ratbastid

Since we're on a college kick lately:

What's the coolest elective you've taken? Or the coolest course outside your major that you took to satisfy a requirement?

I was an English major, and I satisfied my science requirement with a Physics course on Musical Acoustics. That was pretty neat. The prof was one of those Mad Scientist types, who fired starters pistols to get source sounds to analyze and stuff like that. Pretty cool class.

My senior year, I'd pretty much satisfied my department's requirements, so I went wild with Art electives. Took a really great videography class, and computer animation. Fun stuff.

fienna

Renaissance Studies: Leonardo DaVinci - he was "Da" man - plus it was such a cool course to actually learn facts about him rather then the bullsh*t you think you know about him...

i gained a whole appreciation for art that i hadn't thought i was capable for in that class.

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phoenix1002

Haven't had a chance to take much in the way of electives in college, but in HS, I definitely would have to say Satire and Call of the Wild. Both were english electives, which were made up of two groups-the slackers, and the people who were actually interested. The high point in satire was when we read Swift's "A Modest Proposal" and most of the class thought it was real. Call of the Wild I sat through for the sole reason that we got out of school to go on an overnight backpacking trip. That was amusing... most of the other people on the trip had enough stuff for at least a week on their backs.

In college, I'm definitely with you on the art electives... I got almost all my core requirements out of the way freshman year, so I'm working on the prereqs for the metalsmithing class.

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I'd rather be climbing...

I approach college much like a recovering alcoholic--one day at a time...

ratbastid

Cool! That sounds great!

TaLoN

Wine Class... a class where drinking is welcomed

gov135

The History of Spying and Espionage

Very intense, very cool.

greytone

Fencing is clearly number one. Popular music, sociology, and logic where all good also. I also enjoy Law and Medicine in grad school.

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I was there to see beautiful naked women. So was everybody else. It's a common failing.
Robert A Heinlein in "They Do It With Mirrors"

Somenosuke

In my high school, there was no such thing as a "cool class" :P

But for HS, the class I liked the most was choir.

College.. Well thus far, the coolest classes I've taken have been: Latin American Culture and Civilization, and Human Sexuality, which I'm taking now. I'm hoping to take Arabic before I graduate. Dunno if that will be possible, but I'll try anyway! ^_^

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bfresh

History of Rock Music was my favorite.

greytone

I forgot about high school. I took outdoor education with a hiking trip and a white water canoe trip.

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I was there to see beautiful naked women. So was everybody else. It's a common failing.
Robert A Heinlein in "They Do It With Mirrors"

World's King

In high school the best elective I remeber was Bowling... We didn't get to drink or smoke but it was still great to leave school durning the day to go to a bowling alley.


I never took anything fun in college... I was focused... till I quit.

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Peetster

My major was Physics, so I took an elective Chemistry class, glassblowing. It was 1979, so much drug paraphenalia, alcohol stills, etc were being made by the students. Trippin! :-)

Lebell

Bowling.

Years back, Colorado School of Mines had a bowling alley in the student center and you could take bowling for the second half of your PE requirement.

Choir.

We also had a choir class that satisfied some other requirement. I took it every semester, since it was also an easy way to get an A for your gpa.

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"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." – C. S. Lewis

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Sticky

History of music.

A lot of listening to music in class.

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i8one2

Urban planning under my MIS degree program

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LordEden

Abnormal Psy! I loved that class and had a great teacher! She told me I should have been a case study in her book. She just kept repeating "Sometimes you just worry me."

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Zotz

During my last semester of college, I took a Speleology course. We went on three caving expeditions, one of which was an overnight camping trip in a cave. It was pretty freaky waking up but not knowing if your eyes were open. Total darkness!

yangwar

Next semester I'm taking a Philosophy of Science Fiction course. I can't wait!

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My mouth is a word factory.

Tirian

In college I took Orienteering and Wilderness first aid for PE.
That was fun (and useful)

Our orienteering final was to be blindfolded, dropped off in the woods with some maps, a compas and alitimiter, and three days to find our way back. Great fun.

Troublebot

Poetry Class:

Not a big poet, but it was creative and I got to show the mostly female class my sensitive side.

Civil War history:

Great teacher and an excellent topic. Made me realize how much I enjoyed studying history.

Rappelling and marksmenship:

When I was working for the Yearbook, a bunch of us needed our P.E. credit and took the class together. Funny to see a bunch of yearbook geeks rappelling down a three-story building and firing M-16's.

