Best Courses

[Tarrick]

Well, since people have been dumping on their most hated classes...

What were your favorites?


My personal favorites were Logic (Philosophy), Cognitive Psychology and my Photoshop and Motion Graphics classes.

[Guido]

This is a good place to stick my stories about my INTJ physics teacher in cegep. Prepare for a laugh people :D

The guy's classes were like clockwork. He knew exactly how much time he needed to go over things in class so that it fit perfectly into the semester. He had no problem telling students to stop asking questions and see him after class so that he could stay on schedule. This was great, cause there were a lot of dumbasses in the class.

Lab classes were a completely different story. It wouldn't be uncommon for people to have questions, and a lot of them were pretty dumb. He had no problem pointing out that they were dumb either. If he saw you were making simple mistakes (using the wrong significant figures or something) he would make some comment like "It's time you start doing things the way the rest of the universe does them." A lot of people would take big offense to this and not know how to handle it. I thought his sarcastic wit was hilarious and I would often laugh out loud at his comments in class. He was confused by this at first, but we soon realized we were on the same wavelength. So now, there were 2 assholes in the class to making fun of people.

But the way he corrected assignments and labs... this is where the guy would truly shine. One classmate had the bright idea to copy the labs from his sisters old lab book (as the experiments were the same.) The teacher comes up to him a few days later, and tells him to give him his sisters lab book, otherwise he'd stop grading his lab reports. Man was that teacher was sharp. How'd he know? One of the very simple things we had to do was copy the 'purpose' of the lab *(which was written on the hand outs) onto our lab report word for word. He would reword the purpose slightly every year to specifically stop people from copying others' lab reports. He figured it was this guy's sisters since my teacher looked up the names for the year that the 'purpose' matched.

But that's not all. He would go over the lab reports, not once, not twice, but at least 3 times and as many times as necessary. He would use different coloured pens each time he went over them too so that his comments were distinguishable. There is no way to describe it in words... so here's a picture (taken with my w810i!):

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He would correct everything he could think of. Including but not limited to: your grammar, your page numbers, the consistency in your style, your punctuation. If you ever forgot a period... ever... he would drill one onto the page so hard it would be visible for the next 10 pages to come. In my example above, I only have 3 colours on my page. This was the minimum that could happen. This lab report in particular I got 8/10 on. Class average was 6, some would get 7, and it was very rare to get 8 or more. If you ever screwed up a lab report... he'd really let you know. On another lab report, he wrote this in the book: (I'll try and make this as accurate as possible)

READ MY COMMENT
ON PAGE 49, 60 AND 79
ABOUT BEING TOTALLY WRONG.
YOU WERE ASKED TO SEE
ME. DID YOU? YOU * * * * * * * * (I did actually :o)
SHOULD, SO THAT YOU
DON'T KEEP WRITING
NONSENSE THAT
IS NOT ACCEPTABLE
AT THIS LEVEL OF
EDUCATION. THE
NEXT TIME, IF THERE IS
ONE, THAT YOU WRITE
SUCH NONSENSE I
WILL DEDUCT FIVE THREE
MARKS. SURELY
YOU CAN WRITE
SOMETHING THAT
ACTUALLY MAKES
SENSE!!

DO INDEPENDENT
WORK.

(next page)

DO INDEPENDENT CALCULATIONS!

He doesn't like it when people work together, as they tend to copy each others mistakes. If he saw unique mistakes in more than 1 lab, he'd write comments like that. If the copying was too blatant, he'd just hand you a 0. This was a lab where I had done in a rush and copied someone else's work/calculations :X (The method of doing it though, not the actual content... which is why I didn't get a 0) If it was right, it wouldn’t have been a problem :D Some people thought he marked liked this because he wanted to enforce a good work ethic. There may have been some truth to that I guess. I believe he did it because he loved to do it; making the world a smarter place, belittling one dumbass at a time.

Of course with all this abuse, I wasn't just going to put up with it :D I had my own way to retaliate. I'd often leave very simple mistakes in my labs that I could get away with, and then criticize him for missing them. For one assignment, I actually wrote an entire page at a slant because the page got screwed up because of the photocopier. I made sure the entire assignment was perfect, which it was :D The only comment on the whole thing was something like "You are not a malfunctioning xerox machine." I'd like to think he respected me too :D

In short, this man is my hero.

[polenka]

Hmmm....any of my psychology courses (though I didn't enjoy re-hashing facts). Methodology or stats courses that taught me to go forth and conduct my own research. In particular cognitive psychology, forensic psychology, abnormal psychology....I had some awesome philosophy and english courses as well (philosophy of law, symbolic logic, freedom of expression, morality and ethics)...though I ultimately found them unfulfilling because there's no way to test anything objectively.

