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daleks
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daleks
3,770 posts
Chamberlain

You are sitting in class. The teacher is saying words and writing on the board but 90% of the material is flying over your head. Your teacher asks if anyone has questions but you wouldn't even know what to ask. You go suffering through the homework, quizzes, and tests until it is finally all over.

We have all been in these classes that are really hard for us. What is the hardest class you have been in and/or are currently in?
Is it just one certain class or just a certain subject?
Does your brain just not wrap around the concept , is it the time of the class, or maybe just a bad teacher?
What do you do to try and help yourself through the class?

I will post mine later today I just really don't have time right now.

  • 22 Replies
Pieguyme
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Pieguyme
1,010 posts
Farmer

Well, for me it's Geometry. It's not that I don't understand it, it's just that I'm not really "good" at math, per say. I just ask for a detailed explanation, and I usually get it then.

JACKinbigletters
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JACKinbigletters
9,363 posts
Treasurer

Languages, I have a terrible ineptitude for learning languages.

R2D21999
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R2D21999
18,319 posts
Treasurer

I used to struggle with math, but now I'm getting what to do.

I guess Spanish, but that's understandable.

09philj
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09philj
2,825 posts
Jester

I found it difficult to concentrate in IT lessons, as it's so easy to muck about, and a lot of the work is mind numbingly easy. (Understandably, I dropped it.) Out of the four classes I take now, chemistry is probably the hardest, but only because it's so different at A level to GCSE.

StormWalker
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StormWalker
8,232 posts
Jester

Math. I hate math. I'm smart enough to be in relatively advanced classes (right now it's AP Calc), and it all makes sense, mostly, until I have to use it, and then I'm staring at the problems I should be doing in utter confusion. It doesn't help that this year, my teacher is completely useless.
For example, after a quiz that we had no review for, she just put a problem on the board "Find the line tangent to this point (1,2) on the graph y=x^2+1". Well, after everyone sat around for five minutes not knowing how to do the problem because it was never taught to us in Precalc, the teacher revealed that "Oh, by the way, that problem is impossible unless you use calculus to solve it." Well, that doesn't help, now, does it? We're taking this class to learn calc, not to have you laugh about us not knowing any. After that, she went off on some rant about tangent lines (you might say she went off on a tangent), and then suddenly we're talking about velocity and secant lines and r=d/t, and then she gives us an example about squirrels or something, and scribbles on some graph she just made and says something to the lines of "Well now this is (a, f(a)), and (b,f(b)), on this graph and how long is the secant line?" Nobody knows, surprise surprise, and she doesn't answer the question. AND NONE OF US HAVE ANY CLUE WHAT SHE'S TRYING TO DO. Are we supposed to take notes? Is she just talking for the hell of it? What exactly is going on?

tl;dr: I hate math.

Jacen96
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Jacen96
3,087 posts
Bard

Dang, people say my AP calc teacher is bad, but your sounds absolutely horrible.

Tangent lines are easy, just find the slope of two lines close to either side of the point ((f(x+deltax)-f(x)) (rise) /(over) (x+deltax-x)(run)).

Just wait till you get to limits, and have to prove them using epsilon-delta proofs, and then have to wrap your head around limits that break rules you were taught earlier (in calculus, zero can be divided by zero).

