What was the most USELESS extra curricular course you've ever taken?

[charlie and algernon]

In college, I took a semester course on Golf. :rofl:

My roommate and I both signed up for it and because we actually, you know, played golf before, we were leaps and bounds over the rest of the class. But it allowed us to spend a couple hours a week hitting golf balls into a net inside one of the gymnasiums. :rofl:

[kick-ass-bob]

1. Bowling.

I already knew how to bowl to the level that they could teach me :D

[madinmaryland]

2. Archery. I've never used it. At least billiards was fun and I got to use

it at the pool hall on the weekend!

[charlie and algernon]

3. A billiards course would've been very useful

I can't play pool to save my life. :blush:

[MilesColtrane]

4. Fencing

I haven't had to fend off any pirates lately.

[femmocrat]

18. I took fencing and I loved it!

We had to take 4 P.E. classes. It wasn't very useful, but I did enjoy it.

[MilesColtrane]

26. I really liked it too.

Our instructor was a badass. She had all kinds of state and regional titles, and I think she was contending for consideration on the US olympic team.

[Lars39]

5. Badminton

Tennis was full. :shrug::D

[FSogol]

10. I took badminton also. I can beat anyone at any picnic and can serve

hard enough to make any little kid cry. :shrug:

[Lars39]

24. Youch!

Not a totally worthless skill, then. :)

[LynneSin]

6. Genetics

Seriously, a semester of breeding fruit flies.

:grr:

[Duer 157099]

7. Now c'mon, you think they're going to breed themselves?

Not useless!

[LynneSin]

8. Do we even need fruit flies in this world?

I think not - It would have been more useful if I could determine how to make fruit flies extinct!

[Denninmi]

16. Mine wasn't a lab class, just classroom.

It was required for my major, I put it off until the next to last term. This was at Michigan State in the mid 1980's.

Well, I was hopelessly lost after Mendel and his peas. And, being a "herd" class of about 1000 students, getting any help from the professor or even a T.A. was basically out of the question (the T.A. could barely speak English).

After a while, I quit basically going to most of the lectures, gleaned what I could from the book, showed up for tests and quizzes, and figured that there were people out there dumber than I was. The whole class was graded on a curve. Midterm and final were both open book.

I got out of there with a 2.5. Good enough.

[Brother Buzz]

9. I spent a semester hitting Wiffle® golf balls and it really helped my short game

After three shots, I can drop the balls right where I want them, one after another, after another.

[geardaddy]

11. Trumpet lessons in 5th grade

I played for a year and then sold my horn three years ago.

[bluedigger]

22. So you're what, a freshman?

:)

[geardaddy]

27. lol

Freshman in the school of middle age. ;)

[graywarrior]

12. Yoga

Seriously....my instructor was a nazi and a control freak. That class stressed me to the point of injuring my back. I earned 2 credits.

[One_Life_To_Give]

13. Poli Sci

Think it was the only class that wasn't either Engineering or Economics.

edit - Still can't spell

[meegbear]

14. #1 and #2 Archery and Bowling!!

Those were fun times.

[provis99]

15. Etiquette.

How to be a gentleman, eat properly, not say "Shit" all the time, that sort of thing.

[femmocrat]

17. College algebra.

OK, it was a requirement, but I barely got through it, don't remember any of it, and have no idea why it was required.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

19. Slime molds, with lab. That's four semester hours.

I think that's the winner for the most useless course. I needed my 30 hours for my major, biology.

Hey I can still look at a rotten log in the forest and tell if it's at the right stage of sogginess to have slime molds in it!

I used to grow slime molds in my dorm room and petri dishes, and people thought I was weird........ :rofl:

The teacher had a Ph.D. in slime molds he earned at the University of Texas.
His wife, who we called "Mrs. Doctor", had a Ph.D. in fungus. She looked like Virginia Woolf. She was the chief fungus person at NASA in Houston.

Fun couple.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

20. Tennis, and before that, badminton

I knew that I had no eye-hand coordination to speak of, but it was the 1970s, the era of Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs, and Yale offered free lessons in virtually any sport for the price of a gym fee.

So I bought a tennis racket and showed up for tennis lessons, which was THE individual sport at the time.

The instructor was no help at all. Every lesson consisted of me trying to hit things and the instructor yelling "Keep your eye on the ball!"

But I DID keep my eye on the ball, only it was never in the place I thought it was.

After my five free lessons were up, I gave my racket away and never set foot on a tennis court again.

