Easiest Class at U-M?

That was the 1 credit Geosci class I took senior year to get to 120... however it was not the easiest class I had.

I'm gonna go with Linguistics 111.

Any of my classes this semester:
Biology of sex (Bio 116)
Evolution of life (Bio 107)
Microbial World (Env 175)
Musicology 122

I love being a senior done w/ my major.

Linguistics 111 was a breeze, as was psych 111. Classic civ, on the other hand, was a bitch.

I'm talking it right now and it's such a joke

Then the conversation starts and ends with "Aids and other infectious diseases" or something similarly named.

This is beyond debate, friends.

I had Psych 401 with John Hagen. It was as easy as that whole Ann Arbor News "bombshell" would lead you to believe any class with Hagen was.

Party time for a science major. My B School wannabe friends hated it.

For soc 390 it was a 3 credit pass/fail course that simply called for 40 hours of community service with a majority of it at a specified sight plus a paper at the end. Easy 3 credit class.

Intro to comparative politics involved the professor reading directly off his lecture slides that were posted online. I didn't get many A's in college but I got one in PoliSci 140 without going to class more than 3 times.

Armenian Studies (AAPTIS) 274 with Kevork Bardakjian and NERS 211 with Ronald Fleming. For AAPTIS 274, all you had to do was write two papers, regardless of quality, and you were guaranteed an A. You didn't even have to show up to class. Same with NERS 211, except there were two exams instead of two papers, one of which was a take-home.

Sports and Daily Life in Ancient Rome. You study for definitions like it's a 7th grade social studies class.

my wife took the AIDS class and she said it was a joke.

I took several that were fairly easy:

Sports & life in Ancient Rome
Logic
I thought Physics 242 (the precursor to the 340-390 sequence) wasn't that bad. modern physics, basically.
Math 417 (linear algebra) was flat-out cake.
Math 451 (MultiVar Calc) was also cake.
Anthro 101 was also easy

Criminology... But that may have something to do with my mind.

Any seminars, psych classes, attics (cultural) in poland or something similar..

I forget the number, but it was the Psych Peer Advising practicum. Most of the responsibilities involved sitting at a desk and giving students common-sense scheduling advice. Then we got to meet as a group and talk about how we made a difference. Awesome.

Public speaking was a very easy class but it was also one of the most useful.

I miss college.

Took that class after being anally raped by EECS grad classes for 3 semesters. I had a job, I had a TA, I sure as hell wasn't going to put myself through 80 hrs/week EECS torture sessions. Best decision ever. One hour of work per for 3 credits and an A :)

REES ?490?- Rock Kills Communism

1-credit mini-course on Polish rock music in the 1970's and 1980's as it related to anti-communism and youth culture. Totally awesome class. Piotr Westwalewicz got in front of the class the first day and said "This is the easiest and the most fun class you will take at the University of Michigan. And I am proud to give it to you."

We had to download 4 CD's of music to listen to, and I still listen to them a lot to this day. Best course I took at Michigan.

Phil 180, you learn the names of some argument forms and how to calculate simple probability. Everything is online. You shouldn't have to put in more than 20 minutes a week (attending lectures included) to get an A.

Since I double posted here's a shout out to the Water and Society minicourse. I went to precisely one class, studied the notes for a few hours before the exam and got an A.

One vote for Anthro 101

AOSS 101....because not only was it easy, but you also could say you're taking rocket science.

CAAS 200, it was so easy I spent probably 20 minutes studying the entire semester. Open notes tests and exam questions provided beforehand.

Engin 110 was really easy. You just show up to class and do some easy homework.

Don't remember the #, since it was 25 years ago! But my girlfriend (now wife) took it to get her last science credit.

I wrote the book on easy classes (truly, I wrote a guide at one point).

Among others, I took:

-Exploring your Major
-Exploring Ann Arbor
-Lord of the Rings
-Casino Gambling
-Ice Ages Past and Present
-Dinosaurs
-Continents Adrift
-Botany
-Roman Sports
-Waves and Beaches
-Philosophy of Movies
-Fossils
-Archaelogical Frauds (three weeks on aliens/UFOs. Seriously.)

Of those, Exploring your Major and Exploring Ann Arbor were probably the easiest (thank you Lloyd Hall Scholars Program). The respective finals for these courses involved telling the class what major we were interested in, and walking to Stucci's for ice cream.

I am not sure if they still have the class, but Russia Today was a blast, and the easiest A out there. It also qualified for the Race or Ethnicity requirement (not sure if they still have that requirement). My buddy and I used to take turns going. Even though his notes consisted mostly of scribbles with the pen sliding off the paper, only to be blurred by the drool from him asleep face down on the notebook, we still both aced it. If you actually listened to the lecture, it was pretty cool, but.....I had better things to do.

Ahh, the good times.

go to class, sit on facebook (bc it's laptop based), get an A

and for any ME's, ME 311 was so so easy

I took Comp Lit 240, and you got to pick your own grade (!!) Seriously, I showed up to the first class and like none others, and got a 4.0. I know people who didn't write any papers and still got the 4.0. Ridiculous.

