Most Boring/Hated Subject That You're Forced to Take?

[InvalidID]

Studying for an engineering economics test. Most boring thing ever. It is supposed to be easy, but I find it hard because it isn't intellectually challenging enough to interest me.

 

[Kholdstare]

Anything coming out of humanities department.

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

Engineering economics. Is that like how to make a project come in under budget? Are you hoping to get a job with a govt contractor?

 

[QuarkCharmer]

Anything coming out of humanities department.

I took a history of sciences course as an elective way back when. It was fantastic and even touched on the general idea of how many mankind-altering equations work (with simple algebra and intuition, it was an elective afterall). I took it around my third year when I was a music student and I think it played a major role when I re-evaluated my life and decided to go back to school for physics.


I really hate law/politics related anything. Economics, government, all of that.

 

[InvalidID]

I took a history of sciences course as an elective way back when. It was fantastic and even touched on the general idea of how many mankind-altering equations work (with simple algebra and intuition, it was an elective afterall). I took it around my third year when I was a music student and I think it played a major role when I re-evaluated my life and decided to go back to school for physics.


I really hate law/politics related anything. Economics, government, all of that.

Sweet. I am going to take that as an elective.

Engineering economics. Is that like how to make a project come in under budget? Are you hoping to get a job with a govt contractor?

So far, all we've been doing is interest.

 

[Astronuc]

Studying for an engineering economics test. Most boring thing ever. It is supposed to be easy, but I find it hard because it isn't intellectually challenging enough to interest me.

Engineering economics came in handy when I bought a new car while in graduate school. I had done some programs in my calculator, which was programmable. The dealer agent was going to give me a 'great deal' on the interest rate. I pulled out the calculator, put in the numbers, and showed him that it wasn't a great deal (I was paying more for the car). He looked at me, excused himself, came back, and gave me a better deal. I saved on the order of $1000, which is pretty significant for a grad student ~27 years ago.

The one class I did not like was an English literature class. I could not analyze poetry to save my life. I just didn't get it. Maybe today, I could do better.

 

[WannabeNewton]

I can only state high school classes because I'm still in my first year of college so I can't really assess anything yet in that regard, if that is ok. By far, english literature and french were two classes I was forced to take that I absolutely loathed. They were easily the most useless classes I have ever had the misfortune of being forced to sit through for 4 years; such a waste of time that it should be a crime.

 

[FreeMitya]

I haven't been to university yet but I hated having to take French. Useful and sometimes even necessary, sure, but entirely uninteresting to me. Moreover, I think even its so-called "beauty" is exaggerated. Hungarian, now that's a beautiful language.

 

[FreeMitya]

I can only state high school classes because I'm still in my first year of college so I can't really assess anything yet in that regard, if that is ok. By far, english literature and french were two classes I was forced to take that I absolutely loathed. They were easily the most useless classes I have ever had the misfortune of being forced to sit through for 4 years; such a waste of time that it should be a crime.

It's a shame how many younger people are beginning to loathe literature classes when the older people I meet generally liked/loved them. I guess it's a testament to how poorly they're often taught these days.

 

[trollcast]

I'm only at the UK equivalent of high school level but from the past I'd have to say that I actually enjoyed my literature class but hated the english language class (too much creativity and analysis of stupid stuff [like a book blurb wtf?])

Most hated class for me was probably religous studies, absolutely bored me to death most weeks, there was near zero biblical content and most of it was stupid ethics and morals issues.

 

[WannabeNewton]

It's a shame how many younger people are beginning to loathe literature classes when the older people I meet generally liked/loved them. I guess it's a testament to how poorly they're often taught these days.

I have no use for them. I have never had any use for them. I doubt this will change in the future. Like I said: it is a total waste of time. I can read books for enjoyment on my own time but I don't need some english teacher to pick apart every single sentence of a book and fabricate some metaphor or allusion or profound statement about the human condition when it was just some mundane line meant to be read literally. The things people do to make a subject more important than it actually is just blows my mind you know what I mean? English literature classes have ruined my love for reading fiction books. Everything from Catcher in the Rye to A Clockwork Orange, which sit on the pedestal of 'greatest books ever made', were totally picked apart and analyzed to the bone for no reason other than to make substance out of a no substance class.

