<p>Easiest: Expository Writing (Immigration in America) — interesting subject and writing is easy. Three 5-10 page essays in a semester is a light load. </p>
<p>Hardest: </p>
<p>Honors Intermediate Microeconomic Theory —*test averages were in the 30s, and though it was curved, I felt really pathetic never getting any higher than an un-curved D. I’m not used to doing so poorly. The material was complicated, but not that bad. However, we had an hour and a half to take tests that would’ve taken about thrice that to complete well. And the grading was extremely tough. I lost points for really, really minor things. (And, of course, major things. But the minor stuff hurt more, since I disagreed with it.)</p>
<p>Linear Algebra and Real Analysis I — THIS CLASS WAS RIDICULOUS. We had to memorize twenty some proofs that were really long and tedious, and then reproduce them on tests. EVEN IF THERE WERE MORE ELEGANT PROOFS THAT WERE RIGOROUS. This would be easy, really but I can’t stand wasting my time, and so I just proved them in the simpler ways on tests and got points off. The material was pretty simplistic, though. He asked questions on problem sets in really convoluted ways, and I spent about three hours a week just figuring out what he wanted me to do. Doing it was always quick and simple. I hate classes that juxtapose easy material with fifteen page syllabi full of hoops to jump through. They are the hardest.</p>
<p>Easiest: Intro to Physics. Took AP physics in high school, but school didn’t take credit for the AP Physics B exam. Flew through this course without any trouble mainly because I have a knack for it and I knew a lot of the material coming into the class.</p>
<p>Hardest: Fundamentals of Heat and Mass Transfer. By far the toughest class I’ve EVER taken in my life. This class requires the student to have a thorough understanding of fluid mechanics and thermodynamics to really grasp an understanding of the phenomena that are covered in that class. The difficulty was also compounded by the fact that the teacher was a HARD-ASS. Ultimately, I was extremely happy to finish the class and never look back again.</p>
<p>^ you talking about convection, conduction and radiation? It really depends on your professor and your understanding of diff eq. If you know how to setup your problems and apply the right equations, that class shouldn’t be too bad. Most chem engineering majors around here b*tch about o-chem the most.</p>
<p>The biggest pain in the ass in any engineering discipline, imo, are the labs. You have to have a good partner, you have to make the TA’s like you -because they grade your papers, you have to spend a ridiculous amount of time doing the calculations even though it’s only worth 20% of the grade. It’s just BS. I hear senior design is even worse. If you don’t pick the right people to be part of your group, game over.</p>
<p>Easiest: Japanese I. I had already learned a bit of the speaking and writing of the language, so picking up the rest of the fundamentals was easy. I wish I had continued with the language - I only took Japanese I, because I found out halfway through the course that I needed two years of Japanese before I could do my college’s year-long exchange program with a Japanese college and I didn’t start until my sophomore year because of bad advising. Ugh. Still regret that.</p>
<p>Hardest: Intermediate French II. The professor breezed in the first day and started speaking rapidly in French. No one understood her. The rest of the class went downhill from there. She really emphasized the speaking and listening whereas my previous French language classes emphasized reading and writing, so while I was a decent reader/writer in French I was really bad at the listening and speaking. Her exams had listening components and oh, how I sucked. I did manage to pull a B- in that class though.</p>
