Hardest classes you've taken

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Computational theory.
Having to do formal proofs in an exam sucks since it's difficult to focus in a hall with 50 people and a narrow time limit.

I got a barely passing grade but I was still something like top 3 of my class since most people failed it.
 
Since I already posted my hardest college classes, I'll post my hardest high school class. AP English: This wasn't because of the course content, though.

TL;DR - Our original, very mean, teacher had a brain aneurysm one night just before the first quarter ended. Due to the school district never finding a permanent replacement for her over the next three quarters, we had a revolving door of subs and we never learned all that we needed to know in order to have a fighting chance at passing the AP English exam at the end of the year. Very few of my classmates scored well enough to earn the corresponding college credit even though I believe we all passed each semester of this year-long class.

The worst part is that the one sub who taught us the longest should have been allowed to finish the year with us. She actually had a plan to get us back on track with what we needed to learn, and she quickly earned our respect. Unfortunately, she was replaced about 1-2 months before the AP exam with one last sub who did little in the way of picking up where she left off.
 
In my country we have a compulsory course called Ex-Phil which is a philosophy course dating back to the 19th century. Doesn't matter what you study, you have to pass this course. It is filled to the brim with useless shit and usually around 50% fail the class. It is hard because no one except philosophy students want to take this course and it is boring as fuck.
 
The hardest class I had was when I got placed into the sped class because the teacher hated me, I would fuck around and distract the other students by talking joking and passing around funny pictures drawn on top of lesson art. So I get placed with a bunch of kids who clearly belonged in the sped class. This was in grade 4 other classmates in said sped class cannot even spell the word "bike". They had to remove me from the class because I was being so nasty to them because of their stupidity it was so hard not to comment on the girl who couldn't spell bike or the kid who was chewing on his pencil, You know the dumbass type of people that write letters 2-3 times the size of normal folks. After about 2 weeks the teacher realized I clearly didn't belong in the class and sent me back to regular class. All in all it was fun and helped me be a better asshole in society. So technically it was the only class i failed.
 
This will sound very autistic, but Art.
It was a college class about art practices, and my main issue was being creative and learning what the teacher thought was and was not ‘good art’. Basically, I don’t have a creative bone in my body and the teacher thought that Dada was great.
My autistic ass does shit by recipes and plans, not so much ‘art’ as ‘craft’. Not good for impressing the failed painter teaching the class.
 
It should have been one of the easiest classes, but English 1 (English 2 was actually fun and easy). Oh God, where to start with this class.

1: Constant homework. I'm talking like 2 hours a night, and every night homework

2: Tongue tied teacher that only spoke in ebonics (yes this is literal, and yes very ironic)

3: Confusing as fuck instructions that caused almost everything to need to be redone at least twice

4: Group projects with dual enrolled students that didn't do anything productive

5: Focusing more on format than basic writing quality

6: Never posted any important information online
 
Disheveled Human dijo:
The hardest class I had was when I got placed into the sped class because the teacher hated me, I would fuck around and distract the other students by talking joking and passing around funny pictures drawn on top of lesson art. So I get placed with a bunch of kids who clearly belonged in the sped class. This was in grade 4 other classmates in said sped class cannot even spell the word "bike". They had to remove me from the class because I was being so nasty to them because of their stupidity it was so hard not to comment on the girl who couldn't spell bike or the kid who was chewing on his pencil, You know the dumbass type of people that write letters 2-3 times the size of normal folks. After about 2 weeks the teacher realized I clearly didn't belong in the class and sent me back to regular class. All in all it was fun and helped me be a better asshole in society. So technically it was the only class i failed.
Presiona para expandir...
Hell, I wanted to be in one of the Sped classes back in Middle School. I always sucked at math while being great at everything else and no one ever thought that dumping me in the highest level math classes was a terrible idea. By 8th grade I was so behind everyone else and had no idea what was going on, but knew that I desperatly needed to go back to the basics. A few of my friends were in special ed for learning disabilities and we would hang out in their class in the mornings before school started. Their teacher was a very nice man who seemed calm and patient and not an utter cunt like the lady I had. The school wouldn't have allowed it, they just thought struggling kids were "lazy" or "had a bad attitude". Just let me learn my baby math, ok.
 
CivilianOfTheFandomWars dijo:
This will sound very autistic, but Art.
It was a college class about art practices, and my main issue was being creative and learning what the teacher thought was and was not ‘good art’.
Presiona para expandir...

This sounds almost like the poetry class I took in college. Needing to take one humanities-related class for whatever reason (probably to make us "well rounded" or whatever BS), Intro to Poetry seemed like the most appealing option to satisfy the requirement. While the class itself was interesting, our professor expected us to know and parrot back his own interpretations of the poems for exams. It was as if he was oblivious to the fact that different people can have different yet equally-valid interpretations of the same poem. Once I figured out he wanted us to key in on his interpretations, I was able to finish the class with a decent grade. Still, it sucks when instructors expect students to accept their subjective opinions as authoritative -- something that can make a fun class quickly become frustrating.
 
