Weirdest Class YOu Ever Took

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abraxas20

abraxas20

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Ok, tell us, what was the strangest class you have taken. Don't list O-Chem or any other pre-req....we have all taken them....what kind of weirdo stuff do those myriad school out there offer....

Here is my list of weirdo classes:

Old English
Sanskrit
Current Theories in Inflection Morphology
Neurophilosophy
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The Physics of Won Ton Burrito Makers =)
 
During the summer of 2000 at U Pitt they offered a course in the religious studies department called "Religion and Star Trek" Unfortunately I wasn't able to take it myself, but I though I'd tell you about it anyway. In class they actually watched episdoes of Star Trek (I think it was mostly original, but perhaps they did some TNG as well) and talked about how it related to religion and how the alien cultures they encountered had much in common with peoples of various world religion. To my knowledge they never offered it again.

Russian Fairy Tales was also a pretty cool class (read fairy tales as well as books written about them, psychoanalysts theories about them, feminist critcisms of them, literary versions, and on the last day of classes censored fairy tales). Was easy and fun yet we learned a lot. Somehow a lot of science majors manged to get B's and C's in it.

Physics lab was also ridiculous in my opinion, for how much is sucked that is.
 
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I took creating a meaningful life. The teacher was kinda nuts, and we did a lot of soul searching exercises...made mandalas, had group talks in circles, walked a labrynth, etc. It was fun, but as a college GE course requirement???
 
Women in Ancient Greece and Rome--it was about the position of women in society in each of these cultures, and what was expected of them in their daily lives, covering everyone from the wives of emperors to prostitutes.

Also, Prophecy in Israel and Jewish Literature in the Second Temple Period (apocalyptic literature), a 2-course sequence. We talked about a lot of the Christian misinterpretations of these texts, and what they were originally intended to mean. Another one is Oppression and Liberation in the Bible, which examined how people in minority or oppressed groups interpret the Bible differently from those in the dominant culture, and how the Bible has been used to oppress people. Fascinating stuff.
 
History of Rock and Roll---not too weird but pretty cool.

We watched a movie about naked hippies at Woodstock....now that was WEIRD!! :eek: I think most schools have this class but we just got it a year ago!
 
Mine is "Imagining the Alien" - we watched Men in Black on the first day of class, and wrapped up with Invasion of the Body Snatchers. One day I brought in an X-Files episode. This was an honors seminar, I kid you not. :D

However, that doesn't compare to another honors seminar on science and religion which, although slightly before my time, has become legendary. The whole class ended up firewalking. :eek:
 
With UC Davis having arguably the best Veterinary school in the country, undergrad students are lucky enough to get to take classes there. An animal science class I'm in right now where we do crazy things like castrate sheep, and a beer brewing class I'm also in right now tie for the craziest courses I've taken.

Chem and such don't even compare to brewing your own beer and playing with cows that have all of their insides visible through a clear plastic covering that was put in place after their skin was removed on one side to educate students about their digestive process. :)
 
Hands down, spider biology.

Now I have my own spider collection! They eat fruit flies...but it's a little scary, I'll be happy to release them.
 
rhetoric of reggae music

Class was 3 hours once a week. Got to watch all sorts of reggae movies, the most well known of which was "The Harder They Come." Halfway through class, we had a break during which a large majority of the class smoked up outside.
 
i've taken a media course, not too weird, but i did get to be the film director of my very own music video. also, i was going to take fencing next semester, but there's a time conflict, so no fencing yet.

i believe one semester, my school actually offered a harry potter class. i sure wish i took it.
 
Fencing is awesome! I never took it as a class, but I joined a club while studying abroad last year and was very involved in it, and have kept it up since coming back to the US. It's the best thing ever!! :love:
 
Two classes come to mind.

The Fantastic Genre of the 19th Century: we read horror and science fiction stories from different parts of the world--Sandman, Jettatura, Phantom of the Opera, something about a talking nose, etc. It was my first class ever in college and I got an A+ after videotaping a "movie" involving a conglomeration of the stories we had read.

