What was the hardest college course that you took?

[SliceSabre]

Chemistry. The only college course I've ever almost failed. Thankfully I changed majors and dropped out before it counted against me.

Literally had no fucking idea what I was doing in the class and the professor was a real hardass and wasn't all that helpful. Later learned most people failed that course the first time they took it. The math required in that class honestly left me dumbfounded. I just had absolutely 0 comprehension about almost everything except the lab work which I did barely ok in but that was because it was group work and my ass was carried hard.

 

[Evo Shandor]

Advanced Corporate Taxation was a slog. Nothing like cracking open a printed copy of the Income Tax Act and parsing through it.

Doing a quick course on Biblical Hebrew without first knowing the Hebraic alphabet was probably a mistake. I had to learn that shit very quickly so I could keep up with the class.

 

[Grenchel]

Programming in C. I was lost by the third week and I was too stubborn to drop it. I almost failed lol

 

[Vanillalite]

My capstone group coding project was a bit of a mess cause the guy from the company we got paired with got promoted. So then he was like welp no time to deal with these peeps who are doing a capstone project for us.

So we never could get concrete answers on wtf they actually wanted for things. Plus dude just straight missed scheduled meetings with us. Looking back it was kinda a disaster.

 

[MontlyCure]

Intro to jazz

 

[Dali]

Probably a physics class. When we got into differential equations in one of the higher calculus classes I remember that sucking too.

 

[sadmachine]

parasitology. having to memorise the life cycle of hundreds of parasites, sometimes with just tiny variations between them was one of the worst things I ever had to do

 

[Galkinator]

I'm only halfway into my 2nd semester, but so far Logic & Set theory kicked my ass, and Calculus 1 was difficult as well.
Thankfully I passed both on my first test, but now I have Discrete Math (mainly dealing with combinatorics) which is awful as hell, and I feel like I'm gonna fail big time.
Can't wait to be done with all these pure math courses next year and focus more on programming and the actual computer science stuff.

 

[Alvaro]

University Physics. That hard earned C felt like an A.

 

[Mozendo]

Class that I never passed: Easily Psychology, great stuff enjoyed my time in the class, not so much the quizzes.
Classes that I passed: Business math, it wasn't hard as it was tedious. Had to complete over 500 quizes in 2 months and even then I got a D. Math is not a strong suit for me.

 

[Patrick Bateman]

Biochemistry in med school.
Fuck that useless pile of mess.

 

[denpanosekai]

What was your degree in?

And yeah, my university years were simultaneously some of the most fulfilling and stressful years of my life.

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Automation engineering! Lots of Linux, embedded systems and math!!

 

[Wordballoons]

Rule against perpetuities?

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Yes. I did a JD/Master en Droit and it is still one of the most mind numbing concepts I've ever encountered. I remember drawing it out graphically over and over and crying while chain smoking. Thank god for the curve.

 

[Modest Mauser]

Either Calculus II or Discrete Mathematics

 

[RedSonja]

Haha, this is like Vietnam for me going through all these posts. Christ, I don't even know where to start myself. I'll just have to keep my 1000 yard stare on the rest of the day.

 

[thesoapster]

(Computer Science) Principles of Software Engineering

We had one big group project, and it had to be done using waterfall methodology. I did virtually all the writing. My team swore they could do various parts of the programming. One guy said he knew the math. Another said he had some experience in the graphics department. The final person said he could do the UI. I wrote the proposal, documentation, other supporting documents, and wrote the logging component of the app - the only thing that compiled and actually showed up at all in the final deliverable.

The project was to create a 3D robotic arm simulator. The model was the PUMA 560, and we had to display the arm in 3D space, with each segment being to scale. The idea was you needed to be able to specify a point in space for the arm to move to, and maybe even to grab an object. The math portion involved forward/reverse kinematics, as each segment had its own limitations.

Math guy did nothing.
Graphics guy got a sphere to show up two weeks before the project was due.
UI guy did nothing.

