for a minor they didn't end up granting me. Wunderbar.
 
How about those of us that loved Orgo I & II? We're freaks, right?
 
I had a horrible analytical chemistry teacher. When she wasn't around we called her Dr. Crazywoman. Other than that I would say the actual classes that I disliked the most were calculus I and II. Not a calculus person myself. And I'm okay with that!
 
KVO said:
How about those of us that loved Orgo I & II? We're freaks, right?
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one of my friends completely rocked our auditorium sized orgo class. He set all the curves, and he was pre-dental which made it hurt even more lol.

people are good at different things. I rocked physics and bio all thru undergrad, but i had to struggle to get a B+ in calc and chem.
 
Medical Mycology! Awfully dry!- I'm not going into dermatology anytime soon! Fungi are boring, I'll take parasites over mycota anyday.
 
Organizational Behavior... we were graded basically on how somebody else lead us... it was a disaster of the fourth magnitude
 
Honors econ, material boring, prof was easily over 100 yo and no idea how to use comps while the class was computer based.
 
MUL 2010

Introduction to Music Theory

Stupid Stupid STupid

and I play 2 instruments!
 
Would have to be Calculus- I hate math... other than that have had a couple low grades but there were because of stuff happening and then everything else has been tolerable.
 
Bio 1 was bad. The material was good, but the prof was kinda messed up. He used to have one answer in mind, and he wanted only that answer. So, if he wanted to see carbon bonded tetrahedrally, and on the test someone write tetrahedrally bonded carbon, he would mark it wrong, actual example...

English was another bad class...
 
"The Cinemas" 1356; watched movies and wrote papers about them. What I didn't know as a freshman was that the professor was a 5000 level English Lit professor who just happened to be a movie buff. Got C's and D's on the first five papers and had to spend 12 hours every sunday for half the semester to raise my grade to an A-

Analytical Chem was pretty dry too, as well as Anthropology...

I don't know hwy people hate organic so much
 
I loved orgo, I would take those classes again if I were to do undergrad all over again.
 
Man, this sounds bad, but I'm going to go ahead and say it: I hated biochemistry.

Hated. Hated. Hated.

Given that I rather enjoyed o-chem (despite the massive energy suck it involved), I thought biochem would be at least somewhat interesting.

Boy, was I wrong. There was just SO much pedantic memorization of pathways, this leads to that and that leads to this, I was ready to kill myself. Now, I didn't mind memorization info for o-chem because there were patterns involved, and after a while, thinking about doing syntheses (and why they happen) can be kind of fun, even. Biochem, otoh, sucked all the fun out of my being.

There was very little of the type of reasoning o-chem involved, or the type of problem solving physics involved. Instead, replace all of the above with rote memorization of pathways. :cry:

I can honestly say I've liked most of the classes I've taken (even the core classes my school forced upon us that involved reading Marx & Foucault)... But, biochem is an exception. I'm still out looking for the interesting part of the subject that I'm somehow missing... as medical school is supposed to involve far more of biochem, than say... o-chem... or Marx.
 
Maybe its just the professor. A&P is strict memorization as well but it was really enjoyable to me. Taking Biochem next semester so I guess I'll find that out for myself. Sorry it sucked for you so bad!
 
I love rote memorization more than almost anything.

Especially if it involves multiple choice testing or filling in blanks.

Hell, I just love memorization.

I hate any class where your grade depends on the opinion of a whacked out literature professor.

I also hate colleges that require students to take classes taught by whacked out literature professors. Or whacked out sociology professors. Or whacked out humanities professors.

History is okay.
 
Loved Orgo, loved Biochem, hated Thermo.

The professor was terrible would occasionally just stare at the whole class for a good minute before yelling some racist comment about his (Chinese) TAs.
 
zpiff said:
Loved Orgo, loved Biochem, hated Thermo.

The professor was terrible would occasionally just stare at the whole class for a good minute before yelling some racist comment about his (Chinese) TAs.
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That sounds like a thoroughly badass class.
 
