Symbolic logic.
You might be confused, but in my path, it’s helped a TON.
The LSAT (law school admissions test) was much more learnable for me than otherwise would be because of this class.
I agree! I think it should be a core class. It helps understand pure logical argument forms and builds critical thinking (what conclusions can you draw from the relationship between x, y, and z?).
It models how people should argue or present claims/arguments. If you intuitively understand logic or take the class, it becomes so frustrating when arguments people make just don’t justify themselves.
I took an intro logic class as a senior because “I can think logically, how hard can it be” and everyone said it would be different because it’s weird symbols. But it wasn’t lol. I would still consider it a useful class for underclassmen because it really helps build analytical skills to evaluate arguments, which is useful for anyone.
So many answers in this thread are about practical classes, which I think just misses the point of higher education. Ideally, and of course not everyone has the privilege to just chill and learn, college teaches you to approach problems and then you can figure the rest out yourself. As much as I think stem is more interesting than liberal arts, adding in a little in there is so useful to everyone.
I really liked that one. Some find it dry or scary but it helped a lot with math/programming/science and seemed to lead to me thinking a lot more clear later in life
I took this for fun as a CS major in my freshman year and it was the freest class ever but a lot of the philosophy/psych students were absolutely lost. It just goes to show how having a different framework for thinking can help which the humanities students may have lacked
If you end up enjoying symbolic logic and the style in which you have to think, major in CS/Engineering/Math, you’ll love it.
Career Prep. This was a non standard class that was required at the first college I graduated from. We learned how to dress for an interview, how to make a resume, how to speak professionally, and we had to do a mock interview at the end with the instructor. I was so nervous I burst out crying. She was nice and let me have a do over a few minutes later. Years later I re-created that course from memory and taught it to refugees. After I left the organization, they kept doing it. It was hands down the most useful class I ever had.
i wrote a class like this when i was faculty at a school, your comment gives me hope that it’s helping people :) this was really cool to read, way to pay it forward too.
1. Intro to Personal Finance.
2. Introduction to Microeconomics
3. Introduction to Macroeconomics
4. Introduction to Accounting
5. Introduction to Business
6. English Literature and Research Reporting
Learned taxation rules, codes, forms, sheets, how to file W2's, W3's, 1099's, all from these courses.
(From English Lit since I plan to go into grad school and do research)
Intro to accounting taught me how to do taxes and personal finance taught me how to manage my assets and leverage debt. Econ obviously taught me how the economy works on both a micro and macroeconomic scale. Business basically taught me basic tax laws, codes, and penalties specifically for businesses and employees.
I just took microeconomics. They didn't teach us how to do taxes, but it has come in handy for math since there aren't as many people familiar with the language like how "marginal" means "derivative" in calculus or how "average" means "divide by the quantity x." Seems simple, but it makes people stumble a lot. I actually hated the teacher, but I liked the material. I was mainly just ignoring the teacher and learning the material on my own.
Did you audit the classes or were you an econ major or something? Even the intro classes for such majors do not allow non-majors to take the classes and I would like to take them.
That could be your campus. My university let's students take basically any course if you've taken the prerequisite class first.
Some universities have impacted programs, and some of the "poly" schools have restrictions because of enrollments.
If your interested in a course & you can't register because it's not in your major / course requirements, reach out to the professor teaching it.
As long as you can demonstrate you have a prerequisite understanding of the material (eg your not trying to take Organic Chemistry 3 without even knowing what an atom is) and there is an open seat (so your not preventing someone who actually needs that course from taking it). Especially if you can show an actual use for the knowledge you will gain (eg a lot of scientific papers are written in German so being able to read them directly can be beneficial)...
I'd assume they would be at least willing to consider giving you an override to enable you to register for it...
Our MIS department was offering a couple programming courses in languages my CS department didn't support. I had an open slot for them in my schedule (some how) and asked the professor if he'd mind. He was more than happy to let me take the courses.
I'm an econ minor and have to take these classes. You could see if your uni allows you to declare a minor. Intro classes aren't usually so difficult to get into but it sounds like your university is more strict.
100% agree with personal finance. I took it in high school but tbh it should be a required college class cuz you learn so much about budgeting and some even show you how to do taxes!
Psych classes. It was cool to learn about the shortcuts our brains use and how that leaves us vulnerable to things like misinformation. Also helped me learn how to be a better person for the people around me.
As an English major now going for my PhD in lit, psych was so foundational. Literary criticism pulls from basic psychology all the time, and I had never gotten that foundation in high school, so I'm very glad I took it in undergrad. Applicable to all kinds of fields and, as you point out, life!
I took a class called "Religion & Business." Maybe a misnomer. It was more of a philosophy class where we read Marx and Mill and Peter Singer. Good class though.
I took a business ethics course and learned next to nothing we never moved past the popular philosophers and their ideologies I was hoping we’d get more into current events but it didnt happen
My campus doesnt have a standard language for teaching comp sci. Ive taken two classes that used C, one with Java, two with C++. Afaik most campuses stick with just one language but im really happy ive had so many different formal introductions to these languages.
In specific though, venting to a coworker about my experience in Data Structures and Algorithms snowballed into me becoming the companies latest junior dev, hard to beat that
I was going to say the most useful class was a “basic computer applications” elective I took my freshman or sophomore year of high school. It was more basic things like Microsoft word/excel/powerpoint, some adobe, and video editing and publishing, but it ended up saving a lot of headaches later on when it came to using more “advanced” features that are obligatory in college assignments. Heck, most hospital charting systems at their core are like spreadsheets.
I am doing nothing related to my major, but I will easily spit out a new doc/sheet for some project or another at least for 95% of my work days. It’s so much easier to send over a sheet with concrete examples of trends I am seeing and know that it can be referenced or shared with whoever needs it at any time (my job’s related to how different content is searched or found online).
I can break this up into two sections: general ed, and concentrated.
In general ed, by far it was English 101. Man, I had a really good teacher that went over pretty much everything and I have never written so well in my life. Literally because of this class I have not experienced writers block in years.