I made a basic UI with a section that displayed the data from a dummy log file. Today I'd know how to easily write the logging API so that the math guy could write some of the data points to file, but of course our project was nowhere near that level of completion. Again, I did virtually all the writing (waterfall shit). I got high marks on the other small assignments. I wound up with a B.

Fuck that class (and that teacher, who continued to give me completely incapable team members ON PURPOSE the rest of my time in the program).

 

[CrunchyFrog]

Organic Chem. Like NONE of it made any kind of intuitive sense, or at least not in the way it was taught by my profs. Just brute force memorization. I lived in a small room in the library for 3 straight days for that final. Hardest B+ I ever earned. Anatomy and Physiology was another close 2nd, again a lot more just brute force memory (particularly for the cadaver lab, ID'ing structures was just mind-numbing in some cases). After that Biochem, though mostly because my prof for that one was just a raging jerk who had it out for her students.

 

[Ogre]

Any class that didn't hold my interest was also the hardest class. Getting diagnosed and treated for ADD way after undergrad was both a "Holy shit" moment and a "No shit" moment.

In terms of material - Mechanical Ventilation would have been easier had I taken Physics ahead of time. I'm fortunate to enjoy stuff like Chem/O-chem.

Oh, any class that was heavy on group work was instantly also the hardest class. Fuck that shit.

 

[Reckheim]

Calculus 2 or 3 (I cant remember), only passed cause our proof was super lenient.

 

[machine]

Yes. I did a JD/Master en Droit and it is still one of the most mind numbing concepts I've ever encountered. I remember drawing it out graphically over and over and crying while chain smoking. Thank god for the curve.

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LOL, that's sort of how I felt about evidence. Trying to figure out hearsay with a terrible prof was so painful I said I'd never do trial law.

 

[mrmickfran]

Physics

 

[Quad Lasers]

Calculus I and an introductory Java class.

Monster dogshit at both, but I scrapped through.

 

[Virtua Saturn]

Operating Systems. We built an OS from scratch and it was based on one built originally built at Purdue so there was little reference. It was definitely the make it or break it class for Computer Science. I'd say 30 percent of people had to drop.

 

[Henry Jones Jr]

Organic Chem was up there. I didn't do great, but I actually loved reading NMRs.

Creative Nonfiction Writing. The workload assigned by the teacher was INSANE. By then end of the term there were only 5 students left in the class (started with around 20).

 

[Aurongel]

Computer Organization - CS 202: The professor was kinda lousy when it came to exams and insisted that we WRITE OUT entire programs. This of course put me under a great amount of unnecessary stress due to my slow handwriting. I also struggled more than most on flip flop and logic problems, but that's kind of on me.

Artificial Intelligence - CS 520: The professor was very unhelpful (online class) and I encountered many, MANY issues installing the Python libraries required for his class on my Mac. He was also an incredibly tough grader who would outright dock points based on written responses to questions pondering the ethics of AI. I remember him considering my speculation on police/governments potentially abusing facial recognition systems as "conspiratorial and absurd". I've had many intelligent professors but very few of them were genuinely forward thinking and most of their positions on technology in society seem rooted in the 1980/90's. Another great example of knowledge != wisdom.

 

[Cronogear]

Both Calculus 2 and 3.

The only classes I've ever failed and had to retake. And I failed Calc 2 twice.

Physics for Scientists was also extremely tough. I passed, but I felt like it took up 90% of my time that semester.

 

[Delicious Waffles]

None of them. Most of them required a good amount of work that needed to be completed but nothing that I would consider hard. More time consuming than anything else.

 

[Never the Lesser]

Finance by David Chappelle.

No, not that one. This dude's class was no laughing matter.

The school made him a sign on his office door that read, "David 'The Sledgehammer' Chappelle". His job was to weed out any students who weren't cut out for the business school. And it worked -- a ridiculous amount of students who signed up for the class dropped it by the final exam.

He also had an impeccable work ethic and tolerated *none* of your bullshit. One time, he asked my friend back then if he did his homework. Friend said no, and got a nice, firm shove to the shoulder. Another time, I knew a guy who had his buddy sign his name on the attendance sheet. Chappelle *made time* to visit his dorm personally and had a nice conversation with him.

