OT: Hardest class at U-M?
I saw the "Easiest class at U-M?" post and thought that some might find the opposite question interesting.
My hardest class? "Dynamics of Mechanical Systems" I think it was M.E. 340. That (and M.E. 240, come to think of it) just didn't "click" for me. Interestingly, most of my classmates did not share my opinion. They typically chose Fluids or Heat Transfer.
My easiest? A 100-level (Social) Psychology course. It was interesting and almost laughably easy. I took it during my senior year.
I ended up with two Ws on my transcript because i was truly scared these two classes would wreck me GPA. I should have bailed early on. P chem was a bruiser from the start. I think the test averages were in the low 40s in that class.
This is what I've heard. I never took it, though. EECS 353 was the hardest class I had.
Yep...
40+ hours a week x 4 dudes.
EVERY WEEK OF THE SEMESTER.
That being said - I found the class easy conceptually and did well... just lots and lots of work.
My team had the added bonus of one member disappearing after the second week, so all the work had to be done by three of us. That semester I averaged 50 to 60 hours a week just for that one class. I learned a ton about the proper way to go about design though, especially aoout the importance of verifying a design before building it.
I had the printout of our chip professionally framed and still have it in my office 15+ years later.
EECS 570 was also a ton of work, but that was because of the project my partner and I chose. I don't think it was worse than 427 because there weren't weekly deadlines, which made it much less stressful. That was the semester I virtually lived on the third floor of the Media Union. I kept a pillow and a coffee maker next to a computer for the entire semester.
We actually had 5 team memebers - but we told one to go away and not do anything because he was sooo worthless.
Luckily my team was full of VLSI guys - one had worked the previous summer at Intel and ended up there after graduation, I ended up at Intel, one is high up at Apple (after working at National and several chip startups), and one is at AMD after going through HP/Marvel/and a couple other chip houses.
What also made 427 interesting was the competitive aspect of it - it's a class that counts for graduate credit, so my class was about half undergrads and hald graduate students.
You lucked out, I was the only member of my group that ended up in VLSI.
So, was one of your team members Sri?
Nope... Four pasty white Michiganders.
Here are the contest results from our year... should be easy to pick out the team -
https://web.archive.org/web/19980210181918/http://www.eecs.umich.edu/VL…
Small world. I'm literally sitting less than 10 feet from Dave right now. He says hi.
Hilarious....
Ask Dave about "Mark", the tossed out teammate and super weird roommate.
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Was it Physics 242? Whichever one where they are constantly asking you the questions about the guys with flashlights standing on trains travelling .84 times the speed of light.
I was ok in that class until about the last third of the semester, at which point I became completely and utterly lost. I still have no idea what was on the final. I wrote down a bunch of random equations and numbers and failed it pretty miserably. Still managed to pass because I was doing OK up to that point but wow I was confused.
I had Professor Fine for a course on Byzantine history a few years ago. He was really good, but got sidetracked easily (he was really old). Had to do a ton of reading in that class.
Bram is such a nice guy though... but then, I'm an EE and never had to take classes from him.
Bram is a super nice guy - I had him for Aero 225 and he clearly had forgotten how to teach anything at an undergraduate level.
I don't know if I came across anything that held a candle to Aero 525 with Werner Dahm, back before he went to go run the Air Force, or whatever it is he does these days. By the end of the class only Werner Dahm had any idea what was going on.
As a current undergrad, the hardest class that I am aware of is the Japanese Intensives. Each are 10 credit classes, which means one hour of discussion and one hour lecture five times a week, mandatory three times a week Japense-only lunch tables, and the final exams are each a week long. Oh and taken over the course of two semesters for 20 credits total. From what I've heard they are ridiculously hard but whoever survives will speak Japanese very well.
At least you don't have to take it in the Frieze Building as it fell down around you.
wow, lots of us BSME majors on the board apparently.
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Chem 1, after about a month in, including the 1cr lab which I had on Fridays 1-5. No partners, no chairs in that lab.
Statistical physics was the only W I had at mich- that prof was from Stanford and the book was copyrighted 1968- no diagrams, nothing.
Quantum 2 was also brutal.
I doubled up taking intermed mech and e&m in the physics dept one semester and that was a bad idea although either class alone wasn't the most difficult class.
Really, the Chem and the stats always gave me the most difficulty. The calc sequences were easy, the more calc I took the easier it got. Also linear algebra was pretty easy. Not sure why those math classes are polarizing in terms of difficulty for people: either easy brutal, no in. Between.
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I refuse to answer this question simply out of fear I'd dredge up old hives-creating memories.
For me it is probably EECS 381. The content wasn't hard to understand, but the workload was immense for a 4 credit course. On top of taking Introduction to Cryptography and a total of 16 credit hours while doing job interviews, I was completely swamped for my last term.
I found it *very hard* throughout the entire semester. Especially seated next to my lab partner, Muffy The Perfect Ten.
Seriously though, invariant classes do not exist in actuality. Something I learned in a very hard quantitative course that, in fact, was not actually nomered Boner 101.
Peace out.
with Bernstein. Mostly because he apparently makes it a personal goal to slaughter undergrads with nutty math.
Electric Propulsion in grad school was largely a practice in "wtf is this," but the exams typically went okay.
Bernstein is an odd bird, for sure.
My "wtf is this" was most of grad school, so, yeah...
Did you have to hear about his analog computer?
...I had to fix it.
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Score more points than them.
You're welcome, Jim Harbaugh.
You got me there.
I think it is all about perspective, I thought Orgo 1 and Calc 3 were tough. I would go to class and not understand it and then I know people where that material clicks and they think it is relatively easily and so it is all who is taking the classes.
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The professor bragged that it was the hardest course offered by the University. As I recall, it was Physics 405. He said that as long as we attended every class we would get at least a C. It may be the only class I never missed (and happily took my C).
I had no programming experience and it was my 1st semester at Michigan so I had the combo of the long hours and the reality quickly settling in that high school prepared me very little for Michigan. That class killed me. But it ended up being one of my favorites because you learn so much and it teaches you a whole other line of thinking.
Quickly learned that I wasn't the big fish in the High School pond anymore... And that I was out of my league math-wise.
Hard class but a great life lesson... Became a Philosophy major instead.