<p>Honorable mention goes to Theories and Techniques of Counseling. The professor’s exams were absurdly specific - she wanted you to know tiny details of about a 15 different counseling techniques. We used to joke that she’d want you to identify the 16th word in the third paragraph of page 226 in a closed-book test. And she didn’t actually teach the class - her method of “teaching” was to split our class up into groups of 2 and have us each take 2 counseling techniques - one before the midterm, and one after - and do a presentation on it that lasted most of the class period. We were graded on the presentations (and whether we included the very specific detailed information) and then we had to rely on the quality of our classmates’ presentations when we took the exams. Luckily, that seemed to be the kind of class where a C was a good grade on the exam, so I somehow managed to get an A- in the class even though I’m pretty sure I got a D on the first exam and a C on the second.</p>
<p>Easiest: Probably calc I and II, because I had studied all of the material before so I never had to pay attention in lecture or anything, I just handed in my homeworks and did the tests. But that doesn’t really count because I had spent like a year studying math at home before going to college. An intro econ was easy for the same reason: I’m an amateur econ enthusiast. So the easiest normal course where I hadn’t studied the whole shebang in advance was probably geology because the exams were multiple choice and there was no homework, just labs (that a monkey could do). Interesting course and I learned a lot, but difficult it was not.</p>
<p>Hardest: Probably the second in the intermediate classical mechanics sequence, because this was the one that covered angular momentum (in three dimensions), gyroscopic precession, etc. with the full vector/inertial tensor treatment. IOW, possibly the most difficult-to-grasp, counter-intuitive topics in classical physics <em>with</em> a lot of new mathematical concepts thrown your way. Even the author of the textbook, a Harvard professor, said it made his brain hurt to try to understand gyroscopic precession from an intuitive, non-mathematical viewpoint.</p>
<p>Yes, more or less. As with any class in college, professor does make a pretty big difference and that’s probably what affected my perception of the class. I failed miserably on his exams :(</p>
<p>I’d be hard for me to pick an easiest. Easiest conceptually, easiest to get an A?</p>
<p>Hardest, I’d say Data Structures simply because the format of the class seemed to be “We’re going to do a bad job of teaching this and we’re not going to help you learn the material because we want to enforce a strict curve here and we need reasons to justify it.” There were no resources to help us learn the material. In addition, the break down of the class was 1/3 knew everything already going into the class, 1/3 knew a significant portion going into the class, 1/3 didn’t know anything, and I was in that last 1/3. It’s not the most conceptually difficult, not even close, but the format of the class really made it very difficult.</p>
<p>@JimboSteve: Higher algebra and intro analysis are usually meant as a first course in proof based mathematics applied to precalc/calc, and while I understand why you feel the crap they teach in most undergrad analysis courses are contrived and overly complicated, you still need to realize that the goal of these courses isn’t to teach you how to solve algebraic or transcendental systems or understanding their properties all over again (they could just put you in 2 more semesters of 101 math for that). At the end of the course, you should be able to feel comfortable drawing connections between different proofs (this s*** is harder than it sounds) and learn how to turn handwaving arguments (intuition) into formal proofs. While some professors may occasionally accept handwavy arguments (for example, simple geometric intuition during the beginning of combinatorial topo is okay), it’s usually only as a courtesy during the beginning of the course to settle the students into the groove; instinctively starting your proofs from scratch will literally get exponentially harder as the course goes on.</p>
<p>I don’t think there is an easiest course but what I know almost every courses is kinda difficult it usually depends on how you handle it. Of course, no matter how difficult it is if you like what you are doing then there’s no reason for you not to be good at it.</p>
<p>Easiest:
-Intro to Comp Sci: I knew all the covered in the course before I came to college, lol.