Gifted classes/school in general. Not so much for the work, but the environment itself. I was only there for 4th Grade, but every other kid in those courses was up their own ass and insufferable to be around. As a result, I could never actually focus on having more challenging work laid out for me and lost interest in doing any of it. You couldn't even ask for help with anything without feeling like a dumb peasant and it completely soured any effort I wanted to put into getting good marks. Didnt help that none of the kids wanted to even hang out or even be your friend unless you were some child prodigy so you were 100% on your own there. Ended up going back to normal elementary school the next year because I'd rather have a normal school and normal friends than be around pieces of wet cardboard all day.
 
There was this one pharmacology course where the prof was this old coot who did nothing but push his old research papers from the 70s and didn’t believe in power point slides. He was no help to anyone at all and made you feel stupid for asking a question. Half the class always fails. The program will be a better place whenever it is he is fired (unlikely as he’s tenured), retires (hopefully soon), or croaks (at latest).
 
Womanhorse dijo:
Gifted classes/school in general. Not so much for the work, but the environment itself. I was only there for 4th Grade, but every other kid in those courses was up their own ass and insufferable to be around. As a result, I could never actually focus on having more challenging work laid out for me and lost interest in doing any of it.
Presiona para expandir...
I had a similar experience. My private K-8 school's gifted program consisted of students meeting anywhere from weekly to monthly for an hour in lieu of one of their normal class periods. The only problem was none of the work we did ever seemed advanced in any way and there would be the occasional project where students seemed more interest in outdoing each other. In 7th grade, our group was given homework even though the gifted stuff we did was never graded. That's where I lost interest, and I was eventually asked to leave the program for the rest of the year.

The next year, we were largely inactive for the first semester due to low interest/numbers in the gifted group. As a result of our low numbers, the junior high group decided to spend most of our meeting time during the second semester tutoring first graders needing assistance with academic subjects. Although we finally had the chance to do something with a meaningful sense of accomplishment, it would have been nice if we had the chance to do some high school-level assignments that year to see how gifted we really were.

queerape dijo:
There was this one pharmacology course where the prof was this old coot who did nothing but push his old research papers from the 70s and didn’t believe in power point slides.
Presiona para expandir...
While changing careers, my Intro. to Business class instructor - as decent as she was - showed us videos from the 80s featuring Asian auto companies and their corporate philosophies. She seemed averse to showing or teaching us anything that was more up to date and reflected the facts that technology and manufacturing changed drastically in the 25 years since her favorite videos were first released.
 
College algebra, which I had to pass to get my degree. I went to the lab for tutoring every day after class and met with the instructor a few times for one on one help. She was a good teacher but it was frustrating knowing I'd never need to use what I was learning ever again.

Also philosophy was difficult, like I understood the work but the teacher graded essays REALLY hard.
 
Transport phenomena was easily the most work-intensive, but hands down bar none:

Reactor Design and Model Predictive Control nearly killed me.
 
I'm pretty average all around, except for an excellent memory, great verbal skills, and a machine-like, inhuman work ethic when I care (obsess) about something. Even those are mostly the result of years of practice rather than natural talent, and a healthy dose of the 'tism.

I didn't need to take any remedial writing or reading classes in college, the ones I did I always did essays the night before it was due and got 95/100. Chalk that up to reading and writing for fun most of my life.

My mistake with math was memorizing the book and doing everything by rote. I tested into middle school algebra and just chinked my way through everything - 3 hours of practice problems and 3 hours of copying the book a night - up until trig/precalc, where I needed to actually think for a change. I got a C the first time, retook it and got an A. Trig identities was torture until it finally clicked.

I'm sure I could have passed calculus by retaking it with different teachers, but I was running short on time and money so I gave up. Same with discrete math. I didn't have the 12 hours a day it would take to brute force my way through the practice problems and rote-copy-memorize the book.

I need a lot of time to think to understand a subject. Taking accelerated summer courses in networking and relational database management systems was a mistake. Failed both, but the professor was excellent and gave me incompletes instead. Retook them later and got Bs.

Other than that I did fine in college until I burned out and became cynical at the scuminess of it.

I tried taking 200 level Chemistry and Anatomy/Physiology, but it was too much for even me to memorize so I dropped them. If I was 15 IQ points smarter I could've done it easily, but my dad had to marry a dummy.
 
Developmental biology was one of my hardest courses in terms of the sheer volume and complexity of information. Mesoderm organogenesis could be a course all on its own, and memorizing signaling pathways is a bitch. That said, it probably was still one of my favorite courses.

My current calculus class is also pretty difficult. The subject matter isn't too bad, but what makes it hard is the professor. She's a nice lady, but really strict on notation. You need to write down every step in order to get full credit, and heaven help if you forget a symbol somewhere; she'll go on for 5 minutes about how that's wrong and no one will be able to tell what you're trying to do.
 
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