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Wind: [whistling] I hate you.

dimbulb

it HAS to be Wines... =)

also the only class with an age limit......
but being REQUIRED to drink during class....mmmmmm

frenik

In high school my coolest electives were bowling and welding class. In bowling class, we would bowl two games at the local lane three times a week, I actually got pretty good by the end of the class even though we never actually "learned" anything. In welding class we learned how to weld (duh). I'm now a decent welder, but haven't done it for a few years. It was a fun class because we never had to be really serious, and burned/melted everything we could get our hands on.

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I don't know what's worse, that I dreamed about putting my ex-girlfriend in a woodchipper, or that I woke up with an erection. - jim norton

troit

I took golf as my gym elective....

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I've yet to dephile myself...

tricks

Magic, Ritual, and Religion. It was about cults and drugs. And drugs used by cults.

Also, lots of cool honors courses. Only 10 or 12 people around a table instead of 300 in an autotorium. One was on the old t.v. show "The Prisoner." Another was on the origins of the U.S. Constitution. The Professor told the William Wallace story about 5 years before "Braveheart." Just like the movie.

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YzermanS19

Religion 106: Death and Immortality.

Best class I have ever taken.

Aside from My writing 100 class: Conciousness

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snowy

Being an English major I take lots of neat classes within my dept., so I haven't had the opportunity to take a lot of neat electives. I guess it's because the classes I thought would be neat turned out to be lame.

A lot of classes around here are restricted to majors--especially art classes. The one class I'm looking forward to taking next year is History of Sexuality. I think that will be an interesting elective. Otherwise, I've had great luck with my required courses--we have a lot of flexibility within our department, and I've taken things like Literature of the Early Renaissance and Women's Voices in American Literature.

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If I am not better, at least I am different. --Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Captain Canada

That might be the coolest class on earth.

Big Julie

Took an electronic music class in college. The 'studio' was a small room inna basement of the music department, and had two ARP2600's, a sequencer, and a battery of reel-to-reel tape decks, for multi-tracking. And a homemade spindle/stand for making tape loops...

So it was a few years ago.

way2young

My favorite elective (so far) has been "Knights, Peasants, and Bandits in Medieval England". My university also offers "History Through Comic Strips", "Genocide" and "The Apocalypse".

If only college was cheap enough to stay longer!

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Cyberhwk

Outside my major: History of Baseball
Requirement: Sex and Evolution

Slims

cryptology
fractals and chaos
and the history of war

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bundy

Japanese Animation next semester.
can't wait.

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krazykemist

Viking Mythology.
Nothing like the look I got from the other professors when making my way down the hall in full Viking battle dress.

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ratbastid

(I know I started the thread, but reading responses made me think of two more)

I took a Popular Lit course that was in my major, where I'd already read like half the material for the course.

I satisfied a PE credit with an archery course. THAT was fun, and I actually got to be a pretty damn good archer. I won the tournement we had at the last class, shooting 57 out of 60.

hrdwareguy

Beginning Bowling...of course I was already bowling on a league at the time.

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Fearless_Hyena

Criminolgy and/or Criminal Justice, those were 2 cool classes that I learned A LOT from, and they were cool as shit! Criminology gave some insight into the sociology of people who commit crimes, and some of the history behind it was really interesting. One of our textbooks was kind of a biography of a fence, it was fascinating to see how that guy thought.

My criminal justice class was taught by a defense attorney who really cared about the students' rights, and taught us a whole lot of ways to keep yourself from being burned by the system. Hard to think of how to explain it, but after taking that class I thought these were basic things that every student should know by their freshman year. For example, what to do and what not to do when the cops show up at your party for a noise violation, when they're really looking for drugs/underage drinking/etc which you may not be aware of. And how not to accidentally incriminate yourself for something beyond your control or that you weren't really involved in.

I also liked Specch Communications - theory of rhetoric and rhetorical analysis. It really puts political speeches, propaganda, advertising, and other politics into perspective.

If your school has any classes similar to these three, I can't recommend em enough!

apetaster

Economic Anthropoloy as taught by a non-liberal professor. Really interesting stuff, and the fact that I had a prof who didn't burn flags for kicks really made the class one of the few I looked forward to going to.

resipsa

Literature of the Cyberpunk. Best course evar.

Neuromancer, Idoru, Snow Crash, DADoES, Matrix, Lain...