 

[BassForever]

Calc 2, made me switch from being a math major lol

 

[GungHo]

I hit a wall with Partial Differential Equations and it ended up making me switch majors because I realized I was swimming in the wrong pool. My worst grades, though, were in an Art Appreciation elective, mostly because the professor was a sadist and gave out tests that had nothing to do with what was covered or in the material and, from what I was able to investigate, different tests of different difficulty to different people.

 

[GYODX]

It was this course called "Reasoning about action and change" in my Master's year.

A fuck ton of formal logic and temporal logic. I got by pretty well at the start with things like this

But by the end I had no idea what was going on. The proofs and reasoning were the hardest, they looked like this (it's called Hoare's logic)

Yea I still don't really know much of what was going on.

Ultimately it's the only module/course I've ever failed straight up. When I failed it, instead of retaking it I just said fuck it and took the L as I was allowed to graduate with merit as long as I only had one failure within a certain threshold and had good grades elsewhere. Was glad to be done with it, but was kinda bummed that I disappointed my teacher, that dude liked me and thought highly of me as the year before he supervised me over my Bachelor's dissertation which he absolutely loved.

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I took a formal methods course (that I absolutely hated) and didn't see anything half as complex as that. Fuck. that.

I think you need to be a certain kind of person to truly enjoy formal methods lol.

Biochemistry was basically pure memorization


I got a D in that class. Then a B the second time :(

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I have a lot of respect for Biology majors. Organic Chemistry, Molecular Biology, Biochemistry, and Biophysics all look like very challenging (and fun!) classes to take.

 

[Isilia]

Cisco programming was a pain in the ass

 

[smisk]

Differential Equations. Took it twice and even the second time only got a C.

 

[Cajun]

Initially I was a Chem major, and I probably would have said Physical Chemistry, but I never even took the class. Just looking into the course material before taking the course was enough to finally make up my mind that I did not want chem to be my major.

Now I'm a Computer Science major, and I find it funny how subjective difficulty in learning can be. Nearly constant replies about Calculus and Discrete Mathematics in this thread, and walking around campus, you'll find some young student struggling with Calc I every 50 feet or so. Luckily I find Calculus to be one of the easiest forms of mathematics out there. For the first two semesters of Calculus, if you really lock in a few core concepts (understanding limits, how to find a derivative/anti-derivative, etc.), you can cruise through the course material. Now for a new Calculus student that's really only familiar with algebra, these concepts are entirely new, so I understand the initial understanding can be difficult.

I took Discrete II this past semester, and most of my peers in class discussion groups (GroupMe, Discord, etc.) were complaining about our professor and their teaching methods, the lack of reinforcement of basic ideas used, and other things nearly constantly. But I found a large portion of the course was just a retread of Discrete I, so if you passed the first semester, shouldn't you easily pass the second?

Meanwhile, I'm pretty sure my Composition I and II professor (same person for both) wanted to tell me several times that I'm just a shit writer, but I did the work, so I passed in the end. The prof was actually great, and while the workload was pretty heavy (I wrote eight papers over two semesters on top of tons of other assignments), the deadlines were set up in a way to force you to do a bit of work every day, and guided you to getting everything done.

As for my answer: I also took Computer Architecture this past semester, and wow was that terrible. Assembly code is a nightmare if you ask me. First time one of my programming assignments was not fully functional. We had to create two algorithms that did the same thing, one iterative and one recursive. No matter what I did, I could not get the recursive function to work.

 

[Baccus]

Heat transfer phenomenons. It's a more abstract form of thermodynamics. Really interesting, but extremely hard from a math and comprehension standpoint.

Taking that class actually changed my life, as I realized there that some things were better left to /others/, and I switched majors from chemical to industrial engineer. Which was the first step on the rest of my life.

I have nothing but respect and admiration to scientists and men of math. For them we got the keys to this world.

But that ain't it for me.

 

[Rolodzeo]

Probably Electronic Technology, a combination of electronics, electric engineering and physics. But I passed it on my first try while I failed other easier subjects, so I don't know.