Most especially anything I thought I could use in the future....

Currently: Criminological theory, Advanced stats, latent variable modeling, research methods, critical analysis of the criminal justice system...the only course I don't really currently like is my psychotherapy class, which is funny because we were studying Jungian psychoptherapy and had to take the Myers-Briggs test and thus, that's why I'm here. I think it's more that I dislike being babystepped through the history of a therapy and have no time for silly things like archetypes, word-association tests, dream analysis and crazy Freudian concepts that I can just figure out without formally learning. And then there's the whole breaking off into dyads and discussing how we feel about what we're studying. I'm sure I'll be much happier when we get to the more hard core therapies...but then again, I don't intend to ultimately conduct therapy but rather do research (though knowledge of the therapies is necessary should I ever attempt to develop and test a treatment, which ultimately is the goal of psychology).

[qwerty]

Best course I ever took and the one that turned my life around was Artificial Intelligence.
To start with:
The professor of the course is an actual professor who actually knows about the field (PHD thesis on it as well as 100's of papers although that has been dropping off over the past few year). But it wasn't just that.

Here was this dude who was extremely passionate about the subject and would constantly push us to work and it wasn't uncommon to organize further study classes for us to expand a topic in greater detail if enough people argued it in class. It wasn't just the Professor though, it was the class itself. Topics like Artificial intelligence get a number of interested enrollments at the start of each semester but like other classes I've taken (this semester on the in depth history of programming languages and the 4 main styles which is totally awesome) the attendance and dropout rate is huge (I think it was something like 80% because of the concepts) but the people who stuck it out were the sort of people who would push themselves and who would given the right amount of provocation would argue the principles until they were completely broken down into their basic form. As a result that single class on finishing has given the entire department a huge level of questioners - Out of 10 - 3 of my classmates who were completing their degree at the time have gone on to do make breakthroughs in different fields, 5 completed their degree and became research postgrads, with one entering a masters then being boosted into the PHD program. Myself, I have started to run a systems laboratory and will with any luck be continuing on at the end of the year to enter the masters program here.

[TeleportThis]

Guido--that guy sounds awesome.

I've liked most of my classes, but none have really stood out as incredibly awesome. If I had to choose one, I'd probably choose my Introductory EE class; which went over a wide range of topics (vectors, probability, trig) in the lecture, and had a C programming lab. The guy that taught it did research on engineering education, especially at the freshman level, so I think he used that class as an experiment. I wasn't a freshman because I transfered in. He had read some scholarship application I wrote and really took a liking to me after that, which in turn meant he liked to call on me a lot. That got kind of old after a while, but I must have impressed him because he pulled me aside the week before finals and told me I didn't need to take it.

[Jon]

Guido: Clearly, more teachers need to be like that so the students can get the point. Alternatively, students can get the point. I would accept that, too.


My favorite classes are Biology (a shocker, I know, considering my posting history. I used to be a Bio major before switching to art because of shifting career goals [i.e. simultaneously not knowing what to do with a bio degree and wanting to draw comics.]), Linguistics (Phonology and Syntax), and Figure Drawing. Drawing naked people is amazingly awesome.

[Rei]

Hum... can't believe I haven't posted here yet.

Physics (Which I sadly have no courses in anymore... I really needed this to pull my marks up... * :( )
Calc (" ")
World History (I'm still taking as a rebellious movement *;D)
Design Tech/Art (More of those courses I no longer take... because it is doesn't contribute to learning how to make a living *:-/)
Computer Science (which was really a programming course in which the teacher was absolutely useless and probably unqualified. *So basically the class self-taught everything. *Of course that made the course a gazillion times better because we were going WAY farther than the intention of the course, and the final project was like... a pure competition between us geeks.)

Psyc was great until I got the most boring/definately FJ prof in the world.


I'd love to take linguistics. *Hm... maybe I could possibly fit it into my schedule next semester.
I also wanted to take CA... but unfortunately my highschool didn't offer it... and I'm quite sure I'm not paying to have a class in CA in University.

[Firelie]

Class favorites:

- Any art class
- Creative writing
- Linguistics
- Swedish

Edit: Oh, and GEOLOGY! How could I forget that?

[wedekit]

Inferential Statistics, Abnormal Psychology, Biopsychology, Ancient and Modern Literature, and The Good Life/The Examined Life (Philosophy classes that I had to take because of the Hall I chose to live in).