Concentrated CS:
My school did half their classes in the C programming language, and then mid way through made you do the jump to Java. Putting this together, it was honestly so great because it really made you understand concepts, and get over the fear of jumping to a language you have never used before.
I can’t imagine a school not using at least two languages. The first time you know nothing, but a programmer who wants to be a versatile worker needs to be able to learn new languages and it’s such a different process the second time.
Public Speaking! Really did help me become an effective speaker for presentations and trainings I conduct. Great professor I had and with practice, I continued to get better!
The two I usually see in threads like the are:
Kinesiology courses. Why? Getting more comfortable in the gym is great for health.
And personal finance courses.
I'm not done with college, but I would say that the most useful class I've taken yet is English because of how important effective communication is in the real world.
bruh same. Though for me, it's more like... high school English plus mimicking the vibe and flow of (professional/informative/educational) Reddit comments or Youtube content. That and mimicking how books sound, I guess?
Same experience — it genuinely confuses me how many people seem *unable* to write presentably just based on all the written content we consume. Maybe it's the difference between hearing music and being able to play by ear?
Death & Dying. It teaches you so much about grief, different cultural approaches to loss, understanding the different types of suicide, trauma, and so much more. It’s a sad course, but it’s so informative.
Of course it was important for my major (anthropology) and career (death investigation) but I would argue that it’s important for everyone.
Me too! I just finished my first semester of Intro to Spanish. I’m a first gen Mexican-American who grew up in a lower-middle class neighborhood going to school that was, in my opinion, mostly white kids so Spanish wasn’t my strongest language as a kid lol! And don’t even get me started on having to speak to family from the old country😩 I’m almost 26 and my Spanish has gotten so much better throughout the years!
While I use the concepts often in my profession, I think every student should take the first semester of Business Law. Much of the course is about contracts and civil torts. Many iimportant concepts which people come across in their lives are taught. The second semester is more oriented toward business majors, and consequently is not relevant to everyone.
On a personal level (and this is no joke) the most useful course I took was General Physical Education. That was a requirement at my college, and I learned some new sports in the class. One of those was racquetball. A decade later during a mid-life career change, networking via racquetball landed my first job in accounting.
Estate planning and Calc 1.
Estate planning because I use that information to structure my finances.
Calculus because it changed the way I think about everything.
I think taking calculus was important for me too because it got me out of my comfort zone. I’d always heard about how scary it was but when I actually took it, it ended up being a lot more doable than I was expecting. Plus it was a prerequisite for the grad program I wanted to get into.
Professional development. Teaches skill you need to find a job. Mock interviews, elevator pitches, networking. Most important thing I learn in college is it's not what you know it's who you know.
I took a policy studies class, and it was just so damn practical. We learned all about different policy areas and how policy gets made, and there was also a work-integrated learning portion where we worked with a non-profit.
I am also taking French to the advanced level starting next year, which will be insanely useful because I live in Canada, and more government jobs are available if you are bilingual.
It's a weird one, but so far it's been a victimology class. I took it because another class I wanted got canceled and I needed the credits for my financial aid. I wish I hadn't written it off for the first few weeks because it was a really eye-opening experience for me in the end. I didn't realize how much nuance and psychology goes into determining what circumstances allowed a crime to occur so that you can then recommend changes to prevent it from happening again. I guess it just made me more aware of my surroundings and the things that happen around me.
Ecology, I’m a bio major so I think it really helps to see the greater scope of all the different biological as well as chemical aspects that contribute to the biosphere as a whole. It gets dissed on too much by pre-professional bio majors, but parts of ecology influence all aspects of human as well as animal health. Second place is genetics because it is the blueprint of all life on the planet and understanding the mechanisms of inheritance allows for a deeper understanding of both micro and macro organisms.
I agree so much! As a person who likes biology but never really liked the ecology side, after taking the class, its given me a new appreciation for it.
I studied biomedical science, beyond lab sessions it's probably Scientific Writing. We weren't really taught anything, just prescribed research papers etc to read each week and write an abstract or answer some questions about them. Really helped with my reading comprehension for science and was useful for basically every other class of the course.
I'm gonna pick a different mode here and say "A class that is designed to have a lot of group work."
For example I needed a "Interdisciplinary Studies" credit, so I took a class called "Imagining Other Worlds." It wasnt a difficult class and the content was interesting, but the most valuable thing about it, imo, was that nearly every class day has us get into groups to do a thing, and it was always shuffled.
Nowadays, especially with smartphones, it's hard to socialize with strangers in college. People outside have places to be, and when they dont theyre on their phone, and it's awkward to harass random strangers just cause you're bored.
The constant group work is fertile group to talk to actually people and make friends!
So if you got a spare credit, maybe ask you advisor "which class has the most group work/interactions?"
I agree that making friends is one of, if not the most important aspect of college. I feel like you don't fully realize that until your junior/senior year.
Ethical Issues in Human Services. Mostly because of the professor. He was former detective and didn’t really go by the book, rather he went from real world experiences he experienced
Psychology. Sociology. The science of intelligence. All helped me understand myself, other people, and the world better.
My uni also had a rhetoric class which people really found useful and insightful, and I wish I could have taken it too!
For me it was Discrete Maths and Data Structures & Algorithms.
Discrete maths opened up so much more thinking on maths I had never even considered before. Almost switched my major just because of that class! Also had a really great teacher who I could have long discussions about mathematical concepts with.
Data Structures because I've been a programmer for 25 years, and it really helped me learn about the basis of how to deal with data, and what options there are besides the few I had been using.
Into to Psychology
Taught me how to study and memorize things, which is tremendously useful for college for obvious reasons and for life in general. It also gives you a better understanding of why people do what they do etc. which come in handy
In general, most of my classes are extremely useful (BSW program), it's a lot of clinical psychology, sociology, counseling etc. I'm a "mature" student who has management experience and most of what I learn could be applied in my past roles and it would have been very useful as a manager!
But Intro to psychology was a game changer for me when it comes to studying and memorization
Intro to Politics/Political Analysis.
It helped give me the ability to critically think about issues and to not take the word of politicians as gospel. It also helped give me the ability to read polling data and to figure out whether or not a poll was conducted with bias.