Operating Systems was a murder house at my college too. On the final exam we had to design and program (on paper) a synchronous multithreaded distributed computing system, plus more questions, in under 2 (maybe it was 3, I don't remember) hours. It was brutal, but the actual classes were quite easy overall.

 

[aMurderOfCrows]

I can't remember the exact designation of it anymore, but Electric Circuits. Took it twice, both times was extremely confident I knew exactly what I was doing in all the complex circuit calculations. Both times bombed the midterm I thought I did great on and had to drop the class. After the second time I switched majors from Computer Engineering into Computer Science to just stick with programming.

 

[Nooblet]

I took a formal methods course (that I absolutely hated) and didn't see anything half as complex as that. Fuck. that.

I think you need to be a certain kind of person to truly enjoy formal methods lol.


I have a lot of respect for Biology majors. Organic Chemistry, Molecular Biology, Biochemistry, and Biophysics all look like very challenging (and fun!) classes to take.

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Knowledge of Formal methods was actually a prerequisite to do this module, so I did do a lower level Formal methods module in the previous semester. Infact I sort of enjoyed it so I thought it'd be similar and I'd like this as well...I was wrong.

 

[petitmelon]

Non-stem course, my world lit professor was seriously such a nitpicking hardass about everything. But the worst was having a full essay due for the final that he gave notice for the class before. It was only 200 words less than the research essay we worked on for an entire month and he wanted one by the same parameters done in 4 days. Fuck that guy.

 

[tacocat]

What sucks is HLA isn't even pure Assembly. Its like some weird combination of C and Assembly because you work with registers. I would've preferred pure assembly as there is more documentation out there for it. Operating systems I barely skated by with a C. I'm not even at Calc 2, but I'm already think about going the Business with Analytics concentration route and getting this shit over with. Props to you man.

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Thanks - definitely glad its all over and done now. Working is way better - you get paid! (pretty well too).

 

[Wordballoons]

LOL, that's sort of how I felt about evidence. Trying to figure out hearsay with a terrible prof was so painful I said I'd never do trial law.

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I found the evidence and criminal procedure classes in the US to be much more interesting than their equivalents here in France, to be honest. Public defender system, while broken and underfunded, is surprisingly leftist given it's coming out of the states.

But I took evidence from a southern defense attorney who was a beast. Some others took it with someone who was apparently a complete airhead, though. In any case, I don't know if you have taken the bar yet but taking evidence during school (it wasn't mandatory where I went) is going to be a huge boon for you going forward, even if the class made your eyes bleed.

 

[AndyD]

There was this advanced math modeling class that counted both towards math major and computer science. I thought, interesting for CS, let's try it. It turned out to be a weed-out class for advanced math majors and out of 22 of us 19 failed the midterms, a bunch of people dropped it (including me), and only one person ultimately passed the class. 3 more passed it on the second try the following year. It was an old, curmogeony professor, but brilliant and he knew exactly what he was doing.

 

[Sqrt]

Topology III. I failed all the tests until the final. The final exam were 5 questions. The professor left the classroom and said he expected the answers to be at his offices by the next morning. We could do whatever we wanted after that: get our notes, talk between us, go to the library or go to the internet, ask anyone for the answers. It didn't matter, none had the answers. We either understood the material and could proof the statements in the test or we could not. I gave up after 12 hours and managed to answer 3 of the questions. I got a 6.

 

[Firebricks]

Probably Emags II.

 

[Maxim726x]

Biochem.

Actually enjoyed Orgo... I was a TA.

 

[Pau]

men of math

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Seriously?

 

[Tranquility]

Multivariate calculus.

 

[Window]

EM propagation and antenna theory but also one of my most rewarding classes. After that, Materials Science which I still don't get.

 

[Sqrt]

Seriously?

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Emmy Noether, :bows: ,

 

[the-pi-guy]

Compilers. Also I took some upper level math courses and while I passed, I have no idea what all that theoretical stuff was. I also learned that the smaller the math book, the harder the class is.

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This is pretty true.
I swear it goes like:
1300 pages for 100/200 level classes.
800 pages for 300 level classes.
100-300 pages for 400+ level classes.