What's the hardest class you've taken?

[Lambtron]

Title. Currently taking Calc 2 and getting my ass kicked. I like it. It's really challenging, but very rewarding. I know there's a bunch of smart dudes on here. Feel free to share a bit about the class, especially if it's a higher level class for specific majors.

[Shadotwist]

I registered for the wrong bio class once... Other than that probably calc classes and my CS 2 when I didn't study super hard.

[bigyellowtwinki]

This is wcreplays, no class is difficult. That being said, no class was difficult for me when I completed my education program. Education courses are a joke and your primary subject courses are a pleasure. However, the most difficult courses I can ever remember taking were only because the teacher/professor was either too monotone, hence boring and difficult to listen to, or too long winded and purposefully refuses to teach you exactly what you need to know because they want you to think about the answer for yourself. I can understand the think of the answer for yourself to some extent, but there becomes a point when it's just the professor being lazy or forgetting his students aren't masters of the topic. For instance, I had a history professor who was very learned, had very entertaining lectures, but had brutal exams that tested the minutest detail from the text, mostly things never covered or mentioned in class. It was as if he expected each student to read and reread the text, and never once told anyone how to go about dissecting it properly to prepare for the exam. I wanted to know how he expected us to pick up on things in the text like he does, but alas, I was younger and didn't stand up for myself or dare question a professor's methods out of fear for getting a bad grade.

[Elven_Lord]

analysis. I got a 0 on the final. Passed by the skin of my teeth with a C-. For some people it's very easy but it's definitely a "way of thinking" class rather than a "disciplined study" class. I didn't have the way of thinking required. Basically math proofs in general I sucked at.

[Ducksnpie]

Calc 2 is a cunt. Definitely my least favorite of the 3.

Looking back, all of the classes i've taken in-hindsight don't seem so bad. But if you asked me at that point-in-time, i'd probably say that current class x or y is hard. I think a proofs class I took offered the most difficulty, if only because it's not point-and-shoot like all my math had been before it. Methodological, I guess is the word.

Ask me next semester or the semester after that one when i'm taking analysis. Then we'll see!

[bigyellowtwinki]

Perhaps in another 10 years everyone here will finally be done with school and we can all talk about our most difficult job.

[strOut]

In college I got through Calculus easily enough, although admittedly I never came close to fully understanding the material and it's real world applications. As a direct result the toughest class for me was Structures III. Every exam question was unique and you needed a tonne of intuition about how elements bend/shear/deflect etc to even start the problem correctly.

Since graduating I've completed lots of online classes. The hardest one was probably Inferential Statistics. Also CS50 (intro to CS) and CS171 (Data visualization) from harvard's extension school had numerous projects that were very time consuming but rewarding.

[Mohdoo]

Statistical mechanics closely followed by electron optics.

[TaysChreNN]

highschool RE

[bluedot]

PDEs in general relativity... in retrospect those were the weeks I realized that I could probably have a job as a physicist but I'd never be actually great at it.

[xV.Pa[N]da]

Electronic Systems Design. I hadn't taken a recommended pre-requisite and withdrew since I had problems understanding some of the analysis that was covered in the previous class. Other than that, laziness is definitely my worst enemy in regards to taking classes.

[WAAA]

Rock Mechanics, took this in my 8th and last semester at uni. Course content I found very hard to understand and I didn't do so well. Exam wasnt actually that hard but it was graded on a curve and there were quite a few masters students in it, I came away with a B-. Also geomechanics 3 was very hard.

Structures 1 through 4 were all a huge amount of work but you can usually come away with a decent grade.

Overall I was a fairly mediocre student, uni was a reality check for me, I use to think I was smart.

[the_noob]

Gravitational waves. I hadn't taken general relativity, so basically I was waaaaaay behind form the start. Ended up dropping the class a few weeks in.

[WhenPeonsAttack]

Intermediate Accounting II. At that point, I had my first accounting course only 3 semesters ago, and first, the mechanics are very different from any other subject - this isn't something I had been doing in some form since elementary school or even high school. Second, you have to learn every rule for every situation, and I've always been much better at conceptual classes. Third, I was at that fuzzy midpoint in college where I had never worked an accounting job, wasn't really driven, and started questioning if I was in the right major. Fourth, I had skated by pretty well with stuff before that, relying on a good memory and my conceptual understanding, and this class kicked my ass because I didn't put in enough time or effort. I dropped the class and retook it the next semester, passing with a B.

[ReddFoxxofHell]

Combinatorics and what ever the follow up course was. Oh also the class where I had to program (code writing) linear algebra and calculus formulas to do different tasks

[TheBlackElf]

Machine Learning; the professor opened by saying that it was a very theoretical, not at all
hands-on course about the subject (which is how it's usually thaught). I thought I knew math
up to that course, damn.

Generally, it was really really interesting and I would have enjoyed it a lot to just spectate,
but the impending doom of having to pass an exam sucked.

It was literally the last exam of my life and I had about one month to prepare for it after
I finished the rest. There were no retakes and failing it would imply spending another semester
in Switzerland with no funding; there's only so many times you go through it all until you feel
you know the stuff, but there are still two weeks and you feel you're slacking and Diablo 3
has been released and aaaaargh.

[g3.SneakS]

I think that class difficulty has more to do with the particular professor and the requirements of the class than the subject matter of the class itself. The class I struggled in most was probably epistemology. I never knew wtf was going on in that class lol

[mountain dew]

In high school: Physics and AlgIII/Trigonometry were my toughest classes. It was a little frustrating getting an EASY A in AlgII and then getting destroyed in Trig and having to go back down to AlgII, get another easy A, then do horribly again in Trig. It's just not for me.

In college: 2nd year Music History was notoriously difficult in the school I went to. Honestly, most of my Undergrad courses just involved doing the work, not necessarily the degree of difficulty. Balancing homework with rehearsals and practice time was definitely an issue during some quarters. Then again, a lot of concepts that came easily to me, like music theory, took others multiple tries to pass. Apples and oranges I suppose!

[<3Chicas]

CS 473 Algorithms - Basically solving abstract "computer science" problems using one or more of the 9 or so known algorithms. This was also one of the more enjoyable classes I've taken as well. I've never had a problem in the industry that was even one half as challenging as some of the homework questions I had to solve.

[enO]

lower-middle