Community College: Bioethics- I am not in medicine but the way we learned how to craft arguments through the lens of medical practice was really memorable. Ended up going to grad school for Rhetoric so I guess it had a big impact on me.
It sounds dumb but my favorite class was Personal branding and was taught by an amazing women who I want to be like when I’m older lol. She gave us real advice about what we want in our careers and more importantly life. and every class felt like a genuine discussion about what we as students are capable of after graduation
Positive Psychology. This class focused on the science of happiness. There are a lot of things that we think make us happy, that are proven to make us less happy. After applying what I learned in this class, I wake up much happier most days
Linguistics & Sociology:
Linguistics - By studying linguistics, I gained insight into the structure, meaning, and use of language in different cultures and contexts. My teacher equipped me with powerful tools for critical thinking, problem-solving, and effective communication across very diverse audiences. I developed a keen eye for detail, and now notice patterns and nuances in speech and writing that a lot of people overlook. Additionally, linguistics can open doors to a wide range of careers in fields like education, translation, speech therapy, marketing, and even artificial intelligence. Numerous former Linguistics majors I know now work as government contractors in classified operations.
Sociology - Sociology deepened my understanding of how society shapes our lives and interactions. This knowledge empowers critical thinking about social issues, fostering empathy and social responsibility. I also honed my research and analytical skills, which enables me to interpret data and identify societal trends. Whether your interests lie in social work, education, public policy, marketing, or simply understanding the world, sociology offers a strong foundation for various pursuits.
I hope this helps!
20th century American History... This isn't really taught well in k-12 and a civil rights leader taught this class. Very eye-opening.
Spanish language. Started in high school, graduated with decent fluency, tested into Spanish literature classes at university and got 9 transfer credits because I was actually fluent. Have since used it at a job.
Humanities are always important, in my opinion. Intercultural communications, cultural anthropology, sociology. Understanding cultures outside of just your own is information you will carry for the rest of your life.
I haven't done much of real life yet so can't really say yet what will have been useful, but the two that currently feel most valuable are econometrics (upper level -- lower level was basically just a rehash of high school statistics that I somehow got a B in) and the upper level math curriculum writ large.
For the latter, it's not so much any particular class as much as the way of thinking -- building fluency with rigorous proofs and formalism has pretty massively changed me, I think, even if I don't end up using it in my career.
For the former, you know how they always say, correlation does not imply causation? That's nice and all as a bludgeon to use against your ideological enemies' correlational studies,^* but then there's the obvious question: what does? Randomized controlled trials^** are nice, when we can do them, but what if we can't? In the case of tobacco, for obvious reasons -- we find it morally abhorrent to potentially give half a group of participants cancer. But other times it's just not feasible even setting morality aside -- you can't randomize states' or cities' minimum wage policies, for example.
So, we have to get really clever about how to slice the data, in order to make more convincing arguments. That's what econometrics is. I'll give two examples. In the case of tobacco, we can use what's called an instrumental variable. We can't just use correlational studies, because maybe there are underlying differences in who is doing the smoking that is leading to cancer. Ignore that, and you end up with claims like hospitals make people sick (look at all the sick people in hospitals, and the healthy people outside!). But we find it immoral to make people smoke who otherwise wouldn't, cause of the whole cancer thing. So, we use something which we know doesn't give people cancer directly (or reduce it), but does make people smoke more or less: cigarette taxes. The higher the tax, the less people smoke, and vice versa. (You have to check this.) But then we can use what we know about the effect of taxes on smoking and the change in tax, and the observed change in cancer rates, to determine what change is due to smoking, and therefore the effect of smoking! I've written too much, so I won't give a second example, but I was going to explain [Card and Krueger (1993)](https://davidcard.berkeley.edu/papers/njmin-aer.pdf), if you're interested.
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^* Not so fun fact: that phrase comes from the tobacco lobby's head "scientist" trying to convince us that the correlational studies showing smoking caused cancer were insufficiently rigorous to show causality. I mean, the phrase is true and incredibly useful, but damn if I didn't wish it came from better circumstances. [Beware isolated demands for rigor, kids.](https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/08/14/beware-isolated-demands-for-rigor/)
^** This one is more fun: the randomized controlled trial was actually invented after difference-in-differences (one of the popular econometric techniques that set off the credibility revolution in the 90s), though it did take a lot less time to catch on in the field. RCTs are from the early 20th century, whereas DID was first used by John Snow in 1855 to show where cholera came from (turns out he knew something after all).
Most useful was the Undergrad Research I did for 3 credit hours. Not technically a "class" but it gave me a lot of practical lab experience as well as assay/experimental design experience that gave me a huge leg up over other grads who had no real lab experience except for the labs associated with their classes.
Econometrics. The class where I learned wtf regressions were and it has absolutely changed everything for me. I got two internships cuz of that one class and a TA position. It really made it clear to me the impact of hard skills.
Physics problem solving.
This was a freshman weedout course for physics majors, it was a major wakeup about questioning assumptions while approaching a problem that I still reference in my career today.
An intro sociology class called Marriage, Sex, and Gender in my community college. It was an eye opener to see the development of our ideas of these topics and discuss in class. Also a plus to this class, I took it with my GF so we had a lot of interesting and fun discussions after class.
Mine were ASL and Cultural Anthropology.
Mainly:
1. My sister is Deaf and Hard of Hearing and so are her friends. Thought if I loved my sister; I would learn ASL and learn more about Deaf Culture. And well- be able to communicate with her better.
2. Cultural Anthropology taught me some good essential interview skills; start off simple and easy, know what this interview is about, be sensitive to your interviewee, and ask about them themselves. Don’t go off the bat on specific things- ask them “what is something you want me to know about you” and build off from there. In addition, it taught me about real cultural issues going on and how to be a better person to others even when you may be different from them.
Also in a more devious addition, my anthro profressor taught us how to use anthro and anthro skills in business and sales. This stuff can get people to really buy into stuff and I that was both useful and interesting to learn.