If you have read your Michigan Football textbooks as faithfully as you read MGoBlog, then History of College Athletics with John U Bacon is a walk in the park. I don't think I really learned anything at all in the class, and when we were asked to write a paper I walked down to Yost and interviewed the hockey coaches. Looked forward to going to every single class.

Fundamentals of Math or whatever it was MA131 my only math credit needed for my PoliSci Comm double major. I read Vonnegut the whole time and smashed it with an A+. AP calc as a senior in HS Math fundamentals for my college requirement. Beautiful.

stupid internet.

With Bruce Confroth is really easy. You have to put with some his BS in regards to not clearly announcing quiz dates, but it's still really easy

Psych 111 and Anthro 101

was the easiest I took. 1 credit, 6 weeks. Met in the Angell Hall planetarium. Great class.

I don't remember exactly what, but my friends in the B school told me about this class in the Education dept. where you basically just edit an education blog each week and answer some kids' questions. The funny thing about it though was that apparently a bunch of students end up using it to flame one another because no one really reads it anyway. Anyone know what I'm talking about?

I took a Psych class called 110 (not the general 111). Marquise Walker was in the class for about 5 days, and it was probably the easiest class I have ever taken.

My two or three easiest so far are Philosopy 202, Econ 101 and General chemistry...wow I don't really like being an engineer. Econ 370 is also pretty easy

Astronomy 101 was a breeze. I added the class 2 weeks into my semester, showed up for my first class only to find it taking a quiz. I took the quiz cold and got an 85%. It got better from there.

1 credit science class. Show up day 1, pick up syllabus, return for final. Have no idea what actually happened in class. If he had changed the date of the final I would have been effed.

Senior year, I also took a film class with a title close to "Modern Horror Films and the Teen Sex Farce". Class essentially divided the semester into two parts, horror and comedy. Watch 1 movie a week at the Michigan Theatre and then write paper on a horror film and a paper on a Teen Sex Farce. The film list included:

The Birds, Alien, Videodrome, the Brood, Porkys, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Animal House, Midnight Summers Wet Dream, MASH, etc.

I don't remember the number, but the class was called "Politics and Culture of the 60s" and was crosslisted in about a dozen different areas.

Anyway, we'd sit in lecture and watch movies, TV shows, and stuff about the 60s (I seem to remember watching some stuff that I see on VH1 Classic now).

Some reading, but not really that much. A couple of papers, but nothing bad.

JeffB

Do they have this class still? I think it was something like History 286. It was an easy A+ and sure picked up the moral and GPA.

307 or something ... "Conversation Practice" ... 1 CR

Very easy and my instructor was an old-school German metalhead from the 80's. We literally just talked, not even about anything topical.

When I took Mind, Matter, and Machines taught by Eric Lormand there was no attendance, no papers, and no tests. We were "graded" on two 5-minute in class presentations at recitation. Honestly, I have no idea why I got an A- (as opposed to an A, or even a C), but no class I've ever heard of required less effort.

20th century physics (I think it was Phys 109 or something) was also ridiculously easy. 70% of the students were people looking to kill their quantitative reasoning requirement, so if you can do math, you were way ahead of the curve.

Both classes were really interesting, too.

I'd second the earlier vote for Psychology peer counseling. You literally sit in a room and talk about how to give advice, then give said advice to people.

The easiest "real" class I took was Sports and Society. There were no tests. Your grade was based on a term paper that you could rewrite as many times as you wanted. So you'd turn it in, get a B, then rewrite it from there and get an A-, etc. If you did the paper at the beginning of the semester, you could just keep reworking it with the prof. grading it until you get an A.

Intro to Oceanography. The course material wasn't all that easy, but the professor would walk into lecture and look around, and if the lecture hall looked somewhat empty she would have the students pass around a sheet and write down their name and student ID for extra credit points. As this happened approximately 2 out of every 3 lectures for the semester, I got an A+ despite never getting an A on a test. Just goes to show that showing up is sometimes all that matters.

No contest.

I went to the prof's office hours a third of the way through the course to make sure I hadn't missed any assignments. The only thing we had done up to that point was a one page paper on why you weren't a racist and that wasn't graded.

As it turned out, the only material that was graded was the midterm and the final. There was a lot of reading, but I found it to be interesting.

Of course, I took this class in 1996 so don't get POed at me if things have changed.

Apparently no one here needed a 3 credit cross discipline elective because no one has mentioned IOE 301. Quite possible the easiest class I've ever had, and that includes grade school!

It was so easy that many of us had an actual contest going to see who could spend the least amount of time on the class and still get an A. I didn't win and I totaled to 4.5 hours including exams. Final exam, 35 minutes in, walked down to the front, handed in the exam, and commented to the TA: "I aced this". Some were not amused.

IIRC, someone managed to only put in 3 hours total, all semester and ended up with an A.

Some of this stuff is depressing! Not to sound like a dick, but I can't believe some of the crap that passes for higher education. I've had my own stupid fluff class experiences myself. Don't get me wrong: most, if not all colleges, probably have their share of joke courses. It's sad.