[deicruxified]

1. physics... physics...
2. trigonometry
3. chemistry
4. advanced logic
5. philosophy (the best was philosophy of the unconscious, analytical philosophy)
6. psychology
7. literary criticisms
8. creative writing

[Rei]

ETo view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. CHEMISTRYYYY

[bikerscars]

botany

teacher was fantastic

teachers make or break a class

[OneBadMother]

There was this class called History of Science and Technology that was awesome. We got to build little catapults and fly paper airplanes and build radios, for a History credit. :D

I also like Geology and anything that doesn't require constant memorization-grind. I never do the reading.

Admittedly, my favorite learning generally is outside of class. I learn best on my own time.

[rwyatt365]

Best classes; (i.e. classes I had the most fun in)

- Inorganic Chemistry (it's so beautiful when molecules get together!)
- Differential Calculus ("diff'y-Q's"...mathmatical candy)
- Mechanical Engineering Design (cams, and gears, and pumps - oh my!)

[phoenix]

Relativistic Astrophysics

Any class where they have to teach you the mathematical technique you need for the class in that class (because the college doesn't even offer it otherwise) MUST be awesome. For the record the technique needed was tensor calculus.

[thegnat]

Best classes; (i.e. classes I had the most fun in)

- Inorganic Chemistry (it's so beautiful when molecules get together!)
- Differential Calculus ("diff'y-Q's"...mathmatical candy)
- Mechanical Engineering Design (cams, and gears, and pumps - oh my!)

Oh Inorganic Chem lab is so awesome! I LOVE that class. I'm always in the best mood after that class. I even synthesized molecules with decent yields as opposed to organic chem lab! And they are so pretty....I haven't taken the lecture yet but I am going to.
I'm doing research with the prof next spring. I'll be tight with the prof by the end of my senior year haha.

I like my Thermodynamics and Kinetics class - I get the nitty gritty of stuff we learned in Intro Chem. And the math is beautiful. It makes you feel so good when you solve a problem.

Ecology and Evolution - Interesting, fun class. The profs were entertaining. Easy as cake.

[mind_wander]

Wow, alot of science. Damn, I am really an oddball in here. I don't like chemistry[love chemistry ok I can take that one, but I don't like numbers], psyhic not really, biology[like learning about life], computer science[too some extent-I do used the computer].

Favorite?
Business courses in pretaining about making money. Ok, but Accounting is not my thing; thats why we got Accounts for right? Most favorite was International Management course, it was an awesome class; *enjoy it very much, since we got a foreign professor, who is very understanding of due date extentions.

Macroeconomics, Business Law I/II- had a great professor, who kinda gets me. Plus, nice enough to write a letter of recommendation for 2 of my selected transfer schools :) Never regret it, but alot of hardwork. Normally, I am not into law; her teachings were alittle different, which it keep me interested.

Asian History- loads of interesting stuff can be still be useful, til today. Sun Tzu Art of War in business approaches.

English class creative writing- I write things about Asian studies, something at the time found very interested; English and Asians studies does not go together for some people, for me it makes so much sense. Why write something so boring to the professor? Instead write something interesting so the professor don't fall asleep. The majority of the class write, about your life, problems in school, the general stuff. While, I write on something totally the opposite by expanding your mind on whats going outside in this competitive world.

Eastern Philosophy, but not particularly Western Philosophy[kinda bores me]. Does anyone know if there is a combination of both Eastern/Western Philosophy? Love to know about it because that will interest me, so much.

At the moment, can't think of anything else.

[snoogit]

I had my best grades in English, Computer Sciences, and Social Studies.


I had my best experiences in Philosophy.

[HarleyQuinn]

Last semester...

Writing About Literature: There were only about 8-9 of us in class, all bunched together at one table with a free for all discussion based on what we had to read. The teacher is my fav. teacher in the world (ISFJ) and is just amazingly brilliant because she never accepts an answer. She's always asking us to expand on it and try to push ourselves to completely unwrap it just a little bit further. Anyway, her and the students (in particular an older mother taking classes who works at the school) just made the class an absolute blast and we'd spend the whole class discussing and arguing matters and before we knew it, time would be up.

Our final was to self-run a discussion for an hour and fifteen minutes that eventually delved into current day fashion, education & teachers, pop culture (Music and Movies), the rise of technology, and the difference in males vs. females in terms of thinking. Just a really neat way to end the class by somehow tying all of that into what we were studying.