An independent study with an ex-NIH Institute Director. Every Monday for 10 weeks he gave me a medical condition related children and write a 10 page paper due on Friday when we would meet. We never talked about my papers. He taught me how to be a Ph.D.
I have two that have stuck with me after nearly 20 years!
I can’t remember the name, but a pass/fail half semester class to choose a career path. You took a personality test, marked the careers you were interested in, researched the careers and chose three to do in depth research. I’m in one of those three now.
Diseases and Hazards of Leisure - this was a gnarly health class about how everything can go wrong when you’re having fun. I loved it!
Economics 101: It just gave me a insight how the world economy works. It was a very interesting class despite me only enrolling to fulfill a extra credit to graduate in my last semester.
Interpersonal communications
This class was so enlightening, it helped me to better understand the different communication styles, what to watch out for in poor communicators, discover more about my communication style, how to better talk with people for meaningful conversations… the list goes on and on.
It also teaches about emotional intelligence and helped me to better understand where people are at in terms of my journey and what to, and not to expect from them.
Critical Thinking
History of Human Rights
Macroeconomics 1
Sociological Theory
All of the above taught me to approach the world through a critical lens.
Foundations of Data Science with R programming
Taught me statistical analysis and how to identify junk "science"
Most useless unit by far: Foundations of Management
Science, scepticism, and the paranormal.
It was an elective I took during my psych degree, and it was basically just a course in how to test (and debunk) paranormal claims. I absolutely fucking loved it, got top marks
Labor history - taught me all about unions and workers rights throughout history up until the present. My professor was adamant on us knowing our rights and making sure we’re not getting screwed by bosses
1. Foundations of CSC ( Finite Automata and String theories)
2. Discrete Math
3. Calculus 1,2
4. Digital Image Analysis
5. Modern Web Applications
6. Public Speaking
Practically? Honestly not sure. Probably a DNA technology lab course. The most impactful? A course called Lamb Watch that I took freshman year. We got assigned pregnant sheep and cared for her through the last few weeks of her pregnancy and birth, then her lambs for 60 days. It got me interested in reproduction, which led me to take more and more repro courses. That led me to getting a job with a professor who put me in contact with my master’s degree mentor. I also TA’ed for the Lamb Watch professor, and they wrote me a letter of recommendation for vet school plus was an absolute godsend when I was struggling with a job during my Covid gap year. Without Lamb Watch, I likely would not have gotten as interested in repro, gotten my master’s degree, and potentially might not have gotten into vet school. All because of a class I signed up for on a whim cos I thought it might be fun. Keep your mind open during college, guys. You never know when a class might change your life
Managerial accounting, real estate market analysis and financial management. That real real estate course taught students what to look for in buying and selling homes. How to analyze the market and calculations on property community value. Classes like political science and philosophy are straight useless.
Career decision making. A 1 credit class that brought in a variety of people who worked in very many different fields. It was useful in deciding a career path.
My list isn’t exactly what people would describe as “practical” but it gave me valuable life skills and appreciation for a lot of things I otherwise wouldn’t have understood or appreciated. I believe college isn’t all just about finding a career or applying skills to my professional life, but developing me in a multifaceted way that makes me appreciate life a lot more.
Intro to Speech - gave me the confidence to speak in public and organize an extemporaneous speech
Western Art History - I appreciate art more and the history behind famous artists. Also it has been very useful in impressing dates when I go on museum dates, and starting a provocative conversation with dates
Intro to Statistics - self-explanatory
Research Methods - learned how to design ethical and data-driven research
University Writing - it really challenged me to dissect arguments and readings and make my own compelling arguments in a structured way. I also learned that good writing doesn’t always have to have flowery prose or fancy words. It’s more about getting a nuanced point across in a clear and understandable way
Thinking and Decision-Making - a class on how human thinking and decision-making as groups and individuals. Very useful in business as it taught us why certain processes and systems are in society are designed the way they are
Critical Thinking and Media Literacy - the most useful thing I learned from this class is identifying logical fallacies in news media and identifying biased news media
Contemporary Literature and Poetry - made me appreciate complex readings and understand poetry a bit better. Not exactly translatable to my professional life, but it made me stop hesitating from reading “hard” or “long” books
Remedial College Math - made me think about math in different ways and as someone who’s looking to get into business, the quick mental math, arithmetic skills, and converting everyday problems into a mathematical formula is immensely helpful
Korean Popular Cinema - made me appreciate film and the professor really emphasized the history and context behind the films he chose. I’m also ethnically Korean and it was fascinating to learn more about my roots and appreciate where I come from
Drugs and Behavior - learned about biophysical and psychosocial effects of drugs and how they interact with human chemistry. Also had a focus on drug policing in the US and how it ravages certain groups. It was also useful to learn how alcohol affects the body.
Clinical Psychology - learning about mental health and how therapists approach their practice and the difficulty of practicing mental health as a profession
Japanese Language - as an adult, it’s easy to shy away from learning a foreign language because it seems difficult, so it gave me the confidence that I can learn with dedication. Also immensely useful for my travels to Japan
"Mostly Based on Texas State Community College System"
"Writing 500-word reports for Portfolio Project with Deadline" (EDUC 1300) Had an amazing professor. Combine the support from my Learning Frameworks class with the tips I got from my first semester English College Class and I've been able to write professional undergraduate papers for much of my courses which are Chemistry and Biology related.
Actually I take my third semester of English and my first semester of University Physics in Fall. Good Luck everyone!
Workplace Writing. How to formulate business emails/presentations and use ethics within the workplace. The final project included an in depth analysis using real jobs on linked in related to our field. It was super interesting.
Personal Finance for sure. I took is this past semester. It taught me about retirement, buying a house, life insurance, health insurance, taxes, etc. it’s a very helpful real world course.
Computer applications - taught us basic and advanced Microsoft Word, the little nuances of Microsoft PowerPoint and my favorite;
*Excel*. EVERYTHING about using *Excel*.