-Intro to Sociology: It was an amazing course. I learned a lot about groups of people. But it was a totally blow-off class. Three 4-page essays, that’s it.</p>
<p>Hardest:
-Computer Organization: Hands down the hardest course I’ve taken. A lot of assembly/hardware stuff. Did not really know what was going in the class. Barely pulled of an A with 40% curve on the final (that’s how hard it was).</p>
<p>Easiest: A geology course, The Earth’s Environments. It was early high school level stuff. So boring.</p>
<p>Hardest: Advertising Design. For the first 2/3 of the semester, everything had to be done by hand, in marker with extreme precision. A single smudge or shaky line would get you 20% counted off. Then, when we moved to computer design, we had to replicate our designs so exactly that you could put the hand drawn copy and computer copy on top of one another and they would be perfectly aligned. It was a pain in the ass. I spent hours on the assignments. Never again.</p>
<p>Hardest: calc 2, gen chem lab 2. Gen chem lab only because of my GA. He was terrible and he gave me my lowest grade of the semester, a B. Calc 2 was by far the worst class I ever took in college though. I had the same teacher for Clac 1 and I got an A in that class. I had him again for calc 2 and the material was harder to understand. I got a B and I’m an A student usually. Thank God that I’m done with heavy duty math. </p>
<p>Easiest: American history, public speaking, and biology. History, especially US history is an easy A for me. Public speaking was the EASIEST college class I took so far. We had a take home midterm and she gave everyone 100s. I thought I bombed some of my speeches and she gave me grades in the 90s all the time. We didn’t even do outlines or anything like that we just had to hand in our sources. The class was small so that made it easier to. Biology because I’m a bio major and I love the subject. That also comes easy to me.</p>
<p>Easiest: Intro to US history (knew all the material already, A- for zero effort.), and Political theory (lectured/tested straight from the book, final not required if over a certain grade. I took the A- and an easy finals load).</p>
<p>Hardest: Philosophy of Law (upper level philosophy course, TA was an extremely hard grader for tests/papers. Great material and I loved both my TA and professor, but I worked for that A!), Constitutional Law (professor was fantastic, but I was not prepared for the difficulty of her papers- first time doing legal research… Oy. And her tests were some of the most difficult I’ve ever taken. B+ and thankful), and American Legal History (200 + pages of reading a week, majority primary sources, harsh grader for a TA, and some hard tests. Tests were hard because we had an hour to write four essays and identify quotes from documents. That was painful. A- FTW.)</p>
<p>I would say my easiest was either Intro to Ethics or Public Speaking. </p>
<p>Hardest would be either Organic Chem or Biochem. Organic chem was probably harder but it was much more interesting to me. Biochem was not as interesting since I am not much of a biology fan.</p>
<p>The easiest courses: Calculus I & II, Chemistry I & II, and Honors Logic. </p>
<p>The hardest courses: Composition I & II. My professor was writing his Ph.D thesis, so he was pretty much grading our papers in like 15 minutes. Although I did feel a sense of lack in that area, there was still no way I deserved a “B.” Ergo, people should research their professors before they take a class, especially if you feel doubtful. Ratemyprofessor.com was helpful. </p>
<p>Easiest: Multivariable Calculus–adding a variable or two is no big deal, Physics Mechanics–high school physics + calculus (for mechanics, but yes for E/M) is also no big deal.</p>
<p>Hardest: Intro to Logic Design. Not the hardest topic, just that it has industry expectations and the exams have material not covered in the homework or lectures, might be somewhere in the badly written not even required textbook. The labs are pretty hard as we are basically thrown into a lab session in which we have to program (in a hardware language the professor or lab instructor doesn’t even teach you) specific “logic designs” and projects to a circuit board. And it’s frustrating because oftentimes, things simply don’t work and we don’t know what the heck we are doing. Certainly picking up skills companies want you to have though haha ;)</p>
<p>The easiest course I’ve ever taken at my university since I transferred was Music of East Asia. I already had some background knowledge of East Asian music from taking a World Music class back in community college, so I was familiar with most terms used. </p>
<p>Eazy E: gotta be a toss up between Ethics and Government. I say those with respect to the material being taught. Government was like a 9th grade Social Studies class, although it did spurn my Democratic side :)! Honestly though people, I think we would all agree that it’s all about your professor when it comes to getting a good grade. If the teacher doesn’t like you, class can be difficult! Sometimes you get a crappy teacher who you don’t like! It doesn’t matter what they say, you just don’t hear it. I guess i have Ethics on here because I enjoyed the material so much and real got into it. Can’t say I had that enthusiasm for some later classes!</p>
<p>Dizzy Difficult: Managerial Accounting This class was a pressure cooker and the final was 20% of grade and took 3 hours! We had to do all the work online, but sometimes its just hard to get all the numbers right. Figuring out what needs to be debited and credited with respect to costs of materials sold blah blah blah It was just a jumbled freaking mess of numbers and you got 20 different calculations that are based on 4 different numbers. A lot of work to say the least.</p>