 

[micromass]

I have no use for them. I have never had any use for them. I doubt this will change in the future. Like I said: it is a total waste of time. I can read books for enjoyment on my own time but I don't need some english teacher to pick apart every single sentence of a book and fabricate some metaphor or allusion or profound statement about the human condition when it was just some mundane line meant to be read literally. The things people do to make a subject more important than it actually is just blows my mind you know what I mean? English literature classes have ruined my love for reading fiction books. Everything from Catcher in the Rye to A Clockwork Orange, which sit on the pedestal of 'greatest books ever made', were totally picked apart and analyzed to the bone for no reason other than to make substance out of a no substance class.

Furthermore, forcing people to read certain books is not a very good thing, in my opinion. I actually love reading, but I want to read the books that I choose, not the book that the teacher chooses. Because I was forced to read certain books, that really made me hate literature for a while. It's only recently that I rediscovered how fun reading can be.

 

[FreeMitya]

I have no use for them. I have never had any use for them. I doubt this will change in the future. Like I said: it is a total waste of time. I can read books for enjoyment on my own time but I don't need some english teacher to pick apart every single sentence of a book and fabricate some metaphor or allusion or profound statement about the human condition when it was just some mundane line meant to be read literally. The things people do to make a subject more important than it actually is just blows my mind you know what I mean?

I'm sorry you feel that way. I think a good teacher can really enhance the work or, more importantly, can turn people into lifelong independent reading addicts. Harold Bloom, for example, is known for that*. Unfortunately, it's very easy to screw up a literature class, especially if the teacher incorporates politics or something of the like. On the other hand, I've met many people who struggle to realize the beauty and importance of mathematics, which I also attribute to poor teaching.

*Perhaps I should say that that is form the description of my copy of How to Read and Why, just in case that is information that some think should be verified.

 

[WannabeNewton]

I'm sorry you feel that way. I think a good teacher can really enhance the work or, more importantly, can turn people into lifelong independent reading addicts. Harold Bloom, for example, is known for that. Unfortunately, it's very easy to screw up a literature class, especially if the teacher incorporates politics or something of the like.

I love reading. The issue isn't reading. The issue is english teachers stripping apart every line of a book trying to extend some long discussion about the damn color of a room. I see no use in any of this.

 

[trollcast]

I love reading. The issue isn't reading. The issue is english teachers stripping apart every line of a book trying to extend some long discussion about the damn color of a room. I see no use in any of this.

Exactly, obvious themes such as Animal Farm, 1984 et al. are good to talk about but trying to add meaning to something like a poem about frogs is silly

 

[FreeMitya]

I love reading. The issue isn't reading. The issue is english teachers stripping apart every line of a book trying to extend some long discussion about the damn color of a room. I see no use in any of this.

Often teaching can be just plain bad, and you've provided a good example of it, but I don't think that necessarily means that the practice of studying literature in school is intrinsically useless. I'll say it again, and I know it's cliched, but good teaching can make a huge difference.

 

[HeLiXe]

I would prefer a chorus of people scratching their nails against chalkboards than to sit through another algebraic derivation in my astrophysics class.

 

[QuarkCharmer]

I would prefer a chorus of people scratching their nails against chalkboards than to sit through another algebraic derivation in my astrophysics class.

Okay, you win.

I had the (dis)pleasure of sitting through that as well in an astronomy course.

 

[lisab]

Philosophy of Science was damn painful.

 

[micromass]

Philosophy of Science was damn painful.

Oh god, don't remind me...

 

[member 392791]

As far as classes that I'm forced to take for my major, I would say organic chemistry. For classes that aren't related, I don't care for art classes much

 

[HeLiXe]

Okay, you win.

