OT: Your favorite classes while at Michigan
I think there have been a few threads or discussions along this line in the past, but since new classes are added every year, I thought it might be fun to revisit given the dearth of non-OT news.
Here are mine (which all have "are easy" as a pre-req):
1) Psychology and Spiritual Development - One word - self-graded. I gave myself an A since I was an awesome student. Also, Richard Mann was super cool and had some great stories about the 60's.
2) Greek Mythology - A surprisingly useful class for life, especially if you like to read. Professor Verhoogt is funny and the class was pretty easy.
3) The History of Witchcraft - Another gem in the Classic Civ department, which seems to have the highest ratio of easy classes of any department at the U. Don't remember the name of the professor, but he looks like Barack Obama (before he became President) and was a great lecturer. The material was fascinating.
What are yours?
EECS 376, 203, any calc class... after three years of having no favorite class at all I realized I'd screwed up in choosing my major.
Business of Music ended up being my favorite. Helped me out a lot.
My prof said it was obvious I hadn't learned anything in his class, despite getting an A.
Reminds me of when I took Norse Mythology. We were expected to read a ton of books, which I didn't have time to do. Professor called me out on this when grading my exam, saying it was clear that I hadn't read a single book that was assigned. Still got an A- in the class.
Celtic and Nordic Myth with Bjorn Anderson? If so, you we're braver than me. I took it pass fail so I didn't have to worry when I didn't do the reading...
logic. creative writing was also cool. Other than that, I like my major classes a lot, but they're not real hip or anything
Does Brian MacPherson (the Canuck) still chew tobacco during class?
TV Analsys - We talked about 60 minutes, soap operas, and The Simpsons. There were a lot of football players and Engineers taking it as an elective.
Yep.. People couldn't figure out why Chief Wiggum was so irresponsible in regards to his job and his son Ralph. It was clear that he used his power within the community to keep Ralph moving forward in school despite his issues lol
Me fail English? That's unpossible!
"I beat the smart kids! I beat the smart kids! Aww, I bent my Wookie."
I think it was Aero 471. Technically, it was a lab wherein we went flying once or twice a week in a Piper Archer out of Ann Arbor Airport (the professor was the pilot in command). The group I was in were all licensed pilots so the prof let us get a bit of stick time on top of the data we were collecting.
One of the most incredible moments was when one of the students I was flying with put his head through the side window of the aircraft. He had unbuckled to get a better look at the instruments and lost his balance (I can't remember if it was due to turbulence or the maneuver that was being flown). Fortunately, he had a set of David Clark headsets on, which took the brunt of the force. Needless to say, he was seeing stars for a few minutes as we flew back to the airport.
All in all, though, getting to go flying for credit has to be #1 Best Class.
EDIT: Reading further in the thread, I stand corrected. Getting to watch PORN for credit, has to be the #1 Best Class.
A quick note to non-alums, if you'd like to take a Michigan class free of charge via the Net, check out Coursera. You can earn a certificate for the courses, but it's non-credit and you will not be considered a Michigan alum.
I was just talking to someone last night about Richard Mann's class. I haven't heard or thought about that name in years. He, of course, would get a kick out of that though. Really interesting guy.
John Rubadeau's advanced essay writing course was my favorite at Michigan. Any one from my series of classes with Ralph Williams could be named as a runner up.
Geo 116: Geology of the Rockies
8 weeks onsite in Jackson Hole and the surrounding states learning about rocks, beers and life. We lived in cabins at the foot of mountain. Every morning, you were awoken by air raid siren and got to see the mountain covered in fog/snow. It started in mid June and ended in mid August. Best 8 credits ever!
Me too. Looks like I was there a few years before you. I forgot about the siren. Climbing Cream Puff with my roommate toward the end of the term was a great accomplishment, though I remember how much my ribcage hurt that night from all the exertion. He only took the class because his grandpa was Chuck, the camp caretaker. I think he had fun though. Our cabin had been labeled The Opium Den. I had thought about going before my freshman year but went two years later instead. A good choice - apparently it rained all summer in 1992 and the field mice took over the cabins.
