Classes that you like

[Avoraciopoctules]

No, not a D&D thread. I am enjoying school quite a bit. I recently transferred to a new college after getting my AS degree, and one of my first quarter classes (during orientation day, one of the retiring professors was asked about what the transition from semesters would be like. They responded with "I can say nothing in defense of the quarter system") is an English course focused on writing short stories. One of our first assignments was to get the bad writing out of our systems by producing the worst piece of purple prose we could manage. Here is the story I turned in:

John awoke, only to realize that his place of repose, unbeknownst to him up until this very moment, was, in fact, a grave. This thought filled his cranium with lugubrious sensations of horror and dismay. He scrabbled up the earthen walls of his loamy trap, tearing great clods and chunks of root out as he did so. As his head peered out over the surface, he beheld a sight that chilled his soul. There were more graves!

Casting his eyes from side to side, the glowing red orbs taking in all he could readily behold, John nodded to himself. “I am in a graveyard. Truly, this terrifying turn of events is both troublesome and… unanticipated.” Cackling skeletons capered up and down the paths between crypts, strange specters wisped woefully from headstone to ancient, weathered headstone, and the many architectural accoutrements of a place of death all made this fact very clear to him.

Disturbed now that he had a firmer grasp of the situation, John stepped with care from the edge of the hole in the brown soil he had just crawled from, He loosened his cravat and glanced at the headstone that decorated his sleeping place. “Hmm. It seems that my name is indeed John, but why are my memories so hazy? Strange indeed.” John sketched a brief bow of gratitude at the moon while he ordered his thoughts, for he surely would have lost himself if it were not for the delightfully convenient silver luminescence afforded him by the pale orb.

It was then that John heard the bells, and he had never perceived anything more loathsome in his conscious memory. Their tolls rang tintinnabulations of terror through his soul, and he could do nothing but run, his fear not even allowing him to decide where safety was most likely to be found. He approached a tall building, but then something strange and translucent (a ghost?) plowed into and… through him. The sensation was quite dizzying, and he stumbled about a bit before righting himself by leaning on a statue of a flaming demon.

Unfortunately, no sooner did John regain a measure of his poise than the statue swatted him away. It grimaced at him in disdain and made an eldritch gesture, which seemed transform the ornamental gargoyle into a rather realistic looking living fiend wrapped in pale green fire. It spoke to him then, in a hissing voice filled with more malevolence than would seem proper coming from any other sort of being. “There is only one fitting punishment for your insolence, interloper. I will burn you with my flame, for Zippo is my middle name! Wait, why are you… blast it, he’s too far away now”.

As indeed John was, for the moment the demon began to sneer, he knew that the wisest course of action was immediate egress from the accidental encounter. He pounced on the wall of the nearby building and began to climb up it like a spider. It went very high up, but that is what John needed at this point, so he was grateful. But well over halfway to the top, those terrifying tintinnabulations rang out once again, and the most dreadful revelation of all struck John. This was the bell tower, and he was trapped between the two scariest things in the cemetery! But he was too far up to stop now, so John clambered through a window. He saw a robed figure yanking at a bell’s rope, and immediately shouted for the person to cease at once. And then the figure turned to him and gazed deeply into his radiant orbs.

“Whyever should I stop, John?” “I can’t take it, these bells are loathsome! Their sound vexes my heart and soul! Stop them!” “But John, these bells, you and they are at least at some level one and the same. It is their monody that gifted you with this second life. And, admittedly, your unholy hunger for the flesh of mortals, but I think much of the point remains.” Then John remembered everything. He was a ghoul, a hungry revenant awoken to devour intruders who dared to desecrate the cemetery. But one of them had struck him in the head, and done it so very hard that he had forgotten he was dead. It was why he could climb so well, for his fingers and toes ended in sharp claws. And this was his best friend, the boss of the cemetery, who was named King. “Oh. You’re right, King. Sorry, hit my head on something.” “Perfectly understandable, friend John.”

Is this so bad it is good, or so bad it is terrible? I think the story is successful either way. Tintinnabulations of terror. Anyone else have a recent class that they particularly enjoy?

[CatharzGodfoot]

Misusing "lugubrious" in the second sentence? Wow. It's so bad it's Lovecraftian.

[Avoraciopoctules]

Did you like the attempted troll of vampire enthusiasts with the big, Repercussions of Evil-style reveal?

[cthulhu]

You know what would have made it better?

Having ninjas and/or pirates busting in and stabbinating the demon. Because, shit just got real.

[RobbyPants]

Anyone else have a recent class that they particularly enjoy?

It's not a recent class, but I was really glad I took Psych 101 my freshman year. It was one of my favorite classes. Criminal Justice was also decent, but mostly because I liked the professor.