I had the (dis)pleasure of sitting through that as well in an astronomy course.

lol well at least I know there is hope for survival as you made it through.

 

[Sayajin]

I have no use for them. I have never had any use for them. I doubt this will change in the future. Like I said: it is a total waste of time. I can read books for enjoyment on my own time but I don't need some english teacher to pick apart every single sentence of a book and fabricate some metaphor or allusion or profound statement about the human condition when it was just some mundane line meant to be read literally. The things people do to make a subject more important than it actually is just blows my mind you know what I mean? English literature classes have ruined my love for reading fiction books. Everything from Catcher in the Rye to A Clockwork Orange, which sit on the pedestal of 'greatest books ever made', were totally picked apart and analyzed to the bone for no reason other than to make substance out of a no substance class.

I agree with this.
They really should stop teaching this BS in high school. It's really annoying when you have a poem containing no more than 50 words and you have to write essay ~500 words about it in which you have to repeat the garbage that you were hearing for hours and hours.
The other big problem is that teachers assume that you have to understand their methaphors or whatever and that the author actualy ment them. In fact the only way methaphor or something like that can be understood is by assuming that the people reading it have the same or close thinking to you. For people that find math and physics beautiful there is no way to understand their symbols methaphors and enjoy their literature.
If there was a way to encode information in methaphors and stuff that you could make so much from 1 sentence people would be using it for achieving better data compression.
The sad thing is that literature people don't realize that. For them if you "can't understand the profound meaning of things" you are just an idiot.

Another subject ( maybe worse? ) is philosophy and everything related. In my HS our philosophy textbook actualy was trying to disprove Evolution by using statistics and saying that the probability for life to emerge and evolve to human is so low that it wouldn't be probable for this to happen even for the entire age of the universe.
Other lesson in the same textbook was about methaphysics and it was saying that "its very easy to detect even the hardest to be seen particles like neutrino because you can experiment and see them but methaphysics can describe reality above the laws of physics.".
The guy who wrote the textbook had Ph.D on philosophy and many other fancy things.
Nevertheless the whole book was about how everything other except philosophy is useless.
I am not even joking with this one. I never understood who in the world permited this to be studied in official high school.

 

[Len M]

Another subject ( maybe worse? ) is philosophy and everything related. In my HS our philosophy textbook actualy was trying to disprove Evolution by using statistics and saying that the probability for life to emerge and evolve to human is so low that it wouldn't be probable for this to happen even for the entire age of the universe...

...The guy who wrote the textbook had Ph.D on philosophy and many other fancy things.
Nevertheless the whole book was about how everything other except philosophy is useless.
I am not even joking with this one. I never understood who in the world permited this to be studied in official high school.

Philosophy within science clarifies the framework from within which the scientific method operates. It has no remit in determining the validity of a scientific model within its domain of applicability, that validity starts and ends with empirical verification. But extrapolation of the model outside of it's domain of applicability with no corresponding empirical verification of that extrapolation is a legitimate target for philosophical clarification. Maybe the probabilities for life to emerge are so low as to make it an untenable model in terms of possible empirical verification, I don't know. I'm not hinting at intelligent design or anything here at all, I'm simply wondering about the context of the book you describe - I'm suggesting that you perhaps need to understand the remit of scientific models when reading associated philosophical text, the former deals quite clearly with the scientific method, domains of applicability and empirical verification, the latter conjectures about those models as they might apply outside of the domains of applicability and outside of potential empirical verification. As soon as the model becomes a verified model then philosophy has nothing to say about it in terms of its applicability and its scientific "truth" within its domain of applicability.

