Most Valuable Class You Took in College?

[Anonymous]

The most valuable classes I had were the ones where I learned how to write well. I work with engineers who are by and large very smart and intelligent people. And so many of them cannot communicate well in writing.

They design the aircraft, I fix their writing.

[Anonymous]

Got my BS degree in CS from UVA and MS in CS from CMU and honestly I learned absolutely NOTHING. I excel in my professional career from the soft skills I learned on the golf course in how to read people and study people behaviors. One very important thing that I also learned in college was to invest in myself, first and foremost.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Every undergrad should have:

An exercise class or 3-4 days a week in a sport or at the gym
A personal finance class ( or to know the difference between a stock and a bond, basic investing)
A basic statistics course
A nutrition class
An organizational behavior class
A negotiation class
A human sexuality class
A happiness or mental health class (like the popular happiness class at Harvard)
A non European or non American history or literature or religion class

LOL. You need 3 hours a week for a semester to understand the difference between a stock and a bond? Or a nutrition class? This has got to be a troll

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The most valuable classes I had were the ones where I learned how to write well. I work with engineers who are by and large very smart and intelligent people. And so many of them cannot communicate well in writing.

They design the aircraft, I fix their writing.

This is the right answer. Quality writing is key.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The most valuable classes I had were the ones where I learned how to write well. I work with engineers who are by and large very smart and intelligent people. And so many of them cannot communicate well in writing.

They design the aircraft, I fix their writing.

Did they go to sh1tty engineering schools? At the highly-rated schools there is a ton of writing in engineering.

[Anonymous]

Wines class. 🍷

[Anonymous]

Mathematics of Money. By far the best course I took in all four years.

[Anonymous]

Set theory or Discrete Mathematics
Data Structures
English

But it's not really the courses here, it's the lessons and way these classes were taught.
The first taught me what math really is and are why I won't up majoring in mathematics. The second is my best professor in undergrad and he challenged me like no one before or after. He didn't just let me smile and say I tried hard and ease in after a deadline, he docked my A programs into Bs. That hurt. The third is where I learned about plagiarism. It's not that I copied somebody else's work. But I did the same paper for multiple classes with slightly changed things here and there. One was as book report, one was a personal opinion but they were so related. He gave me a lecture on that and ethics and basically said I was half assing it. It helped me a lot. And while it took another decade before I really started to enjoy writing, I think about that now when I submit similar themed papers to multiple journals.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The most valuable classes I had were the ones where I learned how to write well. I work with engineers who are by and large very smart and intelligent people. And so many of them cannot communicate well in writing.

They design the aircraft, I fix their writing.

True for a long time but I suspect chatGPT will change this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Forgot a business writing class. How to write clearly and succinctly, especially in a business email.

This. Business writing. By far.

I wish everyone took business writing and would stop sending me rambling run-on paragraph emails with multiple key dates. If you have a key date - a meeting, training, out of uniform day, whatever it is, for the love of God, can you please put that in its own dedicated email? And give a heads up in the subject line too!


Example:


Subject: Team meeting on Dec. 20th at 2pm


Message: Please join us for the Team L meeting on Dec. 20th at 2pm in the conference room to discuss widgets. Materials are attached.

Regards,
Larla.


That's it. I don't want to have to search through your emails to Act V, stanza 4, paragraph billion, line 50, to realize you wanted to tell me there's a meeting or other event. Ok?

[Anonymous]

Statistics.

[Anonymous]

Two classes actually. Into to Micro Economics and Intro to Macro Economics. I use these classes almost daily to understand current events.

[Anonymous]

I feel like almost everything people listed should be covered in high school.

I’m not sure I learned anything super valuable academically in college. By and large it was easier/less work than high school (and I say that as a fairly technical major at a relatively prestigious school). The valuable part was learning independence and organization and life planning skills.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The most valuable classes I had were the ones where I learned how to write well. I work with engineers who are by and large very smart and intelligent people. And so many of them cannot communicate well in writing.

They design the aircraft, I fix their writing.

I can see the disconnect.

An engineer would simply answer the question. _____ Class.

You wrote 4 sentences without answering the question.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Every undergrad should have:

An exercise class or 3-4 days a week in a sport or at the gym
A personal finance class ( or to know the difference between a stock and a bond, basic investing)
A basic statistics course
A nutrition class
An organizational behavior class
A negotiation class
A human sexuality class
A happiness or mental health class (like the popular happiness class at Harvard)
A non European or non American history or literature or religion class

These should be taught in high school. Everyone should learn these, not just people who go to college.

I got about half of these in the school, and none whatsoever in college. College is for specialization in the things that matter in your life. There are no courses that “every undergrad should have”. The question to ask is “what are generally useful but often overlooked courses?”