Hardest course you've ever done

Inspired by the "most useless course you've ever done" thread, here is its evil cousin, the hardest course you've ever done.

For me, far and away the hardest thing is the 2nd year of my Chemistry Degree, 3 term, Physical Chemistry subject, Statistical Mechanics

1st term P.Chem was Thermodynamics, and I was pretty good at that, with a bit of effort I did OK. 2nd term was Nuclear Chemistry/Quantum Mechanics, far and away my best subject in my entire university education, it almost came naturally.

Final term they combined the two together to create Statistical Mechanics and it was hard with a capital H.A.R.D.

1 hour, 3 times a week, for 10 weeks I just sat there with my brain throbbing trying to take it in, barely understanding a word that was being said Everyone struggled in that class, even the geekazoid no-life-outside-of-campus-90-percent-is-a-low-score-types. I felt like Homer Simpson at the end of every lecture :help:

I managed to drag my sorry ass through the course and scrape a pass. My final year was a doddle after that

Hmm, well, one can always go for a higher level qualification. But in comparison to other courses available at the same level, I'd say A-level mathematics has a contender in the Edexel M6 module. That was nasty, I reckon the hardest exam on the entire A-level syllabus (assuming, of course, that the appropiate two years' study has gone into it).

Thus far, I would say Higher Classical Studies.
I am anticipating that one of next years Advanced Higher courses shall be somewhat trickier : English, Mathematics, Physics or Chemistry...

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Originally Posted by Somebody Else

Hmm, well, one can always go for a higher level qualification. But in comparison to other courses available at the same level, I'd say A-level mathematics has a contender in the Edexel M6 module. That was nasty, I reckon the hardest exam on the entire A-level syllabus (assuming, of course, that the appropiate two years' study has gone into it).

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Chemistry is worse.
Maths A-Level (CCEA) is difficult but it is quite doable when you see a few examples and find the pattern of how to do it. Chemistry is bad, really bad. There is no real link with most of the topics ao you are expected to learn a massive amount of totally unrelated topics and are expected to know them so well that you can say them backwards. Of Course i'm in a class with almost everyone of them wanting to do medicine, so Iit seems terrible when I just can't grasp something

Well, our last grade presentation about China was the most exhausting course me and my friends had ever done. Getting rejected about our outline by the instructor's assistant on the previous day of the presentation , we had to plan everything from the scratch. What's more our instructor had even organized presentations about China, doubling the difficulty of our job that had to be something that she'd find interesting.

It was around 6 am that we had to take a break for a 3-hours of sleep, then wake up and get ready for it.

The result was perfect. Effort always pays back. ~:)

Also physical chemistry for me. Two of the three first year courses for biochemistry at Oxford were physical chemistry and organic chemistry. Pure misery. Actually doing some biochemistry in year two was a huge relief.

Ancient Greek

The one that kicked my hiney was called "History of English." Sounds harmless enough, doesn't it? It was a trap. A dirty, evil trap. They crammed in more linguistics than anybody in his right mind could absorb in one course. And to top it off, we were all expected to become fluent in Old English, which is pretty close to old German. It was three things rolled up into one: Learn a language, dig deep into linguistuics and linguistic theory, and also learn the actual history of the language.

I barely survived. A lot of people didn't. It was an insane amount of stuff to cram into a single-semester course. I wouldn't recommend it to anybody, not even my worst enemy. (Don't people normally take multi-year courses to learn a language? Yeah, that's what I thought.)

Physics with calculus (AP) was pretty hard. Diffeq's would have been hard but I had a great teacher.

CS classes always seem hard while your doing them. But afterwards they seem really easy.

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Originally Posted by ShadesPanther

Chemistry is worse.
Maths A-Level (CCEA) is difficult but it is quite doable when you see a few examples and find the pattern of how to do it. Chemistry is bad, really bad. There is no real link with most of the topics ao you are expected to learn a massive amount of totally unrelated topics and are expected to know them so well that you can say them backwards. Of Course i'm in a class with almost everyone of them wanting to do medicine, so Iit seems terrible when I just can't grasp something

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I did chemistry. Got an A in it without even trying. I also did three maths A-levels. Single maths is easy. Double maths requires some time awake. Triple maths is doable - just so long as you work for the easy bits - M5 and M6 I didn't expect to get an average percentage of more than 50.