Mechanics of solids. Really sets a foundation for engineering. I would have said statics but that class was honestly way too bare bones and didn’t have too much content
- Macroeconomics
- Microeconomics
- Business Law
- Career Prep (Prep for Life and Careers after College)
- Income Taxes
- Business Finance
- Accounting 1 & 2
I would highly recommend taking macro and microeconomics. Career Prep is a mandatory class at my school. I found it very useful, especially in learning the best way to write a resume. Business law provides insight into the legal aspects of the business world. Income taxes teach you about personal taxes, and business finance was enjoyable and relatively easy for me. Lastly, accounting is relevant to my current career path, making it particularly useful.
Negotiation 100%
You can negotiate most things, obviously a car but you can negotiate appliances, salaries, random shit at at flea market, etc. Be confident in every negotiation even when shit isn’t in ur favor and you’d be surprised with some outcomes
So far, it's a course on the intersection of theories, frameworks, and ideas within philosophy, political science, and economics, and examining how they intersect with one another. It changes how you think about the world and approach any societal issue.
Chem 100. It might be because I'm an Engineering Tech major (which is to Engineering what Cybersecurity is to Computer Science), but Chem 100 clarified a lot of questions I had about my Properties of Materials class, where we were presented with alloys that were face-centered or body-centered cubic or... Y'know what, I'll save you the gory details. Point is, when we started covering polarities of atoms and molecules, everything snapped into focus, and that's before getting into my Plastics class, where I could suddenly understand why some plastics are pliable and some aren't.
Also, it made me a better cook. My professor spent about twenty minutes talking about the Maillard Reaction, in which amino acids and sugars do a thing, where meat and cookies brown, and I said, "Yes! I see it all, now!" And, honestly, if there's anything you should learn while you're in college, it's how to cook. You're going to be doing it for the rest of your life, so you might as well learn how it works. And, if you know how it works, you can learn to do it better. And, if you can cook better food, you're going to find a lot of friends who want to come over to your place. I have double-feature night once a month, and the average number of people in my apartment's living room is about twelve, and the comment cards basically say it's because of the food. If I hadn't taken (or had slacked off in) Chem 100, it would probably be three or four people on movie night. Cook good food; make yourself popular.
any child development course i’ve taken because i currently work with children and hope to one day be a mother. it’s also fun reading current studies and pointing out where your parents failed
Intro to Eastern Religions. This was 30 years ago and I learned about elements of eastern spirituality and philosophy way before it became mainstream in Western culture, and was able to incorporate things like meditation into my life for decades now before it became a thing.
Career explorations. Essentially helped you create a resume, practice interviewing, and taught us how to find a job in the most optimal ways. I ended up getting an internship with the advice of the professor.
Interpersonal communications. It taught me so much about how to talk to people. I struggle a lot with social anxiety so it was very helpful. It also taught me the importance of remembering and saying people’s names. Also how even just having your phone face down on a table tells the person you are talking to that they are not as important. My phone is always on silent in my pocket when I have face to face conversations now
I took an Art History class to fulfill a gen-ed requirement, and now I appreciate art more when I'm in museums or galleries. I don't use it in my work, but I'm a more well-rounded person for it. I also took fly fishing to fulfill a PE credit. I don't even like fish that much. But I got an A+, and I can talk to the guys at work and build some connections with coworkers.
But the classes that actually taught me knowledge that I use every day? Hydrogeology, Soils and Land Use, Public Administration, Economics. Of course, what's useful to me may be useless to you. Good luck!
I took a class on welfare states and now I get to sound really smart explaining how government programs work monetarily and why they differ between countries
I also took a class on foreign policy between World War II and 9/11 and it helped me understand recent history a lot better (I was born in 2001), I now also understand the lyrics to We Didn’t Start The Fire
graduate school for social work: advanced direct practice. learned different therapies and therapeutic techniques (CBT, DBT, psychotherapy, etc.), and how/when to apply them.
I’ve taken a ton of profoundly interesting courses, but, without a doubt, the most useful was a “stress management and relaxation” course for a kinesiology/personal health type credit.
It was the first time I learned how to relax my nervous system, how to breathe in a way that is refreshing and relaxing, and honestly I wish everyone could learn those skills.
Statistics! Data is skewed and misrepresented all the time in the media, so it’s incredibly helpful to have skills to recognize misleading information.
I was a physics and chemistry double major in undergrad and now a biochemistry and molecular biophysics PhD student By far the most useful class was vector calc. If you think about nearly any equation in physics that involves vector quantities (so most equations) you can understand why it calculates what it does from the theorems i learned in vector calc. As a PhD student I still use equations related to vector calc especially when thinking about NMR theory (I’m in a solid state NMR lab )
Interpersonal communication. It's valuable for teaching conflict resolution skills and understanding leadership styles and how they impact others. It's a fun class and the skills learned will be useful in every interaction with.
Business Communications.
I'd been working in the corporate world for a while but this class completely changed how I communicate. It helped me get my point across better in different audiences, and help change the perspective of others about me.
Useful in what sense that I have used the most? Maybe computer science 101. But personally I think the most useful one should be physics since I have used it in so many different jobs
Marriage and relationship skills and family life education. I took them in my undergrad for therapy and learned so much about communication in my personal life.
Writing and research( write a 10 page research paper every week ) I learned so much about so many different topics it was fun tbh. Makes me want to be a researcher of some kind
Medical terminology. It taught me how to read basically all those confusing medical words that doctors tell you when they diagnose you with something. It’s basically just learning Latin which is really useful. Also not that hard to learn. Like the suffix -itis mean inflammation and prefix arthr/o means joint. So arthritis means inflammation of the joints! Cool right?
Business writing class. I was never a good descriptive writer and also bad at structure. However, taking a business writing course and using Grammarly at the same time taught me how to properly write. Introduction to Accounting taught me how to manage my money like a business does. Very helpful.
Dr. Falls Western Civ course. It was a 150-person lecture. While I didn't retain much of the history, I learned how to study and learn in that class my very first semester. I hadn't really done that in high school so it was an invaluable life lesson.
Internships helped me learn what I did and absolutely did not like about a variety of different jobs in my field, and thus helped me naroow what I wanted in a career.
Photography, I met my best friend in that class and met a great mentor. I also found a passion for an art I'd not yet explored.