[AJ]

Calculus hands down. I am a mathematics major so go figure, taking Calculus 3 currently in freshman semester of college. After Calculus I like physics followed by history and psychology.
I HATE writing classes with a passion however. Can't wait for next semester when I'm done with English once and for all.

[cielo market]

My experiences vary more by teacher, less by subject.
I found that the worst professors are either:

Those who are ridiculously passionate about the subject, but can't teach. *
(for me, these are usually those who were professionals in their field, but decided to become teachers...)

-or-

Those who are ridiculously passionate about the subject, are great teachers, but expect you to share their insane level of passion about their subject and their subject ONLY.
(it's like they forget we have other classes. they don't want to accept the fact that some of us just take their classes because they're REQUIRED)

On the other hand, I've noticed that some of the best teachers are grad students. Generally they are more concerned with the students liking them and thus tend to be loose. Yes. I take advantage of that.

[patobrocks]

My experiences vary more by teacher, less by subject.

That is so true, a great professor makes the difference. But this semsester, my favorite class, Organizational Communication, the instructor gives us a lot of freedom of expression. I even asked him for feedback about my casual writing style on academic papers, and he encuraged me to pursue my own style as much as my other teachers allowed. But the big clincher for this subject is the text. I've never had such a well wrtitten textbook. Also, the subject is exciting. I've taken a bunch of psychology classes, but communication is like a cross between applied psychology and philosophy. I am taking another class with this instructor next semester.


On the other hand, I've noticed that some of the best teachers are grad students. Generally they are more concerned with the students liking them and thus tend to be loose. Yes. I take advantage of that.

My all time best instructor was a grad student that taught formal logic. He affected my style of thinking, the way i approach a problem. If I never learn another thing at school, at least I can reason.

Other great classes:
Mythology, with a professor that studied under Joseph Campbell
Shakespeare
History of Science, with a visiting Russian scientists
Micro-economics
Creative Writing with Vu Tran
HTML
Interpersonal Communication
Colonial Latin American History

and thinking about it, I feel fortunate to have had so many great experiences that have influenced my thinking, but I don't think that I always get the intended lesson, but I extrpolate my own meaning and add it to my ever changing mental repertoire. So, can i remeber which entity did what in mythology? No, not really, but I think that I incorpotrated some essenses that make me look at the world more critically, but more tolerant. Corny, huh?

I've noticed that a lot of the INTJs like math and science, and i like math to an extent, and enjoyed trig immensely, but it I don't 'think that it changed my life. Well, math did teach me how to approach a problem. I learned to identify the problem, and when that is done properly, the solution os quite often self-evident.

[Bossy Mom]

I loved Spanish, German, art history, drawing, algebra, modern dance, archery, and swimming. As much as I love English literature, I didn't take it in college. I majored in Spanish and the English class I did take was boring.

[vulcan]

hmm

i'm hating english now. i don't care what people say. i'm leaning towards changing my major to bio/physiology.

i loved biology in high school and am in love with evolution ;o

biology GE class in college ruled too.

[The Many]

Eastern Philosophy, but not particularly Western Philosophy[kinda bores me]. Does anyone know if there is a combination of both Eastern/Western Philosophy? Love to know about it because that will interest me, so much.

Schopenhauer did read a lot of Buddhism, and Nietzsche commented on it as well. I am sure there must be a lot more to it though, especially these days with all the comparative analysis or whatever they call it. Western philosophy does seem to concern itself more with INTP-ish analysis than actual life as the Eastern philosophy/ies do, so I get your point, but there is much to learn from there too if you just sit and focus on it.

As for classes, philosophy was great to take. Half my grades last year were more or less philosophy grades, since there was a lot of existentialist-ish analysis involved in the Social Science, International Relations, Theology - even English and Swedish classes.

[radioactivez0r]

I like my Philosophy classes for the discussions, even though I didn't do any of the reading, but classes that stuck with me as ones I actually enjoyed going to (and sometimes that's a pretty big feat):

Origins of English (reading Chaucer in the original pronunciation is amazing)
Differential Equations
Creative Writing, for teaching me about ballads
Studies in Poetry - same teacher as Origins class and we concentrated on Metaphysical Poets, a category I'd never even heard of. For the record, I aced all 3 of the classes I had with him.
I'm forgetting one, but I wanted to mention Anthropology for being super easy and making me feel like a genius.

[AgentofGaming]

Currently may favourite course is Computer Organization (Pre-Requesite to Computer Architecture)

I've taken programming, I've taken hardware (Digital Logic).
Computer Organization is the interface between the two, I find it amazing because it has those eureka moments when it all makes sense between the hardware and the software. Also it entails how our PC at home function.
I like Programming, Hardware and Architecture because it grows on logic which I grasp with ease. It's scary when sometimes it's easier for me to think in Computer language than English.