Of course, I will agree that A-level chemistry is largely senseless. As with GCSE, they teach you a simplified version, that is immediately shown to be wrong at the next step. I took the next step. A-level chemistry was shown to be a load of tripe. Degree level chemistry also happened to bore the hell out of me. So I changed to Ancient History.

No subject is difficult given that the work's been done for it. It's subjects for which one is completely unprepared that there's trouble. I haven't written an essay since GCSEs. Now I'm expected to write degree level essays. That's hard work, for me. For most other people on my course, not a problem.

It's all in the preparation.

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Originally Posted by English assassin

Also physical chemistry for me. Two of the three first year courses for biochemistry at Oxford were physical chemistry and organic chemistry. Pure misery. Actually doing some biochemistry in year two was a huge relief.

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It was the organic that did it for me. I couldn't be bothered to learn all those minutely different little reactions. Plus the stick diagrams started to do my head in. The physical was pretty dry as well (but I passed that one in prelims).

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Originally Posted by Somebody Else

Hmm, well, one can always go for a higher level qualification. But in comparison to other courses available at the same level, I'd say A-level mathematics has a contender in the Edexel M6 module. That was nasty, I reckon the hardest exam on the entire A-level syllabus (assuming, of course, that the appropiate two years' study has gone into it).

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M6? You must have done a lot of maths modules...

M1 is so easy lol...

Chemistry at A2 is pretty tricky.

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Originally Posted by Sjakihata

Ancient Greek

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Agreed.

The teaching courses are easy as long as you work at them, that old preparation thing.
THEN, they throw the real stuff like Homer and Thucydides at you at some stage. Beeeatch! Practise, Practise, Practise.
Still, it's worth all of the hard work.

In terms of course difficulty, probably one of my later quantum physics courses. Never was any good at relativistic quantum field theory. :sweatdrop: On the up side, the course was so challenging that they couldn't really ask all that much, so the exam was pretty straightforward if you'd done the past exam questions.

Now, I'm only a freshman in highschool, but I'd say so far it would have to be Business Computer Programing. We're learning how to develop programs using Java code.

It's pretty hard...:help:

probably music theory 2. unlike everyone else in the class i had exactly no musical experience or background. very steep learning curve.

I've never really found any course I've taken especially hard-unless you count PE as a course, I was never any good at sports. I'm hoping university will change that.

If I had to pick one, I suppose it would be A-level chem, but I've managed to get pretty much a hundred percent in that so far, with a bit of work.

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Originally Posted by Big King Sanctaphrax

I've never really found any course I've taken especially hard-unless you count PE as a course, I was never any good at sports. I'm hoping university will change that.

If I had to pick one, I suppose it would be A-level chem, but I've managed to get pretty much a hundred percent in that so far, with a bit of work.

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No fair!:wall:

Science Degree Physics & Geophysics.

3rd year Quantum Physics, Schrodingers equation under different paradigms... magnetic fields etc...

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Originally Posted by BDC

M6? You must have done a lot of maths modules...

M1 is so easy lol...

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18.
P1, P2, P3, P4, P5, P6
M1, M2, M3, M4, M5, M6
S1, S2, S3, S4, S5, S6

The lower set did D1 and D2 instead of M5 and M6. (That is, if they did 18 modules at all, some were dropped to double maths instead).

M1 and M2 are quite possibly the easiest exams I've ever had to do. If I remember, I got 100s in M1, M2, S1 and P1. (Really should have got 100s in P1, P2, S2 and S3 as well)

Honors Pre-Calc.

I'm not done with it yet, but it is already the hardest I've ever taken, mostly because I don't like math and am not particularly good at it.

this is the hardest course i've ever done: the akina downhill against a trueno 86!

http://i.xanga.com/eightfiftyfive/akinadown.jpg

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this is the hardest course i've ever done: the akina downhill against a trueno 86!