 

[AnTiFreeze3]

Philosophy within science clarifies the framework from within which the scientific method operates. It has no remit in determining the validity of a scientific model within its domain of applicability, that validity starts and ends with empirical verification. But extrapolation of the model outside of it's domain of applicability with no corresponding empirical verification of that extrapolation is a legitimate target for philosophical clarification. Maybe the probabilities for life to emerge are so low as to make it an untenable model in terms of possible empirical verification, I don't know. I'm not hinting at intelligent design or anything here at all, I'm simply wondering about the context of the book you describe - I'm suggesting that you perhaps need to understand the remit of scientific models when reading associated philosophical text, the former deals quite clearly with the scientific method, domains of applicability and empirical verification, the latter conjectures about those models as they might apply outside of the domains of applicability and outside of potential empirical verification. As soon as the model becomes a verified model then philosophy has nothing to say about it in terms of its applicability and its scientific "truth" within its domain of applicability.

No, it clarified the scientific method. Past tense. Philosophy has no use in science beyond what it has previously attributed.

 

[wannab]

None. I'm glad I took all subjects that I did. At the time I thought Latin was a chore but wish now that I didn't drop it.

 

[Len M]

No, it clarified the scientific method. Past tense. Philosophy has no use in science beyond what it has previously attributed.

I thought that's what I said!:

"Philosophy has no remit within empirically verified models created within the scientific method".
(or words to that effect).

However, to address what I think you may be getting at, the creation of a model outside of possible empirical verification (for me) turns that form of inquiry into "something" other than science (in terms of the scientific method needing to achieve empirical verification, or at least in principle being able to achieve verification). How that "something" is defined depends on the individual, for me it can be the subject of philosophical inquiry as much as scientific inquiry, for others it may also involve (in a small or large part) a "flash" of inspiration, even driven by a dream. But until (and not before) that inquiry (in all its various modes) reaches an hypothesis that allows for empirical verification then it is not (in my view) primarily science - it is "something" fed by many modes of thought. The icing on the cake from that point is empirical verification being confirmed (or not), then the predictive model becomes a scientific "truth" within its domain of applicability (on the basis that the verification is positive) and is not then subject to any philosophical inquiry apart from its ontological status in terms of realism or idealism. In fact I would go as far to say that the empirically verified predictive model is set in stone (within its domain of applicability) and thus represents the only source of knowledge (of the physical world) that we can ascribe a "truth" status to and defines for me the power of the scientific method. But that status is limited and is "true" only within the reality it was created (i.e empirical reality) and hence can only be extrapolated outside of empirical reality as a philosophical conjecture via whatever version of realism one adopts. (Or of course you could choose to deny an independent reality and invoke idealism). Neither stance impacts the power of the predictive model, rather it places the model in a context of scientific applicability (within empirical reality) and philosophical conjecture (within independent reality (or in the case of idealism within nothing)).

So by emphasizing a distinction between an empirically verified model (following the scientific method) and a model that lay beyond empirical verification, I was trying to give Sayajin a context in which he could (perhaps) properly judge the book he mentions.

 

[Sayajin]

No, it clarified the scientific method. Past tense. Philosophy has no use in science beyond what it has previously attributed.

To be even more precise. The only reason that Philosophy contributed to science is that for some reason the word Physics wasn't popular in the time of Newton so he had to use the word philosophy in his famous book. What he ment actualy was Physics. If we correct this mistake we can now say that philosophy never had any inpact on real science.
All the philosophy before and after Newton including the ancient greeks turned out to be wrong. No philosophical theory ever had experimental confirmation or some use to describe fenomenon in the real world.
Further more I think that having to study this in high school is unacceptable.
I would really want to post some picture of the referred philosophy book from my previews post but It's not in English.

The thing is that in Science people use advanced equipment and math and try to understand very strange things in the universe. It could turn out that our human race is not smart enough to even be able to understand all physics laws. Even the physics that we know today like GR and QM is very hard to be explained without math (almoast impossible).
With that said some philosophers try to explain why the nature( the universe or whatever you call everything real(reality?)) is the way it is and why it has this laws WITHOUT actualy knowing the laws or having any mathematical knowlege. Just from pure talking a lot of useless words. Yeah right...

 

[G01]

Philosophy of Science was damn painful.

Oh god, don't remind me...