Did you like the attempted troll of vampire enthusiasts with the big, Repercussions of Evil-style reveal?

You mean that he's a ghoul and not a vampire?

[CatharzGodfoot]

Did you like the attempted troll of vampire enthusiasts with the big, Repercussions of Evil-style reveal?

Yeah, but I was really impressed most by how Lovecraftianly it reads. Superficially it's a lot like The Outsider with less existential horror, but by going completely overboard you've managed to make prose that sounds surprisingly authentic.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

My Survey of Psych was awesome. We rarely talked about Psychology, the entire class was critical thinking, learning how to do proper research, and game theory. Good stuff.

I liked both the econ classes I took, although I thought the teacher was unpleasant. Knowledgable and very passionate about teaching, but kind of mean.

[Maj]

I was one of those sick people that loved school, so I have lots of classes that I like, but my favorites were Evil (philosophy/psychology class on how/why people do bad things), Critical Thinking (basic philosophy meets piles of informal logic), and one on comparative religion that I don't remember the name of - but the subject was the big three, and the prof was way awesome.

[Maxus]

I had a British Lit class that was an absolute blast. It sounds weird to say it, but the instructor knew how to make a good test.

Other good classes...Geology 101 and 102 played a part in my decision to go into Geology as a major.

I've also had the pleasure of having a class from one Dr. Sebastian. The man's the closest thing I've seen to a saint, ever. He is a good man. Teaches because he likes teaching, despite being in semi-retirement. He has a lot of stories...Like...

When Mt. St. Helens erupted, geologists went by the truckload to go get ash and samples. He said he had about four garbage bags full leftover the year after the eruption. He still has some today. I know, because we got to play with it.

So this nine-year-old boy who lived next door needed something for Show-and-Tell, so Dr. Sebastian gave him a bag full of ash from the eruption, and made up little baggies for him to pass out in the class, and told him some interesting things about ash--like how fine it is, what it's made of, how far it's travelled, being ash from Mt. St. Helen's. Gave the kid a thing of wax paper to spread the volcanic ash out on.

So, Mr. 9-years-old comes into class with his box of stuff. He spreads out the wax paper when it's his turn, opens up his display bag, and pours the ash in a line across the wax paper and then proudly says, "These are my Aunt Helen's ashes!"

The fallout was the teacher immediately freaked and panicked and ran to the principal and babbled it out to him, who freaked and panicked and called the parents, who were understandably perplexed because they didn't have an Aunt Helen in the family. Eventually they arrived at the truth--after all day--and then the parents asked Dr. Sebastian not to help little Jimmy with his schoolwork without them knowing beforehand.

But, seriously, take an Earth History class/lab if you can. You're basically assured to get to play with fossils. Lots of trilobites.

[CatharzGodfoot]

Classes I enjoyed the most were probably Science and Humanities ("Science Studies") taught by Robin Brown, Structure of Computer Programming (SICP) taught by Maria Gini, Sex, Evolution, and Behavior (social biology/evolutionary psychology) taught by some guy I can't find on the Anthropology page, and Introduction to Traditional Chinese Medicine, taught by Christopher Hafner.

Science and Humanities was taught by an incisive, intelligent, and kindly old hippie (Robin). We spent a lot of time reading and talking about Bruno Latour and Thomas Kuhn, as well as going off on crazy tangents. People in the class were from all over, and it seemed like the sociology weenies got less out of it than anyone else.

Structure of Computer Programming was my first structured introduction to computer programming. The assignments felt more like logic puzzles than anything else, and it was all so new and shiny.

Sex, Evolution, and Behavior was taught by a slightly bitter sounding recent divorcé who really rubbed me the wrong way for the first week or so of class. He seemed like an asshole and just listening to him set me on edge. Then I realize that he was actually pretty fucking smart, and managed to cover the material (and more) in depth without falling into the normal sexist traps of sociobiology and evolutionary psychology. We covered nonhuman animals and a lot of genetics as well, which was surprising for an anthropology class.

Introduction to Traditional Chinese Medicine was taught by a Romani (relevant because he learned TRM from his grandmother) who went to Communist China to learn from a Classical Chinese doctor. He was an incredibly skilled acupuncturist, and covered the material from a refreshingly pragmatic perspective.

These were all basically introductory classes, although they range from the 1k to the 5k level. These were all at the University of Minnesota.

[K]

Human Sexuality was probably the best class I ever took. It was the only time I felt like school really opened my eyes and changed me as person since it made me realize how pointlessly judgmental I was at the time. It was a Psych class.

A class on Paradoxes was also great, so wandering your Philosophy department when you need credits and not requirements is never wasted as long as you stay away from Logic classes.

Also, I actually took classes called "The End of the World" and "Vampires in Film," so you can imagine what kind of student I was.

