Your Top 3 Hardest Curriculum
The Blind Eternities forum
Posted on Jan. 9, 2016, 6:01 a.m. by kengiczar
What classes do you or did you have the hardest time understanding? (This one should vary greatly from person to person.)
So far these are my top 3:
- Humanities
- Modern Standard Arabic
- Database Design
What three classes gave you the largest workload?
So far these are the Top 3:
- Modern Standard Arabic
- Advanced Routing and Switching
- Advanced Composition (I really didn't feel like school that month.)
My hardest courses were
Neurobiology of Perception. Just highly technical stuff regarding the biological substrates of vision and how it actually "works". I actually dropped this course because I wasn't so interested in vision anyway, but I remember it being tough whilst it was mandatory.
Computational neuroscience. Mapping biological functions of the brain onto computer systems using neural networking interfaces. It doesn't work properly. The subject is pretty ridiculous, and it's a weird mismatch of coding and high level neurobiology.
I can't think of a third.
January 9, 2016 7:59 a.m.
I tried teaching myself some k-theory, if that counts. Never again.
January 9, 2016 10:36 a.m.
So I know this is going to sound weird since this is a bit of a cop out, but the hardest thing I've had to wrap my head around wasn't related to academics. I'm a high ranking player in League of Legends, falling somewhere in the top 2% of players or so.
The single hardest process for me to grasp that I've encountered so far is how incredibly good players (we're talking fraction of a percent of the very top) manage spacing in lane, weight opportunity cost, maintain awareness of the game state as a whole, deny creeps, manage resources, and last hit creeps simultaneously.
None of those things are insanely hard on their own, but the ability of the very best players to constantly multitask like that astounds me.
I get that after a certain point of repeating actions, people develop expertise in an area. For example, it's usually said that attaining the rank of grandmaster in chess requires roughly 10,000 hours of play. That's 20 hours a week for 10 years. At that stage, much of what you do becomes almost automated. You expend less effort on basic processes which frees your mind to focus on other things. The entire way you approach problem-solving within that area changes too. There are some insane differences between experts and newbs in everything.
I'm on 4,000 hours in League of Legends atm and I'm only beginning to grasp the total awareness that the very best players have. My goal for the next year is to break from the top 2% to the top 1%. Lets see how that goes...
January 9, 2016 11:40 a.m.
julianjmoss says... #6
I'd say me economics courses in general have been the most challenging (and the most rewarding). The program at my school is very tough and the pass rate for the classes I've taken have been around 40%. I'm taking game theory next semester and I expect it to be incredibly challenging.
January 9, 2016 12:11 p.m.
ducttapedeckbox says... #7
This past semester I took Fluid Mechanics, which was by far my most challenging course. The challenge was ultimately dealing with the professor, who I could rant about for hours. I learned a lot in the class, but unfortunately most of that came from studying and not from the class itself.
Computer Aided Design came with the largest workload. We had a homework set every week, which was a 10-20 page document of parts to build and submit. The homework took 15-20 hours per week, depending on how well you took notes in class - the professor would plow through the homework (or most of it) during our 3-hour class. The final exam was also 3 hours, where he gave us an assignment that resembled the homework, except with many of the parts built so that we just needed to assemble them and perform analyses. That was fun.
I am taking Jet & Rocket Propulsion this coming semester. I've heard that the class is among the hardest that I'll ever take, but also among the most rewarding. The professor is supposedly an incredible lecturer and very dedicated to teaching this course. He's currently leading an effort to build a permanent artificial heart in the next 10 years. Not quite in my area of interest, but still pretty damn cool. I'm looking forward to the class.
January 9, 2016 12:32 p.m.
canterlotguardian says... #8
Accounting. All three of them. Because fuck math.
January 9, 2016 1:41 p.m.
canterlotguardian I'm 15 and I can't wait to take accounting - now that you mention they involve math instead of just MONEY MONEY MONEY I'm a bit more hesitant :)
The only one I've found incredibly difficult is AP Music Theory. Its different from other classes in that the majority of the latter half of the course is learning how to make educated guesses at notes. It's seriously hard.
January 9, 2016 3:35 p.m.
Here's how it works: there's math, and then there's math for business/finance/etc. that's sort of like math's deformed cousin (basically, there's nothing to be excited about). Study modern algebra and be a cool kid.
January 9, 2016 3:55 p.m.
canterlotguardian says... #11
bigguy99 I'm a Business Management major. so all my Accounting stuff is the business/finance math. D:<
January 9, 2016 4:25 p.m.
I don't love algebra, but my goal is start my own company so I'll probably have to do the buisness/finance math anyways. MATH HATE AHOY!
lemmingllama says... #2
My hardest courses also are my ones with the most work.
Programming Paradigms. Our prof was retiring after our class and didn't give a shit, so he gave us tons of work with no support. Also had to learn four new languages over the course of the semester.
Object Oriented Software Engineering. The entire course was basically making a giant project that took about 20 hours a week every week to complete. We got a great mark, but that's because we completed a little over half of all the requirements set by the client.
Data Management for Business Intelligence. Our prof didn't actually teach what was on the exams and assignments. It took until the first assignment for me to even realize we were supposed to be doing data warehousing and machine learning, then I had to self teach myself the course via Google.
January 9, 2016 7:52 a.m.