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LoL. Good one, Soly!

For me: 'Call for Fire'; an Army course to teach infantry guys to call for artillery fire on a position not their own. They gave you a plastic thing called a 'whiz wheel' that I (a highschool dropout at the time) could never make sense of, to supposedly help you decide distance, declination and armament - I think (Redleg could probably straighten me out on that). That whiz-wheel thingee got pretty banged up in the mud and various bodily fluids that happen upon it during combat, and even combat simulations in Army schools.

Then there was the litany of the call itself. You were supposed to follow the prescribed format, and have all your ducks in order (like 10-digit grid coordinates) before you call. Thank gods for the forebearance of actual artillerymen on the other end of a real call; coaching idiots like me, so they understood where I was, and where the bad guys were. And which to throw heat at.

But for training, they had no patience. It took 4 no-go's before I got it.

'Course it doesn't compare to chem or physics (huge holes in my education). I admire your achievements, fellas.

Ancient greek composition. Gah.

TA what are you doing back here?? this is where i hide from you and the others!! :shocked:

I suppose it would be Chem AP, but we had a great teacher. Hmmmm. It would probably be the statics class I am taking now. I barely passed the two tests......

C programming is proving to be very challenging, especially at the rate that we are going. A 900 page text book in a semester?!? GAh! :dizzy2:

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Originally Posted by Byzantine Prince

A 900 page text book in a semester?!? GAh! :dizzy2:

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Fluid dynamics here is 800pages in half a semester...

For me it was probably 'elasticity and plasticity' about the behaviour of materials under stress and pressure. This might not sound too hard, and I've done similar courses which were pretty easy, but this one :dizzy2:

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Originally Posted by Somebody Else

18.
P1, P2, P3, P4, P5, P6
M1, M2, M3, M4, M5, M6
S1, S2, S3, S4, S5, S6

The lower set did D1 and D2 instead of M5 and M6. (That is, if they did 18 modules at all, some were dropped to double maths instead).

M1 and M2 are quite possibly the easiest exams I've ever had to do. If I remember, I got 100s in M1, M2, S1 and P1. (Really should have got 100s in P1, P2, S2 and S3 as well)

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I'm impressed. I have done C1, C2, C3 and S1 so far. All been pretty easy. C4 and M1 coming up. Haven't got 100% in any though. I find it physically impossible to do more work than I need to get the grade I want. It's very peculiar.

French GCSE :D
its not even finished yet :(

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Originally Posted by doc_bean

This might not sound too hard

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That's not hard at all.

Latin...I just cannot hack latin. Yes, the GCSE is relatively simplistic but the stuff they give us is ridiculous...

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Originally Posted by Byzantine Prince

That's not hard at all.

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Like I said, it doesn't sound to hard, but it was an advanced course, dealing with specific models and a whole bunch of models and equations you had to memorize.

But it was mostly hard since it was also the most BORING course I ever took.

A2-Level Chinese.

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Originally Posted by Tiberius

A2-Level Chinese.

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I was under the impression that Chinese was impossible unless you were a native speaker, and really easy if you were.

I know one guy in my school got 100% for his Japanese A2, which he sat without any prep on a whim. Top of the country or something. Useful having a really difficult first language...

chinese is easier than japanese (i learned both) but this is just my opinion. my reasons have to do with the actual usage and not the grammar and vocabulary.

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Originally Posted by BDC

I was under the impression that Chinese was impossible unless you were a native speaker, and really easy if you were.

I know one guy in my school got 100% for his Japanese A2, which he sat without any prep on a whim. Top of the country or something. Useful having a really difficult first language...

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Cybernetics. Especially since we had to know the details of processes of entirely different fields (physiology, engineering and several others).

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Originally Posted by Teleklos Archelaou

Ancient greek composition. Gah.

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Difficult yes, but I love Latin and Greek prose composition. It's like puzzle solving, but far more interesting than stupid crosswords, sudokus etc. (Gah!)