I enjoy philosophy of science quite a bit. I think it's important to analyze the thought processes that go into science. I know quite a few people who are trained in science yet have no idea, beyond some vague idea of the existence of the scientific method, what science actually entails.

To be recursive, I think that thinking about the ways in which we think is important.

 

[Len M]

To be even more precise. The only reason that Philosophy contributed to science is that for some reason the word Physics wasn't popular in the time of Newton so he had to use the word philosophy in his famous book. What he ment actualy was Physics. If we correct this mistake we can now say that philosophy never had any inpact on real science.
All the philosophy before and after Newton including the ancient greeks turned out to be wrong. No philosophical theory ever had experimental confirmation or some use to describe fenomenon in the real world.
Further more I think that having to study this in high school is unacceptable.
I would really want to post some picture of the referred philosophy book from my previews post but It's not in English.

The thing is that in Science people use advanced equipment and math and try to understand very strange things in the universe. It could turn out that our human race is not smart enough to even be able to understand all physics laws. Even the physics that we know today like GR and QM is very hard to be explained without math (almoast impossible).
With that said some philosophers try to explain why the nature( the universe or whatever you call everything real(reality?)) is the way it is and why it has this laws WITHOUT actualy knowing the laws or having any mathematical knowlege. Just from pure talking a lot of useless words. Yeah right...

But science is practiced in terms of empiricism (at least if you consider verification to be a proper part of science) and empiricism can only be practiced with our involvement. So we need to ask ourselves what the relationship is between a reality that involves us and a reality that is independent of us. That relationship cannot be addressed through the scientific method because we are an intrinsic part of establishing an empirically verified model, we can't verify a model of independent reality! So we have to invoke theories of realism or idealism to express the relationship between empirical reality and independent reality (though in the case of idealism no independent reality is assumed to even exist). None of those can be proven or disproven, so the extrapolation of a scientific model to independent reality turns that model into a philosophical conjecture within independent reality. The particular flavour of realism or idealism that is adopted becomes a philosophical stance from which you interpret the models and their relevance to independent reality. But that's all it can ever be (an interpretation) whereas the scientific model, within empirical reality is a scientific truth (within its domain of applicability). But having made the distinction between a model having a scientific truth within empirical reality and that same model having philosophical conjecture within independent reality one then is much clearer as to the role of philosophical thinking within science. Philosophy has no role to play within the domain of applicability of an empirically verified model, but outside of that domain, either within independent reality or as part of a hypothesis that in principle cannot be empirically verified, then philosophical thinking is as valid as any other mode of thought. At least that's the case if we adopt a bottom line of science as requiring empirical verification. If we don't adopt that premise then I'm not sure what science then becomes, certainly not the science I relate to.

So when you read that book, what is the author referring to? Is he dealing with unverifiable models and philosophical thinking or is he saying that empirically verified models can be proven wrong by philosophy? The former case invokes philosophical thinking and is legitimate (though not in any sense of proving or disproving), the latter is clearly wrong because the only premise by which an empirical model can be shown to be incorrect is through the process of empirical verification.

 

[DiracPool]

Natural History of Aquatic Invertebrates

I had to take this as a biology undergrad. It seemed to be the least boring of the pool of courses I could take for whatever section requirement it fulfilled. In any case, I thought it might be fun, it involved taking several field trips down to Bodega Bay, and other lakes and pools around the SF bay area to take samples, etc., and study them back at the lab. Unfortunately, the only thing I remember from the course and therefore took out of it was this exercise whereby we had to remember the shell patterns of something like several hundred mollusks. And we were quizzed on this. It was like someone gave you the fingerprints of a 1000 convicts and the quiz was going to be on your identification of these patterns and hierarchical relations between them.. I remember thinking, this is a skill I really AM not going to ever use...and I never have.