The year was 1999; first semester freshman year. Sounded kind of interesting and a couple of kids I knew mentioned it. Went for syllabus day and day two; a "documentary" about big foot was shown. I skipped for a few weeks and my friends mentioned that the midterm was the next day. I skimmed the little text and then sweated. The midterm was was 50 true/false and essay questions about the scientific method. I got 100%, the only one of my collegiate career.

I told all my friends to take it the next semester. The best any of them did was a straight B. They must have ratcheted it up a notch.

Taught by Duderstadt. First day of class, tells everyone if they're looking for a challenge, they should probably drop his class. Went to one class, got an "A". He does not take attendance. Four short assignments. as long as they are handed in, done deal. If he still does this class, highly recommend.

Oceanography. You only need a 50 to pass!

Frauds in Archeology, forget the number though. Super easy, and for bonus points: actually interesting AND fulfilled the R&E requirement.

Shows up on my transcript as "RC 1 DIV 351 - Special Topics". As I recall, you basically wrote a few papers about yourself and shared them with other people in the class. .. and you had to take it pass/fail.

Stats 402, or 405, or one of those that sounds upper level but was actually quite easy. I had to take the final a day early b/c I had a medical school interview. I got an A+ in that class, not an A mind you, an A+ b/c I had 99% overall or something. I think I studied about 20 min the whole semester.

Also, I agree Anthro 101 was easy. I took the midterm still drunk from the night before and got 88% or something, which is about the same proof as the stuff I was drinking the night before.

i had two finals in one day, and one of them was in IOE 265 (statistics). I pulled an all nighter studying for the other course. Then, in the hour between the two finals, I studied for this course's final. I got a 99%. Easiest class I took since 8th grade.

I can't remember the number, but the course was read a book (or not) and write a paper. You gave yourself a grade at the end. The professor is no longer at M anymore if I remember correctly. Lots of A's in that course.

Brent Petway was in my Musicology 123 class, history of popular music, which I got an A+ in. He rarely showed up, but I assume he still passed. If Brent Petway can do it, you can do it.

Also I missed the first two weeks of intro to astronomy, including the first exam, and I still got an A+. Do that course.

Accounting for non-accounting majors (granted I took it for pass/fail credit).. Somehow I passed even though I knew nothing. Also I took a grad level class that was a general enegineering course about entrepreneurship and that class was also a joke because all of the undergrads (all 3 of us) just pretty much had to show up to class and got an A in a 500 level ENGR class.

This is an upcoming class, but the German department needs enrollment numbers so they're going to have some 100 or 200 level minicourse on German Beer. Yes, an entire course on beer.

I think they said it will drop the Fall.

First discussion section, the TA says that 30% of our grade would be based on participation...but that she realized some of us were shy so she wouldn't penalize us if we didn't say anything. This was a 300 level class too...

GEO 105: Dinosaurs, was absolutely ridiculous. Beyond easy, but disappointingly, we only talked about glaciers and some earth crust movements. I created a project for that class that looked like it was done by a 4th grader.

Also, AmCult 20-something: History of American Music. Not so much because the class was easy; it was and also very interesting. Moreso because the professor was batshit crazy. She was having nervous breakdowns every other lecture and told us wayyyy too much about her personal life.

At the Law School--Race, Gender, and Affirmative Action.

The name is misleading, you don't learn any employment or education law.

The whole course is a 'justification' for affirmative action programs. On the final you can literally get away with writing things like "racism stains the land it happened on, so even if new people now live there the stain must be cleansed by affirmative action". Full points.

The most easy class in the whole law school. The most easy class in the whole University. No thought or study required at all.

I took acting 102 with Jerry Schwiebert and it was by far the easiest class. We never acted. He taught us how to give foot massages so that we would feel more grounded on stage. It ended up being a massage class designed to help us with how we carried ourselves onstage. Didn't learn a thing about acting, but my wife loves the foot massages.

Now that I think about it, I also played in the Men's Basketball pep band which was a credit. We rarely rehearsed. Sadly it was during the Ellerbee/Amaker years, but we got free Nike clothes and watched the games up close. Not a bad class if you can actually play an instrument. I never did Marching Band because of the time commitment, but auditions for the pep bands are open to anybody. I was at Michigan from 1999-2004 so this might have changed, but they actually paid us $50 per game to play for the women's team.

were Research Methods-SM 349 (especially with Rodney Fort) and of course Basic First Aid-PHYSED 216...doesn't get any easier than that.

Future Worlds, in the Geography Department. What Geography Department, you ask?  The one the University shut down in 1981.

The course coordinator, Michael Naimark, who has gone on to some fame as an Internet wise man, was an undergraduate at the time.  (The 70s were like that.)

The main requirement of the course was to help build a geodesic dome on the diag in time for Earth Day.  I sat in the dome for an hour or two after it was built.

Another requirement was to write a letter to yourself, seal and stamp it, for delivery five years in the future.  I was pretty freaked out when an envelope addressed to me in my handwriting containing a blank sheet of paper showed up in my mailbox in 1980.

And for all that, I got an A.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxPhBq55j7s

Every day physics 106, don't think twice and it's actually 3 credits.. You feel like you're in 7th grade ..