I think the hardest class in English, only because I always feel like I'm doing it wrong, not to mention the fact that AP makes it feel like you have a higher bar to meet.

~~~Darth Caedus

Pieguyme
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Pieguyme
1,010 posts
Farmer

(you might say she went off on a tangent)
Is it bad I thought of this joke before I read it? I think it is...
Omegap12
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Omegap12
1,980 posts
Shepherd

Science.

My teacher is an ex- US AirForce, 60 years old, and is the strictest person you will ever meet.

AND, he hates me so much, he put me in the front of the room for talking, even when i wasnt talking at all.

daleks
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daleks
3,770 posts
Chamberlain

My hardest class right now is probably MA 301 which is basically a class all about proofs. I usually get the general idea of what is going on but there is usually that one part of the problem where they do something weird. Also the problems are just really long at times, like a whole blackboard of work.

However I don't think that is my hardest class of all time. My hardest class of all time was AP Physics C. I was just really bad at it even though I tried hard. The AP test killed me and I got a 3 on both the mech and E&M sections.

Languages, I have a terrible ineptitude for learning languages.
I guess Spanish, but that's understandable

I'm pretty bad at languages too. I think part of my problem was that I didn't really want to learn them when I was in high school because when I took Spanish in college I did really well. Maybe it was just easier but I feel like I didn't not care about it then.
Just wait till you get to limits, and have to prove them using epsilon-delta proofs

Just wait until you have to prove the epsilon-delta proof. You probably will not have to unless you take a class like the one I first talked about.
My teacher is an ex- US AirForce, 60 years old, and is the strictest person you will ever meet.

Weird, all the Air Force people I know are really chill.
nichodemus
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nichodemus
14,981 posts
Grand Duke

Lol Math probably. I never had problems with languages, or humanities based subjects. Math was okay till they mixed alphabets and squiggly lines into the equation. After that, it's just a straight road of fails, sub passes, and shrugging.

TheMostManlyMan
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TheMostManlyMan
5,769 posts
Chamberlain

Maths. It's not my teachers fault, he's brilliant, funny, devilishly handsome and me. After doing geometry last year, I started up on algebra 2 this year and was reunited with my intense hatred for it. I hate math so much! Which is precisely why I'm going to get a degree in computer science!

~Manly

RedN
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RedN
141 posts
Duke

I never had problems with maths,or any other kind of science.

Probably Arabic,the language is not simple,it has a huge set of grammar rules,and a rich dictionnary.
(I do understand Arabic,but I can't understand any Paragraph written with it,for example,poems in Arabic contain most of the time complicated expressions and words,but they rhyme beautifully).

Arabic is a rich language: it pushes the compositions of words, whether to use circumlocution to express some complex ideas, it has a very large vocabulary and a rare flexibility of forms. There would be 80 different words to express honey, 200 for the snake, 500 lions, 1000 for the camel, as much for the sword, and until 4000 to make the idea of ââmisfortune. That's a lot of shades of ideas, the subtlety that they have resulted in special terms, and in the large number of terms used for the same idea, there are a host of figures and tropes. An Arabic grammarian said it would take six camels to carry the collection root of the tongue; another author claimed to have counted 12,305,052 words, taking perhaps for different words the changes undergone by the same root as the case numbers, people, times, modes, etc. Certainly Arab roots are among about 6,000, and the vocabulary includes 60,000 words.

Source : [url]http://www.cosmovisions.com/langueArabe.htm[/url] , translated to English using Google translate.
daleks
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daleks
3,770 posts
Chamberlain

Which is precisely why I'm going to get a degree in computer science!

You need math for CS...You have to take through Linear Algebra, which means you take Calc 1-3.
tangentHyperplane
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tangentHyperplane
90 posts
Nomad

Currently I think my hardest class is spacecraft dynamics. The derivations are long and use many different principles while the homework is badly written so I'm not sure what the professor wants.

But the hardest I have ever taken was calculus 3 (infinite sums/series, 3D plotting, and Taylor series I think). It was bad but somehow I passed. Everything I didn't understand in calc 3 made perfect sense in advanced calculus 1 and 2 (I guess you could call these calc 4 and 5) so I place half the blame on my calc 3 professor for not professing clearly and the rest on me for not knowing how to study effectively. But it doesn't even matter who to blame. Transcripts don't leave room for comments about whose fault it was. They have only your name on there in the end.

TheMostManlyMan
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TheMostManlyMan
5,769 posts
Chamberlain

You need math for CS...You have to take through Linear Algebra, which means you take Calc 1-3.

I know! *sobs* Although you're wrong about one thing, at least the college my brother is thinking of going to (same degree) only requires Calc 1 and 2 I think.

~Manly
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