World of Opera and Musical Theatre: We watched a video every class of either a live opera performance or movie musical. My final consisted of a paper about Broadway pop-musicals in the 80s and 90s.
 
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The History of the American Musical (way cool! We watched clips from musicals every day)
A class on the Sixties that lasted for three quarters
Celtic Folklore
 
Literature, Music, and Aesthetics: The Life of the Beatles

Not horribly weird, but pretty sweet. I want the beer brewing class though!
 
Black-Hole Physics would be mine. Very fun and cool course on relativity, four dimensional thinking, and of course the theory and applications of black holes taught with a fairly low requirement in mathematics.
 
Cultural Anthropology aka Tribal Porn 101 :eek:
 
"Music of the Beatles"
Not a trivia class, but rather an exploration and study of music, using the Beatles as reference material. Easiest A in 4 years :thumbup:
 
There's a course at my univ called "Biology of Sex" (not a real biology course, it's part of another department)... i've heard it's really interesting, all the students are really into it.. haven't taken it myself tho..
 
- Advanced Outdoor Survival
- Native American Uses of Western Plants
- The Literature of Horror and Fantasy (text was by Stephen King)
 
SCUBA Theory.

Six hours in the pool every week. PADI Master SCUBA certification at the end of the course. Plus, you get to learn a lot about first aid, etc.
 
Basic Firearms...we look at guns for 2 hours a week and shoot them at the end of the semester.

Human Sexuality....if you've ever heard of Dr. Dailey
 
chaos and fractals - an introduction
the art of the suspense scene
horseback riding
improv comedy techniques
modern french absurdist theater
post-surgery idiokinesis

what can i say, i went to oberlin... :cool:
 
history of the future of war
- pretty cool, but sad... about what may be to come in a future world war.

reading graphic design
- got as microcosmic as typeface analysis

programming languages
- who uses APL anyway?!?! well it was 8 years ago...
 
abraxas20 said:
Ok, tell us, what was the strangest class you have taken. Don't list O-Chem or any other pre-req....we have all taken them....what kind of weirdo stuff do those myriad school out there offer....

Here is my list of weirdo classes:

Old English
Sanskrit
Current Theories in Inflection Morphology
Neurophilosophy
Click to expand...

Food and Beverage 367: Beers of the World

We brewed our own beer, and then spent the rest of the semester tasting all sorts of beer. I got a 116 percent, not kidding. Didn't have to take the final, and then the teacher gave my beer to other people in my group that had to take the final. Our own brews had to be stored for the whole semester to bottle condition.
 
Interview and Detection of Deception :thumbup: :thumbup:
 
Shakespeare and biochemical methods. Mostly because I had 3 previous years of research doing the same stuff we were supposedly 'learning' by taking that course. Regardless, it was a 2 credit course which had lecture 3 times a week, discussion 2 times a week, and two three hour labs a week. ?that sucked!
 
Well, I only went once before deciding the class was BS, but I started to take a Philosophy of Art class. It is a subject that's interests me very much, but the instructor wrecked it. He showed up and had a blue goatee, which I can deal with, but rather than talking about art and philosophy, he spent 2+ hours talking about and showing slides of his adventures at Burning Man, which he had attended with "a group of Italian body painters." After two hours of that I got up and left.
 
My intro to philosophy class was weird. The prof thought he was psychic, and was really into eastern religions. He "tapped into" his psychic powers one night while meditating on (thinking about) me and a few of my classmates, and he revealed his findings to everyone in the class.
I am supposed to go to Israel and meet a girl named Mary. He also saw me in one of those slow tube rides at water parks, floating leisurely down the river. He said this means that I am slowly drifting towards my goals.
 
Gotta be the Biology and Natural History of Fireflies. What an awesome class :thumbup:
 
US History of the 1960's & Appreciation of Dance in Film and Broadway Musicals

It took me a while to 'find myself'. :D

I'm sure that these classes will come up in my interview even though I don't remember a thing from them. Oh, well.

Oh yeah, I also took the good old "Human Sexuality." The subject material wasn't weird, but people's reaction to it certainly was.
 