Favourites (ranked):
Computer Architecture (Hardware level logic)
Computer Engineering Technologies (Technician like repair w/ some digital logic)
Computer Science/Information Technology (Programming, except for the debugging part)
History (provided I didn't have to write analysis essays)
Physics @ Gr. 11 only
Chemistry @ Gr. 11 only (Yes Gr.11 only, after that they got ugly and more mathematical than conceptual and I hated them)
Business (The wide scoped kind, which is found at entry level, it's like common sense)
English @ Gr. 11 only (because the class size was like 12 and I felt like participating)
Math from Gr. 3-7, 11 (Math/Calc the other years I hated it)
Calculus Gr. 12, First Year (I was good at calculus until my prof got ill and the next two courses of calculus were all downhill with bad professors)

Hmm I liked my Gr.11 year the best probably because I was at the top of the class for everything.

[Tokey41]

My English teacher because he was straight to the point but spoke in such a laid back manner. He never wasted time, yet it seemed like the class went by so fast and the information just flowed so well into his lecture.

Many of my psych teachers were great as well.

[Zilal]

This is a good place to stick my stories about my INTJ physics teacher in cegep. Prepare for a laugh people :D

That was an awesome story.

My favorite classes in high school were 11th and 12th grade English, in which I had good teachers who challenged us and encouraged me personally.

I took an intro to business management class at a community college a few years ago that was also excellent. The teacher might have been INTJ. He was probably the only instance I've seen of the Socratic method actually being used to good effect... he'd ask the class questions about what should or shouldn't be done in particular situations, and I'd watch as everyone sweated trying to come up with the "right" answer or the answer he wanted. But there was never any right answer. I think most of the class never really got that, or got that they might have to develop their own opinions rather than trying to guess what the teacher wanted.

I liked plant biology, the professor was extremely nice and funny and generally made class fun to go to. I didn't really enjoy last semester's historical geology class but it was very valuable and memorable, and somewhat reminiscent of Guido's experience... a page from a corrected paper below:

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(This paper also came with a full page of single-spaced text on what was wrong with the paper. The best thing about the class was that the papers could all be rewritten and our grade would be an average of the two.)

I am enjoying mineralogy very much this semester. Interesting material (to me), and the professor is nice and has tons of stories from decades of being a geologist.

[Isolation]

Existentialism
Old World Archeology

[mkay]

I was a journalism major. Liked those classes, of course. Also really liked economics, urban development, some lit classes, German and Japanese.

[jadefalcon]

guido- incredible. I would probably do similar things like you did. The Xerox comment would blow me away. Hmm... my favorites

High School
___________
1) British Literature II. My teacher was witty- "Now is the song saying "chasing waterfalls" or "jason waterfalls?" He is my hero! Always had John Coltrane playing during class.

2) Intro to Engineering. Fun hands on projects. Was encouraged to compete.

3) Gym (awesome teacher), fun games, kickball, football, floor hockey, dodgeball.

3) Woodworking- more hands on, I like working with wood. It is beautiful.

4) Chemistry- Fun! the equations were fun, playing with stuff was fun, all of it was fun (except the empirical formula and complex hydrolysis).

5) Government- amusing teacher. learned a lot, very thought provoking.
6) Precalculus- fun learning conics and the like, learned a lot busting my ass from a 54 to 83.
7) Physics- guido, like your case he was a hillarious ass.


College
______
1) Electical Circuits 101- although I did poor in this class, I loved the teacher. Kirchoff is Schmirnoff, and "Hertz are hertz no matter where they hurt".
2) Autocad and Solidworks- the classes were drone, but I enjoyed teaching myself.
3) Public Speaking- just fun to talk about stuff I like in my speeches!
4) English and Rhetoric 15- teacher is a tough cookie. LOVED her stories about woodstock. Challenged me to write better.
5) Physics- I liked the hands on experiments and easy approach, with a side dish of technical extras and explanations.

and thats only after 1 year of college- I got 3 or 4 to go.

[demvesalius]

In college:

Intro to Philosophy - The Socratic method can be rather influential to an 18 year old, along with Sufi stories, and anyone ever read "Flatland" by Abbott?

Intro to Exercise Biology - My life passion, so I took to it easily.

Economical Anthropology - I got my ass kicked in that class and barely passed with a C-, but it was interesting as hell.

All my English classes - I'm not an English major, but I love to write.

Sexual Anthropology - Oh yeah!...