O/T Toughest class you had at Miami

[MU CLEVELAND 01]

Thought this would be a good one to discuss..

By far, the toughest class that I ever had at Miami was FIN 403, taught by the one-and-only Dave Leonard.

FIN 403 was "Portfolio Management"...discussed the equity, bond, derivative, and currency markets to name a few.. Stocks, bonds, options, futures, Black-Schoals option pricing, etc.

It wasn't just the material that was difficult...Dr. Leonard was VERY demanding, and could absolutely tear-down anyone in class (and he did it several times per class).

I appreciate him (and the class) so much more now in my after-school life..

Did anyone else have this class? Did anyone take another class by Dave Leonard? I was a glutton for punishment and had him for FIN 417 (Int'l Financial Mgt.) too..

[thechuck_2112]

PHY 461, Electromagnetic Theory. The class that made me realize law was in my future, because it was the toughest class of a three-class regimen (along with quantum mechanics and thermodynamics/statistical mechanics) that made me see just how much I actually hate physics.

Or

PHY 286, Computational Physics (certainly the one I hated the most). I took it twice. Dropped it the first time, when it was in C++, took it again the next year, and it was in Java, neither of which is used for actual computational physics (FORTRAN is still the language of choice). I got less than half the points in the class the second time around and got a B. I didn't learn a damn thing about how to actually program; instead, the class was a bunch of silly little "tricks of the trade" that we were supposed to employ without actually understanding how they worked. As a result, I came away knowing about as much as I did before. I had typed up a ten-paragraph, two-page-long evaluation of the course to hand in with the bubble form, and we were informed that there would be no evaluations for the class, because the professor thought it was total BS that we could evaluate him but he couldn't evaluate us. (He's going to retire within the next five or so years anyway; complaining about not being allowed to fill out an evaluation wouldn't do any good.)
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[EDDIE]

Econ 485 Money and Banking taught by Dr. Huchison.

You usually took it the last semester or so. I guess I thought it was tough because I missed about half of the classes due to covering games and just plain goofing off!

By the way...easiest classes:

Choral Union...I took it 5 times.

Microbiology 131

Most low level History classes

Cat 135 and Cat 136

Hell...I don't know if these classes are still offered.
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[redhawkforlife]

Power Volleyball
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[thechuck_2112]

Easiest classes:

PHS 336A, Theory of Coaching Basketball. Yeah, it was really fun, but 80% of your grade is attendance. Let's be honest here.

FST 236, Alternative Traditions in Film. The hardest part was staying awake; that was the semester I was getting a nightly dose of Sledge, Shiv, and Bake about four times a week. I imagine that it'd be really tough if you don't like foreign film, though.

COM 135H, Intro to Speech Comm (Honors). So much easier than the regular section of COM 135. We had to do three speeches and that was it.

BOT 244, Viticulture and Enology. I know that it can be really tough on some people, but I was so enthralled by and interested in the class that I found it a cinch.
_________________
"Psycho was low on talent. Psycho was low on athleticism. Psycho can play on my team any day. Psycho has the biggest heart of any player I have seen."
--mollautt

"You white people are crazy!" -- Matt Sussman

[killgas20]

Easiest (by far)...MUS 106 Marching Band and MUS 109A(?) Basketball Band. Attendance = A.
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[WV Redhawk]

International Law with Jackson. I think it was POL 373.
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[MUDawgFan]

Toughest:
Management 402: Human Resource Law w/ Dr. Walsh
As I look back on it now, not really a super tough course. What made it tough was the fact it was my first ever law class and Walsh wrote the book we used. So you could never call him out on certain things or argue about test responses.

Calc 151: Dr. Aktar took a class I got an B in in High school and made it so hard I got a C- at Miami.

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Easy ones

I'm with Chuck when I say COM 151 was a joke.

Football Coaching Theory, PHS 336, not too tough

I also had to take a one hour class for 5 weeks on how to be an RA prior to being one. Man was it simple, I just forget the Course #.

[Maz]

Monetary Theory and Policy. No contest.

[Chris W]

The toughest two for me were microeconomics and accounting. I was a political science major, and wanted to take some business related courses as background for law school. I didn't do too well in micro, but did much better in macroceconomics. You business majors will probably laugh, but I had trouble with basic accounting. Fortunately, there were some guys in my dorm who were whizzes in it and really helped 'tutor' me, and I was able to salvage a B in the class.