Hated honors organic - but likely more due to the teaching style than the material per se. A real **** show.
 
Physics lab. It wasn't hard, just miserable.
 
I think the worse class... (so far) that I have taken as an undergrad had to be... I don't know this is a toughy... maybe Pre-Calc... that class was a pain, but so was fundamentals of neurobio... and it was in the summer so it made it a lot worse. So those two are even... but depending on how I do in genetics... it might be my worse experience.
 
My worst (and most hated) class so far is easily Physics I (Mechanics). Subject was incredibly boring and the text we used was terrible.
 
Chuckwalla said:
Physics lab. It wasn't hard, just miserable.
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oh yeah forgot about how pointless physics lab was. My TA was hilarious and we actually spent half of one lab session helping him create a facebook account.

my orgo lab TA was straight outta japan and hardly spoke any english. As long as you put something u got credit.
 
Intro Chem Lab.
6 hours of homework a week for a 1 credit class. And I got a B in it. Eff that bs.
 
i looooooooved organic. i hated government. worst class ever. tested us on articles from the new york times, which we were suppose to read every day. yeeeeeea, no.
 
I had to take this craptastic class "principles of communication" freshman year. Basically if you were allowed to go from 3rd to 4th grade then you should get like a 105%, so all I showed up for were test days and to turn in a paper and leave. Turns out the college of communication has a college-wide attendance policy (I had no idea... I friggin skipped 95% of the class) so even though every grade in the class was an A, I ended up with an F and had to retake the same craptastic class a second time.
 
Most atrocious class I ever took was sociology. I ****ing hated that class simply for the fact that pretty much everything the teacher (and textbook) taught, especially on health care, was so horrendously wrong that I wanted to scream out "You're full of ****!" at her every lecture. The only thing that class taught me was how to smile and nod my head at someone else's psychotic ramblings long enough to get a good grade and then run the hell away.

I'd say calc 1 is the runner-up for worst class simply because my teacher was a narcissistic nazi. Imagine someone who gives you test questions, some of which she can't even answer herself without stopping to think about it for a minute or two, and just relishes in the fact that she knows so much more math than the class. Oh yes, this is to say nothing of the fact that she pretty much treated the class as if everyone was a math major...and if we weren't, then we should be. I still got an A, but I hated that class, I will hate that teacher until the last drop of life is sucked out of me, and I hope she rots in hell. There's a happy ending though; my current teacher in calc 2 is a different one and reasonable. But I still want her predecessor to rot in hell, just FYI.
 
emttim said:
Most atrocious class I ever took was sociology. I ****ing hated that class simply for the fact that pretty much everything the teacher (and textbook) taught, especially on health care, was so horrendously wrong that I wanted to scream out "You're full of ****!" at her every lecture. The only thing that class taught me was how to smile and nod my head at someone else's psychotic ramblings long enough to get a good grade and then run the hell away.
Click to expand...

I was lucky with my sociology class - the teacher didn't care if I disagreed with him or the book - so long as I did so in an intelligent and polite manner.
 
Mayday said:
I was lucky with my sociology class - the teacher didn't care if I disagreed with him or the book - so long as I did so in an intelligent and polite manner.
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Considering pre-meds tend to like science & facts, you must have disagreed with him and the book quite a lot. :laugh:
 
anomalous738232 said:
what was the worst class you've yet to take as an undergrad? doesn't have to be a science/math class- just any course you remember as being horrible

for me, it would have to be an art history course. had absolutely NO interest in the material, went to lecture and fell asleep 3/5 days. people are impressed with pre-meds? some of the art majors in my section could literally write 20 pages about 1 sculpture. crazy- i would never be able to do THAT.
Click to expand...
We had art appreciation. I loved it. I would say my least favorite class was professional writing- I've always been a good writer, and so this class was just useless. As for difficulty- Comparative Vertebrate Zoology, hands down. I've never had a more difficult class in my life....so far.
 
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