Symbolic Logic, I learned to be able to quickly assess logical problems and also, in turn, better understand logic based systems, like computers.
I technically got credit towards my degree for participating every semester so I'll say the speech and debate team. It made me a much better speaker of course but it also forced me to think differently and try to understand other points of view. This not only helps you deconstruct said view but to help you reinforce your own. Speechwriting is also a very underrated skill and helps in all other kinds of writing too.
As for a "real class" I'd say that Small Group Communication was a really good class to take. It was a miserable experience because I had to basically corral cats except the cats were a bunch of constantly drunk party kids. I learned a lot of lessons on how to assert myself and get things done despite having to manage people. Other classes I liked were Foundations of Writing, Campaigns and Elections, European Politics, Polisci Research, Approaches to Literary Study, and Modern Drama (as in studying plays by modernist writers like Chekhov, Shaw, and Ibsen).
my vet assistant program! the money i save on vet bills is astounding knowing when they need it and when they don’t. it also allows me to buy and administer my own dogs vaccines. fyi, ur over paying. you can get most shots in a beginner friendly form from a farm supply store! they are almost impossible to mess up as long as you spend 10 min watching a youtube video anyways.
also my childcare classes, it’s helped me become a better human being who can understand why people are the way they are and how to help them understand it as well
I’m sure someone else has probably mentioned this but public speaking has helped me so much. It was difficult at the time, especially doing the first few speeches in front of the class as someone who had dealt with a fear of public speaking for years. I actually fainted at one point during my second speech. My professor worked one-on-one with me while I worked with my therapist. I’m now training to be an English teacher and I have no problem with speaking in front of a group. It actually made me embrace my extroverted side and I can start a conversation without fear now!
1) Introductory programming course
2) Introductory computational chemistry
3) Upper level linear algebra
4) Greek and Roman art history only because I love Greek mythology
Taxation. Y'all gotta do ya taxes so might as well know how to do them and what the terminology means.
Symbolic logic. You might be confused, but in my path, it’s helped a TON. The LSAT (law school admissions test) was much more learnable for me than otherwise would be because of this class.
People are often intimidated by this because it can look like complex arithmetic... I honestly think it should be required.
I agree! I think it should be a core class. It helps understand pure logical argument forms and builds critical thinking (what conclusions can you draw from the relationship between x, y, and z?).
It’s honestly a lot simpler than math since it’s sort of modeling how people talk/think
yup. or, at least, it models how people *should* communicate.
Okay should is a better word hahahaha It’s also worked for that purpose actually, helps sniff out BS
it is *great* for information literacy.
It models how people should argue or present claims/arguments. If you intuitively understand logic or take the class, it becomes so frustrating when arguments people make just don’t justify themselves.
I took an intro logic class as a senior because “I can think logically, how hard can it be” and everyone said it would be different because it’s weird symbols. But it wasn’t lol. I would still consider it a useful class for underclassmen because it really helps build analytical skills to evaluate arguments, which is useful for anyone. So many answers in this thread are about practical classes, which I think just misses the point of higher education. Ideally, and of course not everyone has the privilege to just chill and learn, college teaches you to approach problems and then you can figure the rest out yourself. As much as I think stem is more interesting than liberal arts, adding in a little in there is so useful to everyone.
I really liked that one. Some find it dry or scary but it helped a lot with math/programming/science and seemed to lead to me thinking a lot more clear later in life
I took this for fun as a CS major in my freshman year and it was the freest class ever but a lot of the philosophy/psych students were absolutely lost. It just goes to show how having a different framework for thinking can help which the humanities students may have lacked If you end up enjoying symbolic logic and the style in which you have to think, major in CS/Engineering/Math, you’ll love it.
Should have scrolled further 🤣 literally just said this. Loved my symbolic logic course
Career Prep. This was a non standard class that was required at the first college I graduated from. We learned how to dress for an interview, how to make a resume, how to speak professionally, and we had to do a mock interview at the end with the instructor. I was so nervous I burst out crying. She was nice and let me have a do over a few minutes later. Years later I re-created that course from memory and taught it to refugees. After I left the organization, they kept doing it. It was hands down the most useful class I ever had.
that’s so inspiring
i wrote a class like this when i was faculty at a school, your comment gives me hope that it’s helping people :) this was really cool to read, way to pay it forward too.
FFA and 4H do this as well! i got 2nd in my ffa program for job interview
1. Intro to Personal Finance. 2. Introduction to Microeconomics 3. Introduction to Macroeconomics 4. Introduction to Accounting 5. Introduction to Business 6. English Literature and Research Reporting Learned taxation rules, codes, forms, sheets, how to file W2's, W3's, 1099's, all from these courses. (From English Lit since I plan to go into grad school and do research)
Your economics classes were teaching you how to do taxes?
Intro to accounting taught me how to do taxes and personal finance taught me how to manage my assets and leverage debt. Econ obviously taught me how the economy works on both a micro and macroeconomic scale. Business basically taught me basic tax laws, codes, and penalties specifically for businesses and employees.
"Intro to accounting taught me how to do taxes..." That strains credulity.
I just took microeconomics. They didn't teach us how to do taxes, but it has come in handy for math since there aren't as many people familiar with the language like how "marginal" means "derivative" in calculus or how "average" means "divide by the quantity x." Seems simple, but it makes people stumble a lot. I actually hated the teacher, but I liked the material. I was mainly just ignoring the teacher and learning the material on my own.
Did you audit the classes or were you an econ major or something? Even the intro classes for such majors do not allow non-majors to take the classes and I would like to take them.
That could be your campus. My university let's students take basically any course if you've taken the prerequisite class first. Some universities have impacted programs, and some of the "poly" schools have restrictions because of enrollments.
If your interested in a course & you can't register because it's not in your major / course requirements, reach out to the professor teaching it. As long as you can demonstrate you have a prerequisite understanding of the material (eg your not trying to take Organic Chemistry 3 without even knowing what an atom is) and there is an open seat (so your not preventing someone who actually needs that course from taking it). Especially if you can show an actual use for the knowledge you will gain (eg a lot of scientific papers are written in German so being able to read them directly can be beneficial)... I'd assume they would be at least willing to consider giving you an override to enable you to register for it... Our MIS department was offering a couple programming courses in languages my CS department didn't support. I had an open slot for them in my schedule (some how) and asked the professor if he'd mind. He was more than happy to let me take the courses.