I won't use the term 'easy', but my most enjoyable classes at Miami were Criminal Justice taught by Dr. Hatting, International Politics taught by Dr. Schmidt, Golf taught by Mr. Ballmer, and Music Appreciation taught by Dr. Seltzer. To this day, I love classical music largely because of that class.

Another interesting class was 'Physics in sports.' We learned such things as how vector analysis made for better billiards playing; the timing of the catcher's throw to second base and the probabilities of the throw beating the runner on a steal attempt; and the coefficient of restitution for different balls-tennis, baseball, basketball. That part reminded me of David Letterman trying to repeat Galileo's experiment by dropping a 6 pack of regular beer and 6 pack of lite beer off a building to see if they would fall at the same rate!!!
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[Barky]

The toughest by far was organic chemistry. I still have nightmares about reaction mechanisms.

I'd have to agree that easiest was basketball band. Lots of fun though. I wouldn't say marching band was the easiest just because of the number of hours it required each week.
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The band wants a scrimmage!

4 out of 3 people have trouble with fractions.

[KCRedskin]

Any upper-level Arch Studio that has Prof. Sergio Sanabria as instructor. He's tougher than krypton-laden galvanized nails, but if you can survive, you know you are a better designer because of him.

Easiest? Basketball Band of course.

Most fun? Probably a Geology course I took from Nick Zenter my soph or junior year. Fueled my fascination later in life for all our favorite TV leaning channels - TLC, DSC, HST, etc.
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[DevilGrad]

[Beatnik]

01, I was also stripped to the core by Dave Leonard for FIN 302. He was a fine teacher, but really enjoyed being tough on people.

Best class? History of Jazz, MUS 131? with Tammy Kernodle. Great lady. Sang to us in class.

I also really enjoyed Intro Anthropology with Linda Marchant, one of Miami's nicest and fun teachers. She showed us lots of video of her interacting with Chimps in Africa. Fascinating.

It seems to me that about 8 out of 10 times everyone's favorite class was an elective. Usually later on in college...
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[JohnnyMac]

[redhawkforlife]

One of my favorite classes was German 231. German Folklore and Literature. It wasn't too tough, but reading the true Brothers Grimm was fun.

I hated any class that had to do with math...Stats, Accounting, Calculus, etc. Most things I have a great attention span for. Math not so much. I abhore it.
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Miami - the other, other love of my life

[MUfan]

Hard for me to remember exact course names/titles, etc.

Anything science was tough for me since I had no interest in it. I took the physics in sports class and passed with a "C", but only because it had some outrageous curve.

As far as classes I liked - Econ 201 and 202 with Jerry Miller. Tough classes, but I definetely learned a lot.

Entrepreneurial class with John Altman - great class.

Couple of employment law classes with Dr. Walsh. Interesting guy.

Took a golf class with an older lady who used to coach golf at Miami, I think. Can't remember her name.
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[Maz]

[bnancs]

Well, I ended up with a D in Calc, but I think that was due to lack of effort (I had the MTWR class, where we had a quiz every Thursday. I usually went to class on Thursdays... usually).

My actual hardest class was probably MKT 491. Had to very prepared for every single class, with some good solid analysis. Last semester, senior year+...

Also had a couple of challenging ones for my DSC minor (which was only a minor because it was the same number of classes as the thematic sequence would have been), but don't remember the course numbers or names.

Overall best class was MKT 351(?) with Tim Greenlee, the best Prof. I had at Miami. Learned a lot in there. In fact, it was that class that made me want to go into market research, which was another reason for that DSC minor.

I work in IT. In my time at Miami I took the one basic, required for business school, MIS class. Oh well!
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[RedSteve]

My favorite class was CLS 210.C -- the Roman City. It was taught by Jack Dutra, who is still a good friend today. It was a phenomenal class that looked at urban development and planning in the ancient world. The class itself was deceptively interdisciplinary, incorporating aspects of architecture, politics, commerce, everyday Roman life, religion, history, and even weather.

Honorable mention: my freshman honors seminar in Communications. I forget the course number, but it was a course on the first amendment with Howard Kleimann.