Science Fiction Film. True story.
basically any of the classes involving group work with partners you can't choose (Lab 360 and Lab 460). Lab 460 was especially bad for me; we had three rotations, and generally you only have to present for one of the three, but due to an odd number of people in the class, I was the lucky one that had to present twice. Presenters are considered team leaders for that rotation, which involves more responsibility. I got two completely useless partners for one of my rotations; one guy was just unstable and we basically had to meet whenever he wasn't drunk, and I caught the other writing an email that said "this meeting is so useless" after I'd written the entire 20-page lab report by myself. When you get good partners, it's like a dream by comparison.
I 100% agree. Having dead weight in a ChE group was never fun; however, the opposite was usually pretty sweet.
English 425. John Rubadeau. The man is a legend. Good luck getting into his class before senior year though.
Sadly, I think my favorite course was EECS 371 (not sure if that's the name). It was a senior design course I took as a junior and we designed a little car that could follow a yellow line back when that was pretty cool (think 2001-2002). All with an FPGA and a cheap lab network.
That's EECS 373.It was my favorite class too, also because of the project. We had a remote control bulldozer that used a sonic ranger to find a box and then launch a ball into it.
You guys are lucky... when I took EECS 373 it involved breadboards and a 80186 emulator.
I think my favorites were:
EECS 427 - VLSI Design
Musicology 341 - Art of Music
No idea if it's still offered, but it was an interesting class. Sadly, I remember more from it than from any actual history class I ever took. Although if I missed out on taking the history of witchcraft, I'll be upset... I hope that didn't exist when I was there.
History 285 - Science, Technoloyg and Society Post WWII - I don't know if this is still offered and can't remember the name of the professor, but it was a fasinating class. I'm not a big fan of history classes because many of them are just about memorizing names and dates - this was not the case in this class.
Geoscience 206 - Water and Environment - Super easy, but pretty interesting. You could tell the professor LOVED the subject and got pretty animated, sometimes, over meandering rivers, cutbanks and the like. Made for some pretty funny moments.
It was awesome and counted as an upper level writting requirement. Easily on the biggest joke classes at U of M. Easy, easy 4.0
Forgot about that class - yes! So easy...
History of the University with Duderstadt... I think I went to two classes... and I got an "A"
You only needed to write like 3 2-page papers, and that was it.
On a side-note, there was this gorgeous Jewish girl in the class... Oy vey. Should have gone more often.
Extreme weather in angell hall. Prof Samson was awesome and we got to go out and do some really cool things during bad weather.
AmCult 2XX - History of American Popular music was outstanding, Bruce Conforth knows his stuff. I heard that his Beatniks, Hippies, and Punks class was even better but I couldn't take it.
As an engineer everyone else probably thinks my other classes were weird, but Internal Combustion Engines and Vehicle Dynamics were also really good.
There were a fe notable ones, but I really did like Affective Neuroscience, which when I took it was actually taught by the man who coined the term - Jaak Panksepp (who also taught at Bowling Green, and indeed, he was commuting to Ann Arbor from there as a guest lecturer, I believe). The neurological mechanisms of emotion actually made for some fascinating reading, I thought. We were even introduced to some of his work studying laughter in animals - very cool stuff.
Anything Spring or Summer Term. Smaller classes, more laid back atmosphere but at the same time an accelerated syllabus, nicer weather and the eye candy that comes with it. If I had to pick one, it'd probably be an intro painting class... kind of a nice change of pace for an engineering student for sure. A close second was a math class in cryptography.
"Renaissance Poetry"
23 students in that class. I was the only guy.
And "Politics of Geology"
That was facinating because it was taught by one of the two conservative professors I ever had at Michigan and the class was liberal as hell. Made for some very spirited debates in clsss to say the least.
Yeah, I was often put off on some of my classes because they were wayyyyy to liberal for my liking. I forget the one profs name but she was horrible for throwing her opinion about everything in all the time.
Anthing Victor Lieberman teaches-I had Arab Israeli Conflict and History of Southeast Asia. I saw he won the Golden Apple this year, well deserved. Best lecturer at the University, hands down.