I should have known better from the time when I had a late registration date in college and the only open PE course from the list of courses that fulfilled the PE requirement was badminton. Given my lack of eye-to-hand coordination, having to play badminton three times a week made for a very long term.

[Ineeda]

21. Square dancing...although

to be accurate, it was really just a segment of high school PE in the winter when we couldn't go outside. Really nerdy. Swing your partner!

[bluedigger]

23. I took Human Sexuality pass/fail.

I passed.


Jerk.


:rofl:

[Avalux]

25. Horseback riding. I'm not sure it was useless though...

when everything collapses and we have to ride horses again to get around, I'll know how. Learned how to ride bareback and jump off at a full gallop. :D

[csziggy]

28. Freshman English - which I took the last semester in college

As a make up course. Long story, but I was required to take it because of some convoluted logic in assigning my transferred credits. I was not told until the review of my credits to make sure I was ready to graduate that I had to get three credits of Freshman English.

I did 80% of the course work, got "A" on everything. The final was to write an essay, suggesting what grade we should make in the course and justifying that grade. I suggested that I should get a "B" since I did not do all the course work, made my arguments for a "B", and was assigned "A" for the class.

Because of that course, I had to take one more semester, ended up with a double major (Anthropology and Library Science), and was three credits short of a minor in Geology (because I did not have the chemistry to go on and get the additional classes to get a minor). None of which I have ever used.

[jmowreader]

29. Drop Zone Support Team Leader

It teaches you how to set up drop zones for parachute insertion of equipment and personnel, and landing zones for helicopter insertion of the same.

When I got to Fort Drum, they needed someone to set up the LZs and DZs for our equipment insertions. "Hey! Sergeant M. was in the 101st, he'll pick this up quick!" I got sent over to the long-range surveillance detachment on Friday afternoon for "training." First they made sure to tell me the 101st is a bunch of (insert sexist insult here) and I should have gone to the 82nd--hey, it wasn't my fucking fault, someone at Department of the Army decides where you're assigned by looking at your assignment preference form then sending you somewhere else--"we have here a soldier who wants to go to Fort Lewis, Schofield Barracks or Fort Wainwright...you got anything open in Georgia for him? No? Then Kentucky will have to do!" They gave me a copy of the field manual on airborne operations (which tells you how to set up a DZ) and the FM for air assault operations (which tells you how to set up an LZ), told me to read both books cover to cover over the weekend and show up at the company door with all my field gear on Monday at 4am, and we'd go to the woods and set up DZs and LZs for about a week. Okay, no problem. I get out there, we set up a bunch of zones, they pronounced me ready and we all went home. (The fuckers also taught me to jump out of a perfectly good airplane with full field gear. Not fun.) So for the next six months I was out there on every FTX setting up LZs and DZs and generally having myself a good old time because setting up DZs beats running MI Power and Light any day of the week.

After I'd set up my thirtieth LZ, someone decided to ask if I'd been to the Official US Army Parachute School Course on doing this. Of course not! Two jumpmasters from my own unit trained me. Well...no, that won't do, the mobile training team is coming to base next week and you have to go to the school to get certified. No problem, man, I went to the school and whipped right through it.

And then I never set up a DZ or an LZ again.

[grasswire]

30. the poetry of Federico Garcia Llorca

Why, why, why?

[dembotoz]

31. relaxation

dark gym with wrestling mats on floor.

different techniques taught

goal was not to fall asleep

[rug]

32. I got 3 credits for a sailing course.

Sailed around New York Harbor on the Petrel all spring.

[RSillsbee]

33. Death And Dying for health care professionals

No one (and I mean no one)in the class wanted to take the class. I begged them to put me in Food and Nutrition but the student adviser had orders to fill that class.

The instructor spent all of her time telling us how her life sucked because she had to teach that class and she knew every one in it hated her.

She taught out of a third edition text and we all had fifth edition texts and we actually had one student that would put meaningless paragraphs in the middle of his essays to prove the teacher wasn't actually reading the work.

When I say meaningless paragraphs I mean he would write This class sucks, I'm watching unicorns shoot purple lasers out their butts, I wonder if Professor So-And-So swallows{his words not mine}, Why am I doing this you aren't reading it anyway. He got a "B" for the course and challenged his grade on the grounds that the teacher never actually read his assignments. He proved his case by pulling his graded essays out of the teacher's pile and reading such paragraphs to the department chair. The instructor was gone the next semester

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