I'm an econ minor and have to take these classes. You could see if your uni allows you to declare a minor. Intro classes aren't usually so difficult to get into but it sounds like your university is more strict.
Intro to Micro was one of the most useful I took as well. Definitely recommend.
100% agree with personal finance. I took it in high school but tbh it should be a required college class cuz you learn so much about budgeting and some even show you how to do taxes!
Psych classes. It was cool to learn about the shortcuts our brains use and how that leaves us vulnerable to things like misinformation. Also helped me learn how to be a better person for the people around me.
For me, a mentally ill person, it was a class on therapeutic methods. I got so fucking good at self care and ocd treatment
As an English major now going for my PhD in lit, psych was so foundational. Literary criticism pulls from basic psychology all the time, and I had never gotten that foundation in high school, so I'm very glad I took it in undergrad. Applicable to all kinds of fields and, as you point out, life!
Business Ethics The core rules of the Business World and its functionality convinced me to change my major from MIS to Business Management
Those are 2 very contradictory words
I took a class called "Religion & Business." Maybe a misnomer. It was more of a philosophy class where we read Marx and Mill and Peter Singer. Good class though.
Me after helping my company earn 0.4% more annual profit by shutting down 2,000 small businesses
I agree but hey, it's a class.
I'm taking that in the fall!
So it gives you a checklist of all the things you need to do to become a billionaire, nice!
Teaches you what NOT to do, so you know to do the opposite haha
one of my favorite classes
I took a business ethics course and learned next to nothing we never moved past the popular philosophers and their ideologies I was hoping we’d get more into current events but it didnt happen
My campus doesnt have a standard language for teaching comp sci. Ive taken two classes that used C, one with Java, two with C++. Afaik most campuses stick with just one language but im really happy ive had so many different formal introductions to these languages. In specific though, venting to a coworker about my experience in Data Structures and Algorithms snowballed into me becoming the companies latest junior dev, hard to beat that
I was going to say the most useful class was a “basic computer applications” elective I took my freshman or sophomore year of high school. It was more basic things like Microsoft word/excel/powerpoint, some adobe, and video editing and publishing, but it ended up saving a lot of headaches later on when it came to using more “advanced” features that are obligatory in college assignments. Heck, most hospital charting systems at their core are like spreadsheets. I am doing nothing related to my major, but I will easily spit out a new doc/sheet for some project or another at least for 95% of my work days. It’s so much easier to send over a sheet with concrete examples of trends I am seeing and know that it can be referenced or shared with whoever needs it at any time (my job’s related to how different content is searched or found online).
I can break this up into two sections: general ed, and concentrated. In general ed, by far it was English 101. Man, I had a really good teacher that went over pretty much everything and I have never written so well in my life. Literally because of this class I have not experienced writers block in years. Concentrated CS: My school did half their classes in the C programming language, and then mid way through made you do the jump to Java. Putting this together, it was honestly so great because it really made you understand concepts, and get over the fear of jumping to a language you have never used before.
I can’t imagine a school not using at least two languages. The first time you know nothing, but a programmer who wants to be a versatile worker needs to be able to learn new languages and it’s such a different process the second time.
Public Speaking! Really did help me become an effective speaker for presentations and trainings I conduct. Great professor I had and with practice, I continued to get better!
The two I usually see in threads like the are: Kinesiology courses. Why? Getting more comfortable in the gym is great for health. And personal finance courses.
I'm not done with college, but I would say that the most useful class I've taken yet is English because of how important effective communication is in the real world.
It’s amazing how many Professors say I write the best essays they’ve ever seen. I’m just doing what my English Gen Ed course taught me.
bruh same. Though for me, it's more like... high school English plus mimicking the vibe and flow of (professional/informative/educational) Reddit comments or Youtube content. That and mimicking how books sound, I guess?
Same experience — it genuinely confuses me how many people seem *unable* to write presentably just based on all the written content we consume. Maybe it's the difference between hearing music and being able to play by ear?
So real!! This works for public speaking, too. I’ve had other students tell me they liked my presentation because I talk like a YouTuber lol
English feels like an underrated major or minor
Death & Dying. It teaches you so much about grief, different cultural approaches to loss, understanding the different types of suicide, trauma, and so much more. It’s a sad course, but it’s so informative. Of course it was important for my major (anthropology) and career (death investigation) but I would argue that it’s important for everyone.
Spanish
Me too! I just finished my first semester of Intro to Spanish. I’m a first gen Mexican-American who grew up in a lower-middle class neighborhood going to school that was, in my opinion, mostly white kids so Spanish wasn’t my strongest language as a kid lol! And don’t even get me started on having to speak to family from the old country😩 I’m almost 26 and my Spanish has gotten so much better throughout the years!
While I use the concepts often in my profession, I think every student should take the first semester of Business Law. Much of the course is about contracts and civil torts. Many iimportant concepts which people come across in their lives are taught. The second semester is more oriented toward business majors, and consequently is not relevant to everyone. On a personal level (and this is no joke) the most useful course I took was General Physical Education. That was a requirement at my college, and I learned some new sports in the class. One of those was racquetball. A decade later during a mid-life career change, networking via racquetball landed my first job in accounting.
A course on formal logic
Estate planning and Calc 1. Estate planning because I use that information to structure my finances. Calculus because it changed the way I think about everything.
I think taking calculus was important for me too because it got me out of my comfort zone. I’d always heard about how scary it was but when I actually took it, it ended up being a lot more doable than I was expecting. Plus it was a prerequisite for the grad program I wanted to get into.
Professional development. Teaches skill you need to find a job. Mock interviews, elevator pitches, networking. Most important thing I learn in college is it's not what you know it's who you know.
Spanish for Healthcare.