 

[Hercuflea]

Classes I hate, in approximate order: discrete math esp. COMBINATORICS, econometrics, any Literature, statistics, marketing, English, political "science," management, "sociology," "environmental" classes, art

Indifferent: psychology, Computer Sci., music, thermodynamics (I like it but so far I suck at it)

Classes I love: Linear Algebra, Diff. Eq and PDE's, Calculus, Complex Analysis (although it blew my mind), Nuclear Engineering, Physics, Chemistry, Economics, History (don't like the attitudes of the profs though)

Classes I have yet to experience: Real Analysis, Functional Analysis, Abstract Algebra, modern physics, numerical analysis, nuclear reactor physics, plasma physics, organic/inorganic/physical chemistry, differential geometry, topology, knot theory (sounds awesome)

 

[micromass]

Classes I hate, in approximate order: discrete math esp. COMBINATORICS, econometrics, any Literature, statistics, marketing, English, political "science," management, "sociology," "environmental" classes, art

Indifferent: psychology, Computer Sci., music, thermodynamics (I like it but so far I suck at it)

Classes I love: Linear Algebra, Diff. Eq and PDE's, Calculus, Complex Analysis (although it blew my mind), Nuclear Engineering, Physics, Chemistry, Economics, History (don't like the attitudes of the profs though)

Classes I have yet to experience: Real Analysis, Functional Analysis, Abstract Algebra, modern physics, numerical analysis, nuclear reactor physics, plasma physics, organic/inorganic/physical chemistry, differential geometry, topology, knot theory (sounds awesome)

I know it's completely off topic, but I find it weird that you can take complex analysis without having taken real analysis...

 

[AnTiFreeze3]

But science is practiced in terms of empiricism (at least if you consider verification to be a proper part of science) and empiricism can only be practiced with our involvement. So we need to ask ourselves what the relationship is between a reality that involves us and a reality that is independent of us. That relationship cannot be addressed through the scientific method because we are an intrinsic part of establishing an empirically verified model, we can't verify a model of independent reality! So we have to invoke theories of realism or idealism to express the relationship between empirical reality and independent reality (though in the case of idealism no independent reality is assumed to even exist). None of those can be proven or disproven, so the extrapolation of a scientific model to independent reality turns that model into a philosophical conjecture within independent reality. The particular flavour of realism or idealism that is adopted becomes a philosophical stance from which you interpret the models and their relevance to independent reality. But that's all it can ever be (an interpretation) whereas the scientific model, within empirical reality is a scientific truth (within its domain of applicability). But having made the distinction between a model having a scientific truth within empirical reality and that same model having philosophical conjecture within independent reality one then is much clearer as to the role of philosophical thinking within science. Philosophy has no role to play within the domain of applicability of an empirically verified model, but outside of that domain, either within independent reality or as part of a hypothesis that in principle cannot be empirically verified, then philosophical thinking is as valid as any other mode of thought. At least that's the case if we adopt a bottom line of science as requiring empirical verification. If we don't adopt that premise then I'm not sure what science then becomes, certainly not the science I relate to.

So when you read that book, what is the author referring to? Is he dealing with unverifiable models and philosophical thinking or is he saying that empirically verified models can be proven wrong by philosophy? The former case invokes philosophical thinking and is legitimate (though not in any sense of proving or disproving), the latter is clearly wrong because the only premise by which an empirical model can be shown to be incorrect is through the process of empirical verification.

Just say that philosophy is valid (or at least, as valid as it can be) when pondering claims that can't be tested, and is illegitimate when pondering claims that can and have been tested. It's so much simpler without the garrulous bantering.

 

[Hercuflea]

I know it's completely off topic, but I find it weird that you can take complex analysis without having taken real analysis...

Hmm...well they did call it "complex variables" on the catalog, but the prof referred to the class as "complex analysis" in the syllabus and in person. And it required Vector/multi calc, but most of us were graduating/near graduating math seniors, and the class went over topics such as harmonic functions, differentiating/integrating complex functions, contour integrals, cauchy-riemann equations, cauchy integral formula, and residue theory. I think she planned on doing conformal mappings but never had time to teach it. It was the hardest class of my life actually.