[The Lunatic Fringe]

Human Sexuality was probably the best class I ever took. It was the only time I felt like school really opened my eyes and changed me as person since it made me realize how pointlessly judgmental I was at the time. It was a Psych class.

Could you elaborate?

[Maxus]

I'm betting the class covered the biology behind homosexuality and other, similar issues that people like to tell each other is a choice when it is, as near as can be determined, in very much part, wired in.

Maybe, to borrow the above phrase, a couple of wires get crossed in the brain's chemistry. Given how the human species is about half-inbred anyway, I'm just about surprised that humanity gets off with less than ten percent of the population being attracted to the same gender, rather than less than ten percent of the population having that ostrich-foot condition or three thumbs or something.

[Koumei]

I didn't go to Uni, for a variety of reasons, so I can't say I did any of the weird and esoteric ones. There was a class on Pornography at one of the unis, though.

So basically, in high school I enjoyed Art, English and (in grade 12) IT. I made a text adventure for my IT project ("Using Python, make some form of game that relies on the random number generator". So while some people did a basic Snakes and Ladders thing that plays itself, I made a text adventure with combat, classes (the D&D term. Well, and the programming term), levels and stuff). 100% for that project.

Bio and Chem were fun when I tried doing them, but despite the fun, I was just no good at them.

[Prak]

... but my favorites were Evil (philosophy/psychology class on how/why people do bad things)...

...Where can I find this class? I need to take it, I'd love to see the looks on people's faces when I tell them I'm taking Evil as a class.

I've really enjoyed quite a bit of my Culinary program, but I think I'm getting a bit burnt out on it, especially with last year being almost entirely in a single class room for all my classes, and this year being all lecture classes.

Cinema Genres was fun the couple of times (different genre either time) I took it, though part of that was taking it with friends, and part was the cute TA in Horror/Thriller, sadly I was already (supposedly) involved when I took that one.

[cthulhu]

The classes are the ones with good lecturers. Rage spoilered below.

Doing engineering the chances of getting someone who was

A) A terrible public speaker (one guy refused to look at the class while lecturing and would talk to a wall or whatever)

B) A dripping hate [EDITED]

C) Incomprehensible english accent (The worst offender being a polish guy)

However, the absolute worse guy was this dude:

http://cs.anu.edu.au/~Weifa.Liang/

Who was

A) A poor public speaker

B) Considered undergraduates beneath him - he would just skip over massive tranches of workings when he was doing examples with the words 'then obviously' He also only posted incomplete lecture notes, and all of them were scanned in up side down then pdfed...

C) Had a very strong asian accent. While this annoying, combined with an exceptionally tough subject and the other two points.

However, he was great mates with the faculty dean and despite 5 student petitions to remove him in the 5 years I was there.. he is still there.

What an absolute tool.

[Cynic]

my favorite course hands down would have to be a tossup between "texas politics" and "history of psychology."

Both courses were two separate studies in how much arcana a subject can have without studying magic.

[Cynic]

my favorite course hands down would have to be a tossup between "texas politics" and "history of psychology."

Both courses were two separate studies in how much arcana a subject can have without studying magic.

[Koumei]

My sister did History's Killing Fields as a minor subject. They covered the Khmer Rouge and stuff. Nice name to it.

[DragonChild]

Narrative and Technology.

I got to derail a class discussion by talking about Dragon Age... with the teacher. We've talked about D&D, Mass Effect, Dragon Age, Zork, and so many other cool things.

[Maj]

...Where can I find this class? I need to take it, I'd love to see the looks on people's faces when I tell them I'm taking Evil as a class.

The Evergreen State College. I have to give props to the profs, too (there were two). Stephen Beck, the philosophy prof, was the same teacher who taught my formal logic class (which was also cool), and he managed to convince the other teacher to take one extra student so they could let me into the class (I was first on the wait list because my financial aid came in after the quarter started, so it bumped my registration out of the system). I learned so much in this class.

But Evergreen is home to some really weird classes - stuff like the ethics of Star Trek. And you get to write your own, too (I did this quite a few times).

[CatharzGodfoot]

My second biggest regret from my time as a strudent at TESC is taking only boring classes. Although we did make plum brandy in Chemistry II.

[Maj]

How on earth can you make it through Evergreen and take only boring classes?

That actually takes skill.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Fucking fuckers with their life-affirming, intellect-building liberal arts classes.

I'm on my third semester of college right now and the only classes which I enjoyed was Introduction to Programming (because I got to learn how to code in assembly) and Integral Calculus because that's the only math class I ever got an A in.

Let me tell you how much I love spending eight hours a week on my Embedded Systems class doing nothing but debugging code. Or spending another five hours a week doing a physics lab for a one-hour class.

[Grek]

Introductory geology labs are fun as hell. Take one.