History of College Athletics-John U Bacon. Nuff said.
Great Books-I always kick myself for not doing much of the reading. I'll never have an opporutnity to be guided through the canon by experts again.
Europe in the Era of Total War-Brian Porter Szucs. Outstanding lecturer, fascinating class, pretty easy.
US Intervention in Latin America-An uncomfortable class, but fascinating. Richard Turits was great and I see that he is at Michigan.
I took a couple of AnthroBio courses to fulfill my NS requirements and they were fascinating, also easy.
Campaign Stratagies and Tactics-Our professor ran numerous campaigns, lots of real world experience to back up the lectures.
I'll second great books and all of Lieberman's material. He's the one who convinced me of my major. Human encyclopedia and genuinely great guy.
I think you took the verb "second" a little too literally there.
I'll second great books and all of Lieberman's material. He's the one who convinced me of my major. Human encyclopedia and genuinely great guy.
John is a fantastic professor and seemed to find a way to challenge all of his students to dedicate themselves to improving their writing.
Eng 401 analyzing the Bible's literary aspects with Williams 2nd. Ian Fulcher also taught an English class about comic books but I can't remember the number. Among the comics we analyzed were what I believe will be the comic inspiring the Batman-Superman movie as well as Maus.
Slavic 490: Rock Kills Communism. A mini-course on Polish rock music. Basically involved listening to a LOT of music, watching some really rad 60s cartoons, and writing short papers on why all this stuff basically sounded exactly like Blondie and The Police if both were Polish bands writing about trying to topple a totalitarian government.
Anything with Ken Mikolowski in the RC.
And, of course, both of John Bacon's courses (College Athletics and Sports Writing).
To this day I remember and use many of the principles. The worst: accounting courses in the business school. Pay accountants.
History of American Radicalism with Howard Brick
20th Century American Wars with Jon Marwil
Urban Politics with Greg Markus
Congress and State Legislatures with Joe Schwarz
Theory and Practice of Communism with Zvi Gitelman
I bet you'd never guess I was into polisci/history....
Maybe I had a different prof (early 90s), but I found American Wars hugely disappointing. Walked in hoping to learn about guns, bombs, and battles. What I actually got was a semester full of how minorities and women truly won the wars for us, sigh...
You had Tom Collier. He also taught History of the Vietnam War. A little better at that one since he was there.
September 29th, 2014 at 10:23 PM ^
History of the Vietnam War was one of my absolute favorites...
Anything in Poly Sci taught by Organski, that dude was crazy.
Made me a poli-sci major. He was crazy.
Anything with Ron Suny is great. He's a Soviet historian, probably the foremost in the world. I think he's back on campus and teaching in the fall from what he told me.
If Matt Lassiter is teaching, his classes are also great. History of suburbia sounds boring but is sweet.
Brian Porter-Szucs is also a great lecturer. I especially liked his history of Poland classes.
Lieberman is fantastic too. He's personally very pro-Israel which upsets some people but you honestly can't tell in class. His lectures are not biased, and I don't have a stake in either side.
Suny is amazing. Took 3 classes from him. He's great to listen to and the classes were very small, so we had some great discussions. He's the only prof whose total lack of technology skills I found endearing. (There was a girl who always had a laptop - Suny would be going on about some statue in St Petersburg, and wishing he had a picture to show us. Girl pulls up statue on Google image search. Suny is flabbergasted.)
Actually won an undergrad CREES writing award for a paper I wrote for his class. Was rather odd going to their graduation to accept my award and being an aero engineer in a room full of Eastern European language majors.
Agreed that Lassiter and Porter were both excellent. Two of my favorites in the department,
Porter's History 318 (Europe in the Era of War) was easily one of my favorite classes ever.
Sport Law- David Shand
The David Shand that played hockey at Michigan, the NHL and Europe and also was a co-host on WTKA for a while.
Every lucture was a lesson in profanity, it was phenomenal
Also told us he didnt like cocaine because it prohibited him from doing his 3 favorite things: 1) Sleeping 2) Having Sex 3) Eating