I just sat through the most excruciatingly painful 2.5 hour class tonight

[Reverend_Smitty]

11 out of 30 people showed up (one of those jack-asses being me) and this guy proceeded to teach the most dull chemistry lesson ever invented by mankind...for 2 and a half hours!!! While all those other slackers were off enjoying their spring break prematurely I was stuck in that damn classroom cursing their names. I almost nodded off 3 or 4 times (and I never do that in class). But it's over and I have no more chem for a week and a half...to celebrate tonight, I have ordered a cheesesteak and some curly fries from a local pizza joint. It should arrive in about a half an hour...I really shouldn't be eating it but dammit I need to reward myself for not committing suicide in the middle of the classroom!

And I was having a good day up until this point too!

[Telly Savalas]

1. Ouch!

2.5 hours might be an appropriate length for discussion-based/Socratic method classes (with a break or two of course.)

But for things like math and the hard sciences, it just doesn't make any sense. Most normal people can only stay focused enough to process the material for about 45 minutes before drifting off.

Enjoy the cheesesteak!

[deadparrot]

2. Ouch. Chemistry.

x(

That hurts just reading about it. I'm done with my science requirements, thankfully. It just ain't my thing.

:hug: Hope that dinner is delicious--I'm sure it's well deserved!

[Benfea]

3. Linear algebra was the worst for me.

In college, I read the synopsis and it sounded interesting, so I took it. It turns out that linear algebra is all crap anyone with one year of high school algebra could understand. Mind you, at the time I was already taking 4th year math courses alongside a good number of graduate students, so linear algebra was several (terminally boring) steps down for me.

The only redeeming quality of that class was the professor. We had a west African professor with one of those really great sing-song African accents, and he had a delightful propensity for the absurd. To demonstrate vector spaces, he chose a number system that could only contain one number, and he called his one number "moon." Since the number system had only one number in it, every mathematical operation resulted in the same answer: "moon." (Picture this in a west African accent: "Moon times moon equals moon. Moon plus moon equals moon…")

On the flipside, I took a terribly interesting course in quantum mechanics under a professor who could bore the paint off a trailer hitch at 300 yards. He spoke in a quiet, put-you-to-sleep monotone; his public speaking style could only be described as "terrified" so every other word out of his mouth was "uh" ("The uh preceeding uh theory of uh scattering uh…"); on top of that he had a completely incomprehensible Irish accent. He was the nicest man you could ever meet (and the only physics professor in the department who wasn't a raging alcoholic), but I really didn't enjoy that class.