Hardest class: LAT 410 - Aeneid seminar. Vergil is difficult enough, not because of the translation (any Latin student knows the story by the time he or she has taken 2 or 3 years of Latin) but because so much scholarship has been written around him, and you have to take so much of that into account when reading and writing your term papers. Of course, when your instructor is a prominent Vergilian scholar, it adds that much more to the pressure to writing an acceptable paper.

Oh, and this particular instructor was pissed that another student and I were required by the School of Education to miss four weeks of that semester (second semester) to complete our junior block, despite the fact that we told him early in the first semester that we would not be able to attend all his classes if he scheduled them for the morning. As a punishment, er, way to make sure we weren't skipping out on our readings, he required us to turn in full written translations of the reading assignments from both of those two-week absences by the time we returned to class.

Writing out 1,600 lines of Vergil translated without sounding too much like the Loeb you're using for reference is fricking torture.
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[RedskinAlum02]

Federal Income Tax with Barry Arlinghaus was a lot of fun at 8am during the summer!
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HOWDY HO!

[MrG]

Hardest class for me was Intro to Writing. A Required course, but I was already published. What made it hard was that the professor said my Fiction was shallow, and in a genre no one was interested in and my humor was shallow and weak and that I'd never get published - written in red and highlighted too.
Went to Dept head and showed them the note and the two books of the 5 I'd authored. Asked was this really a required course even though I had aced the AP exam?
Yes all Freshmen must take this course. I showed her my books. Let her call my agent.
Up the chain.
Eventually the final professor I talked too said okay I'll pull some strings, but do me a favor...show this to the professor in class I want to see her face...

So I returned the next week to class with what was supposed to be a rewrite of the story wrapped around the books...
Freaking hell broke out in class. My books came flying back at me and knocked over a MAC near my seat.
Having 12 short stories in hand (that had been rejected previously) ready to fill in one shot the class requirements (attendance wasn't taken, but papers and feedback were required (that's reading other's and discussing it and giving them notes etc) for a passing grade (But over half in class were there on P/F).

Anyway that made one more visit to Dept head. With teacher complaining I undermined her in class, by being a published author (No matter the rags I'd written for, or the genres), and countering everything she'd been taught as required for writing in real world.
I countered all you need is a good vocabulary, a run away imagination, an ability to sculpt a character or two with words into a 3D personality with inherent human flaws, and weave them into an entertaining ride of a story. Plot would follow, but if you meant to entertain, then entertain...screw being clever, do what the characters demand and the better the villain the more the protagonist will have to do.
Then when Dept head asked why she was failing me she stormed out...Dept head said don't go back to class, but do talk tot he others in eng lab on discussion day...signed paper said "A-" couldn't 4pt me for course...he then saw my AP scores and said why no one put me in higher classes...also noted that I was in military at time and not a regular student...he said he'd have to review policy for special cases.
He also suggested avoiding any English class for a while excepting those needed by my major (Ie Tech Writing) and that if I took another class in his dept. too many other non-published Professors would feel challenged by my presence.
Hell I don't think my books and stories really had more than 5000 sales nationwide or the Zine reprints...didn't matter. I'd been paid to write and that would be crap on their flakes...

So a minor in english or a double major went right out the window.
Left more time for taking the PHYS courses I liked...

Heh Chuck I took that course in Fortran and let me tell you, it's only Miami that teaches that course in Fortran still. Other cover Fortan as the old way to do scientific Calcs.
There are much better shell programs now that use symbology and actual formulations and translate them into C++ (Force Trans C) to map out a formula, variables and permutations.
Heck there are even programs that take physics equations and roughly translate them into circuitry for EE experiments.

I thin ForceCTranslator is a Nasa proprietary program though...

Bio 201 was tough as I was only guy in the class, being "of age", Employed, with a vehicle (Even one as ratty looking as mine was), meant I was dating more than paying attention to professor's canned lectures. 20 women, 1 guy! I "dated" half of them at one time or another...had to get a special project to write up to get passing grade...got a B eventually, but proff didn't like my using class as he said "Testosterone driven attempt at spreading my DNA in a Haphazard shot gun approach!". Not my fault the class was full of hottie freshmen and sophie women...being only guy was very very nice...I got called "Token" in class a play on "Tolkien" and being only guy there.

