I am not a fan of 4-year college degree programs. I have one of those and it was pretty much forced upon us as high-school graduates. "Go to university, or you are going to be poor!" It seem to me that a whole lot of my friends are actually poor because of student loans and haven't really gotten much benefit out of their degree and I think i know why that is. The course material is largely filler to make your degree take 4 years.
Most of the people i know from my 20's were my college pals. Very few of them have achieved any sort of massive financial success and most of the ones that have, are successful in something completely unrelated to what they studied in college. Some of the most successful people I know didn't go to college at all, but just knew what they enjoyed, managed to stay reasonably sober to learn how to do it, and turned it into something they get paid for... how awesome is that?
Anyway, here is a short list of some of the dumbest college courses I took that actually counted towards my GPA with the SAME WEIGHT as actual courses.
Jazz Appreciation
I mean, come on! The teacher was borderline insane and we just listened to awful music for 50 minutes in a row. He would wag his head and say things like "dig man! DIG!" while it was playing and wave his arms around.
Would you believe there was also really expensive textbooks for this class that were required as well? So we are taking a class that focuses entirely on audio but we need printed materials. The tests were a joke and everyone got an "A" if they just occasionally turned up for class.
Bowling
Yep, that's right. You can take bowling as a college course. The only sport that you can actually smoke while you do it counts as academic credit. Not only that but it counts exactly the same towards your overall GPA as an astrophysics class. We would turn up at the lanes, and go on the most expensive bowling that the world has ever seen. Again, as long as you actually went to class from time to time, you got a good grade. It didn't matter one bit if you improved at all.
Scuba Diving
You remember all those business meeting that your dad had underwater? Major universities have identified that this is a much-needed skill in the academic world and coupled it with your overall degree progress. If you look good in a bikini they might invent a new grade for you that is higher than an "A."
well you forgot to put your tank on, but you know, it doesn't really matter. A+"
This was the case with the hot chicks in my class, some of them were terrible divers, often performing actions that could get you killed in a real diving environment but the instructors (who were mostly young men) were magically able to see past this. I was graded on a much different scale and ended up actually learning something. I am sure that if the world had been back then like it is today I could have sued the university for sexism and made millions of dollars.
Intro to computers taught by a guy with a PhD in computer science
This was mostly a class about Microsoft Products and the history of computing-because it is absolutely essential in the IT world that we all know who Charles Babbage is in order to perform your coding job. Furthermore if you don't know how ROM drives function or how a tape drive is manufactured how can you possibly work on today's apps?
The worst thing about this is the fact that the professor has spent the past 12 years perfecting his knowledge of things that have been obsolete for 5 years or more. I was a graduate assistant in this class for first-year college students and the people in that class told me that "if I hadn't sat in on lectures, they wouldn't have learned anything," which was flattering but also identifies a massive failure on the part of the university. Why on earth would you charge someone who doesn't know S**T about today's programs with teaching other people about it. Frequently the students would actually teach him something, which should never happen.
Aaaannd of course, a vast majority of the classroom time involved using expensive textbooks rather than actual computer programs, as is tradition in major USA universities.
Those are the best ones I could think of, but i am sure there are many many more. I'll have to look at my transcripts because it was a long time ago and I have likely forgotten a great many of the classes I took.
Were you ever forced to study something completely absurd for a certification? I'd love to hear about it if you were.
I loved my bowling class! It was 1 credit on a Saturday morning and I had so much fun on Lane One with the other losers that could not bowl. It was me and a bunch of black girls with tight jeans, hair, and fingernails done, and we had a blast.
You could move up in the lanes if you improved, but none of us ever did. I got an "A" because, like your class, the score you could bowl was not the issue. They counted participation and a few tests about the rules, history of bowling, and the anatomy of a bowling alley.
My Music was a survey class and I liked it even though I don't like music too much in real life. No crazy guy taught it.
My Intro to Computers was Programming in Basic and it just about killed me. We had to write all kinds of code to end up printing out a diagram of Snoopy on a dot matrix printer, so now you know I am old. I was using one of the first Apple products at work, so this did nothing for me.
I got my Accounting BBA and it served me very well in the earnings game later on in life. I was bookkeeping while going to school part-time, so this all was good career-wise and school-wise. My boss at the time said to not worry about anything but getting good grades and jumping through the hoops since that stuff all matters in accounting. My salary more than doubled the year after I graduated so that was a good plan.
I went for my CPA and needed a few additional credit hours beyond what the degree needed qualify to sit for it. So in my last two terms I took whatever would fit into my schedule just to get those hours. One of those classes was called something like "Intro to Western City States" and turned out to be one of the hardest classes I ever took. I thought my accounting classes where hard until I got to this.
It was taught by a genius who was in the midst of a nervous breakdown as far as we students could tell. He never looked at one of us directly for the whole term and sat at his desk looking at notes and talking like a madman for three hours straight. The material was so dense and about things like the installation of sewer lines in 14th century Italy as a means to population growth. We would all just be numb on our breaks from this.
The class had three exams and we got all the possible questions on Day One of the term. He picked only one question out of each section on the day of each exam and then we wrote about it open book. The exams came back with all kinds of remarks handwritten by him and strong words of encouragement about how to do better for next time. It was hard to believe this guy had written all this nice feedback but he had.
I was an "A" student in most classes and got a "B" here. I have never used any of the knowledge that was crammed into my sore head.
All my degrees were paid for by the companies I worked for so I never cared about cost. But I sure did not like carrying all those heavy books around and I know they were expensive.
that is one of the most impressive responses to anything i have ever written here. If I could give you 200% upvote i would. tyvm for commenting. I loved it!
Aw! Thank you so much. I loved school and you got me to go down memory lane :)
Lol. Mine was women's studies and history of rock and roll.
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Here in India there is no scuba diving and bowling included in a academic grades I was surprised to hear about their inducement in graduation course. moreover I loved the satire you cracked upon getting A+ grades in scuba diving with bikini body! :p
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