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.
Most math courses said to many theorems, that the solving of this is beyond the scope of this class. Well, this was the class where they all came together to be solved, at least for most of the class. Huge lecture hall at 12:00. Fortunately he had a big curve.
One of my metallurgical engineering courses, X ray diffraction was over the top. At this point in my life, I really do not care. I have my degree, worked successfully for many years and retired. Sort of like do you need algebra.
I got my master's in EE specializing in communications/info theory and signal processing. But they made us take that math course. That course proved 1>0 for the ENTIRE COURSE!!!! talk about proofs!
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I made the mistake of taking a class on natural resources in the RC. Thought it was going to be about resource usage, policy, things like that. Needed it to fulfill some RC requirement for a science class.
It was physics. Like, I had to find my high school graphing calculator and learn a subject I'd never taken (topped out at chemistry and environmental science in HS, never took physics, and I'm terrible at math), so I could do all sorts of calculations about oil supplies, energy usage, combustion engines... It was a total nightmare. I had absolutely no idea what was going on.
I'll also add John U Bacon's courses into the mix. Took both History of College Athletics and his (I think only one-time) course on the American Sports Writer. Worked my ass off, met the demands, got the two best A-'s I've ever gotten. One of those things where the class being hard was a good thing.
The econ stat theory courses I took were pretty difficult. Even if the econometrics were relatively easy, parts of the theory classes were basically incomprehensible.
That class was also widely thought to be the toughest class at Michigan Tech. I think it was mostly due to the professor teaching it, but who knows.. I passed.
My classes were generally pretty easy. Econ 102 was tough on me, though. 8am, and I was very distracted that semester =/= translate to a good grade.
Aero 623: Computational Fluid Dynamics II
Every time I came to class I wondered what in the world Van Leer was doing with his equations. I breezed through Math 215 with an A+, (so my math is pretty good), but VL wasn't kidding when he said "This is probably the most difficult course in the Aero Department"
That course would not exist today as it did in the late 70s. It was RF signal processing done in the analog domain, so you used fast fourier transforms to describe the waveforms. I was a computer engineering major. Half the class was EEs. They did much better than the CEs that lived in the digital world. We discussed the new fangled Compact Disc as one of the first digitally processed systems. That was a few years prior to commercial CD players.
I'm late to this party, but it feels like an opportunity to commisserate after 20 years, so better late than never. I even had to check my transcript, because I couldn't remember the course that was so bad I had to withdraw. Memory is getting bad, too. But maybe that's a good thing, for these courses.
ME210 (Solid Mechanics) - frustratingly bad
PHYS401 (Intermediate Mechanics) - should've withdrawn after the first exam; A- for a score of 21/100 made me think I should stick it out. Bad decision. Pretty sure I still have recurring nightmares about not being able to answer even one question on the exam after the first pass.
PHYS406 (Statistical and Thermal Physics) - only W on the transcript; completely lost.
406 was brutal
Mine was Calc 1. Great GSI, sadistic test writers. I'm not great at math by any means, but that semester (Fall 2011) was one of the hardest in recent memory for that class. I had to work extremely hard for a C+. Also didn't help that I had 18 credits and Chem 130 and 125. Never made that mistake again.
Probably a high-level Chemical Engineering class if its anything like every other school on earth.
Organic Chemistry is always fun for a masochist. Enormous amount of work, but I'd hesitate to call it the hardest.
For me it's a toss-up between ChE 230 (Intro to Material and Energy Balances) and ChE 460 (ChE Lab II). The former is a ChE weedout class. The class delivered tons of material and all the exams had impossible time constraints. I received my worst grade at UM in that class. The latter was a lab class where every lab report came with an all-nighter to prep it and then a presentation in front of the class while you're dog tired. There were multiple professors in attendance who would take every opportunity to publicly rip your test plans, results and conclusions to shreds. Not fun.
I switched from ChemE to CSE after I took ChemE 230. It was definitely one of the hardest classes I took in all of undergrad (I think a couple of the EECS classes I took were harder, but I was a lot more interested in EECS than I was in ChemE).
True that. To put a time frame on it, this is all circa 1991 through 1994. As far as non-engineering classes I would have to say it's a tie between Organic Chem 215 and Inorganic Chemistry (I forget the Inorganic class number). The final exam for Orgo 215 was impossible. I think I scored 35% and ended up with a B which gives you some insight into how the rest of the class fared. And for Inorganic Chem, I don't know if I had a shitty prof or I was stupid but I grasped very little. Rote memorization got me by. I think I still have nightmares about that class where I am taking the final exam and nothing looks familiar. Every other class I took at UM was moderately easy for me.
I really enjoyed independent study Biochemistry (again I forget the number). I worked my ass off but the material was very interesting and engaging. Tons of memorization.
I very much disliked EECS 370.
Progamming in C to emulate Assembly language. fuck that man
back in the day. I think you'd consider that to be worse than the insanity of using C to emulate assembly language.
Ugh, I hated that class too, but more for the way it was structured than the material. We had six exams throughout the semester that all consisted exclusively of 15 multiple choice questions. Those exams accounted for 90% of your grade (the other 10% was the homework assignments), such that each exam question was 1% of your grade. No partial credit. It was nerve-racking.
At least you could easily cheat in it cause the projects had to be written in the same way by design....
...not that anyone would copy code or anything *makes jerkoff motion*
Measurements & Instrumentation. It wasn't so much the material (although that was part of it), it was that the professor was one of the worst instructors I've ever encountered. He would ramble on and on and nobody knew what the hell he was getting at. The median on the midterm was 30%.
I could've said screw it, I'll try and teach myself by reading the book, but he also wrote the book.
I graduated from undergrad a long time ago (CoE c/o 2003), but my hardest class was EECS 482 (Operating Systems) with Peter Chen. I took a lot of easy classes in LSA, but my easiest Engineering class was probably IOE 422 (Entrepreneurship), which may not exist anymore.
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I woke up, skipped all my classes, then went to the lab and worked on my project until I was too tired or another lab needed my attention. Pulled more alll nighters than I can remember. Material wasn't very difficult but fuck me the project demanded every ounce of time I had
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ChE 487 - Process Design and Engineering