Econ 101 sucked, I slept though most classes, and used a voice activated recorder to listen to lectures. Once I found out lectures never waivered from the can, I went to library found old copies of transcripts of the class (we had 7 different TA's give the lectures).
I found the paper requirements and grading principles there too.
Wrote my three papers and turned them in early. Got them back rewrote them, repeated 3 times well before they were due. And repeated that until they got B/A grades...then turned em in as the finals...we still had 6 weeks to go in class...
That class was designed to weed out Econ weenies from those of us who were forced to take the class...it did that wonderfully...I stayed away from any BIZ or econ classes afterwards big time.

Did much better in smaller classes than the big ones.
Physic's labs were fun... Had Dr Stetson from Middletown campus for most of them. Playing with Lasers while DrStetson was trying to get a piece of the Star Wars (Reagan era) Research funding was way cool and entertaining. (rest of dept didnt like it).

Did an experiment on Slow Photon Pulsed laser with High Freq Beam Rider (slow pulse photon laser to push air or water atoms out of the path until target would be painted and charge surface with photonic charge and then hit it with a higher freq pulsed hard laser with opposing charge with minimal air dispersal) Called it the Wham Bam Thank you mam machine as it made a "Whirrr FUD FUD FUD WHAM BAM" noise when fired... We caused many a power outage in the labs from power overloads...designing capacitor and battery banks became a year long project (for a grade and credit too).
Doc got all the benifits of our research and I'm sure he took them somewhere (private sector) after he retired.
Spending a Friday afternoon in lab with a Hippie-nerf Physics proffessor blowing up things just to test applications of pulsed photonic power was great fun (clean up wasn't) Kudo's to whoever brought in the jar of Marshmellow fluff, and the Jif PB . (I brought in simple stuff like 2 liter pepsi, mt dew, mr pibb...Chef Boyardee etc).

We got lots of warning notes from dept...but we got results, and fixed or cleaned up our mess...
Try showing up to Linear Algebra with condensed mountain dew, scorched marshmellow fluff, and carbonized Peanut butter in your hair...smell aside, wasn't popular look (thank god I had real short hair then).
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[CountryRedHawk]

BMZ!

All I have to say. Freshman year's death trap.

[bradmu]

Hardest:
SAN 271 - Object Oriented Programming. (The Weed out Programming class) This class shouldn't have been all that hard, but my prof thought she'd take the weed out title to heart
Architecture 188 (I think) - History of Modern Arch. - Cool class, but Prof Brown-Manrique was tough....plus it was my first college class
Calc II - No Explanation Needed
SAN 385 - Databases If anyone had Uckan for a prof, you know what I'm talkin bout.

Easiest:
Basketball Coaching w/Chuck, Monty, and Mike Larkin (also can't forget Andy Capper)
mgt 291 - Orgazational Behavior

[MrG]

Lil Hint here...if you can take the pre-req classes at a branch campus once or twice a week, you'll free up your schedule and maximize your grade point average big time.

Branch campus classes are smaller, more cozy, and less pretentious.
I took classes at MUM my junior and senior year of HS (Middletown) and it made the translation to Main campus easier (even after a year stationed near OU and taking classes there), I took higher level classes I'd never have gotten at Miami there way before I was even a Freshman. On summer breaks I took labs and classes to fill my time too. Evening Industrial science classes were great- Metallurgy (With Armco input), Robotics, Physical Chemistry and Applications- (PCHEM sucked on main campus) etc.

I'm sure many of our alumns here would tell you that if you can, take advantage of the branch campuses in driving range. It was one reason many of my friends got to keep cars on campus. They were going for accellerated degrees and using both campuses MUH and MUM to their advantage.
With Computers and Digital Cable Modems now, you too can take Telecommuting classes with branch campuses, and you know something, they count just like regular classes for the most part- be sure to check before hand!
Junior year my Roomate had a beast of a computer with sat-link (From his father) that let him take classes around all Miami's campus over the computer.
He sighed up for 30 hours of tele-credits that fall and took the 12 hours required on main campus...he left the room to get beer, pizza, wash clothes and attend his three campus classes...and that was it.
He was an english-Polisci Major with minors in I don't know how many other areas. That spring he went to Luxembourgh so I had room to myself! Lucky bastard would send me pictures of him with Giant steins of ale, and visiting breweries in belgium, germany etc...
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ESPN is to the BCS what FOX News is to the Republican party. Though it is hard to tell who's got their head up the arses of the other farther. Rest of the world, just has to watch their interests flicker by on the ticker tape meanwhile.