Wine Tasting, History of Wine, Magical Mushroom and Mischevious Molds. Oh, and can't forget Wine Science!
 
Human Sexuality. On the first day of class, the professor went over different cultures and their sexual rituals. One of the rituals was like Song of the Reeds or something like that where an adolescent girl comes of age by having the "privilege" of receiving as much semen as possible from a bunch of men. A couple of days later we watched a female ejaculation. :eek:

Sorry if I offended anyone.
 
edkNARF said:
Wine Tasting, History of Wine, Magical Mushroom and Mischevious Molds. Oh, and can't forget Wine Science!
Click to expand...


You an aggie? :) (UCDavis to those who don't know)
 
Before I converted to premed I was a humanities major, and we had to take a certain number of "science" credits to graduate. For one of mine I took a class called "Intro to math" where we learned things like how to design an efficient street sweeping plan, and how credit card numbers work. Later, when I went back to school and took real math classes such as calculus, I realized how completely silly that class was.

Some other interesting classes were:

Dante
Harpsichord lessons
Kierkegaard
Italian Renaissance Art (nice textbook!)
Jane Austen
A class I took on Catholicism, where we attended mass at different churches, from a super conservative one that still did Latin mass to an ultra liberal one in a gymnasium where people sat on folding chairs

Then there was the drivers' ed debacle in 10th grade
 
Hmmm... as a Religion major I had some fun ones like Intro to Preaching, but best of all had to be Black Nationalism, which had a lot of student discussion including the quote of the year "but it's true... white women really do want black men"
 
pushkin said:
Dante
Harpsichord lessons
Kierkegaard
Italian Renaissance Art (nice textbook!)
Jane Austen
A class I took on Catholicism, where we attended mass at different churches, from a super conservative one that still did Latin mass to an ultra liberal one in a gymnasium where people sat on folding chairs
Then there was the drivers' ed debacle in 10th grade
Click to expand...

Hey, that Dante class sounds kinda interesting, although I would hate to be in that Jane Austen class.
 
I took a class in "Simpson-ology"! :laugh:

We watched a bunch of "Simpsons" episodes and analyzed their relevance in real socio-politcal contexts.

:D
 
Astrophysical Chemistry. It was actually one of the coolest classes I took in college.

I also took a "Civilian's Life during Wartime" class, which was also pretty darn interesting.
 
the behavioral effects of psychoactive drugs
 
Sociology of Medicine not at all what I expected.

Medieval English History/Literature 1100-1300: cool because you could choose any historical topic you wanted to study and then you researched it and presented your findings to the professor (my papers were on medical theory, clothmaking, urbanization, monastic sheep economy, and abbey construction). The Literature portion was subtitled "the evolution of Arthurian Myth in Literature" and yes... in addition to reading the billion historical editions we did--at last--get to see the stellar interpretation of monty python
 
I took an english class that studied apocalyptic texts that appeared after WWII. We watched a few videos on nuclear weaponary and had a 20 page research paper due at the end of the semester. We generated a lot of interesting discussions in class that often turned into shouting matches. Good times. :thumbup:
 
SanDiegoSOD said:
You an aggie? :) (UCDavis to those who don't know)
Click to expand...

Close. I went to the Ag School of Cornell. Except for Wine Science, all my other wine classes were in the hotel school. I also forget to mention another fun class I took in the hotel school: Cooking!
 
Wine science rocks! And it's a surprising challenging course, from what I've heard.
 
"Study of Apartheid"....I was really looking forward to the learning about apartheid and the struggles of South Africa, but unfortunately, the prof only wanted to use the classroom as a stage to push his own agenda. We had to endure months of comments such as "the black mans penis is twice the size of a white mans", "everything wrong and evil in this world is brought upon by the white man", "no white man has ever scored better then me on any test", "nobody can speak in this class until you are as smart as I am" and "the white man is the devil"...these are literal comments, word for word. Instead of using this class to help bring different ethnicity's together, he brought more separation. There was actually a brawl in a bar one night over comments made in this class. Worst of all, the class was manditory for graduation so every student had to go though this guy.
 
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