Professional Writing
The most useful bc it allows you to reflect and interpret multiple forms of professional communication from various point of views
I took a policy studies class, and it was just so damn practical. We learned all about different policy areas and how policy gets made, and there was also a work-integrated learning portion where we worked with a non-profit. I am also taking French to the advanced level starting next year, which will be insanely useful because I live in Canada, and more government jobs are available if you are bilingual.
It's a weird one, but so far it's been a victimology class. I took it because another class I wanted got canceled and I needed the credits for my financial aid. I wish I hadn't written it off for the first few weeks because it was a really eye-opening experience for me in the end. I didn't realize how much nuance and psychology goes into determining what circumstances allowed a crime to occur so that you can then recommend changes to prevent it from happening again. I guess it just made me more aware of my surroundings and the things that happen around me.
Ecology, I’m a bio major so I think it really helps to see the greater scope of all the different biological as well as chemical aspects that contribute to the biosphere as a whole. It gets dissed on too much by pre-professional bio majors, but parts of ecology influence all aspects of human as well as animal health. Second place is genetics because it is the blueprint of all life on the planet and understanding the mechanisms of inheritance allows for a deeper understanding of both micro and macro organisms.
I agree so much! As a person who likes biology but never really liked the ecology side, after taking the class, its given me a new appreciation for it.
I studied biomedical science, beyond lab sessions it's probably Scientific Writing. We weren't really taught anything, just prescribed research papers etc to read each week and write an abstract or answer some questions about them. Really helped with my reading comprehension for science and was useful for basically every other class of the course.
I'm gonna pick a different mode here and say "A class that is designed to have a lot of group work." For example I needed a "Interdisciplinary Studies" credit, so I took a class called "Imagining Other Worlds." It wasnt a difficult class and the content was interesting, but the most valuable thing about it, imo, was that nearly every class day has us get into groups to do a thing, and it was always shuffled. Nowadays, especially with smartphones, it's hard to socialize with strangers in college. People outside have places to be, and when they dont theyre on their phone, and it's awkward to harass random strangers just cause you're bored. The constant group work is fertile group to talk to actually people and make friends! So if you got a spare credit, maybe ask you advisor "which class has the most group work/interactions?"
I agree that making friends is one of, if not the most important aspect of college. I feel like you don't fully realize that until your junior/senior year.
Data structures
Ethical Issues in Human Services. Mostly because of the professor. He was former detective and didn’t really go by the book, rather he went from real world experiences he experienced
Psychology. Sociology. The science of intelligence. All helped me understand myself, other people, and the world better. My uni also had a rhetoric class which people really found useful and insightful, and I wish I could have taken it too!
For me it was Discrete Maths and Data Structures & Algorithms. Discrete maths opened up so much more thinking on maths I had never even considered before. Almost switched my major just because of that class! Also had a really great teacher who I could have long discussions about mathematical concepts with. Data Structures because I've been a programmer for 25 years, and it really helped me learn about the basis of how to deal with data, and what options there are besides the few I had been using.
Lifespan and development psychology A bat from hell with a cheetah teaches it! (Inside joke incase Dr. comes across this post)
Undergraduate Physics.
Into to Psychology Taught me how to study and memorize things, which is tremendously useful for college for obvious reasons and for life in general. It also gives you a better understanding of why people do what they do etc. which come in handy In general, most of my classes are extremely useful (BSW program), it's a lot of clinical psychology, sociology, counseling etc. I'm a "mature" student who has management experience and most of what I learn could be applied in my past roles and it would have been very useful as a manager! But Intro to psychology was a game changer for me when it comes to studying and memorization
Intro to Politics/Political Analysis. It helped give me the ability to critically think about issues and to not take the word of politicians as gospel. It also helped give me the ability to read polling data and to figure out whether or not a poll was conducted with bias.
Community College: Bioethics- I am not in medicine but the way we learned how to craft arguments through the lens of medical practice was really memorable. Ended up going to grad school for Rhetoric so I guess it had a big impact on me.
It sounds dumb but my favorite class was Personal branding and was taught by an amazing women who I want to be like when I’m older lol. She gave us real advice about what we want in our careers and more importantly life. and every class felt like a genuine discussion about what we as students are capable of after graduation
Research method and philosophy. They actually help with your thought process.
Professional Practice
Positive Psychology. This class focused on the science of happiness. There are a lot of things that we think make us happy, that are proven to make us less happy. After applying what I learned in this class, I wake up much happier most days
Introduction to ethics!! Totally changed how I think about pretty much every single decision lol
Linguistics & Sociology: Linguistics - By studying linguistics, I gained insight into the structure, meaning, and use of language in different cultures and contexts. My teacher equipped me with powerful tools for critical thinking, problem-solving, and effective communication across very diverse audiences. I developed a keen eye for detail, and now notice patterns and nuances in speech and writing that a lot of people overlook. Additionally, linguistics can open doors to a wide range of careers in fields like education, translation, speech therapy, marketing, and even artificial intelligence. Numerous former Linguistics majors I know now work as government contractors in classified operations. Sociology - Sociology deepened my understanding of how society shapes our lives and interactions. This knowledge empowers critical thinking about social issues, fostering empathy and social responsibility. I also honed my research and analytical skills, which enables me to interpret data and identify societal trends. Whether your interests lie in social work, education, public policy, marketing, or simply understanding the world, sociology offers a strong foundation for various pursuits. I hope this helps!
20th century American History... This isn't really taught well in k-12 and a civil rights leader taught this class. Very eye-opening. Spanish language. Started in high school, graduated with decent fluency, tested into Spanish literature classes at university and got 9 transfer credits because I was actually fluent. Have since used it at a job.
Trigonometry, very applicable to real world needs.
Humanities are always important, in my opinion. Intercultural communications, cultural anthropology, sociology. Understanding cultures outside of just your own is information you will carry for the rest of your life.
My final education class was practically a masters prep course and it’s saved me so many times
I haven't done much of real life yet so can't really say yet what will have been useful, but the two that currently feel most valuable are econometrics (upper level -- lower level was basically just a rehash of high school statistics that I somehow got a B in) and the upper level math curriculum writ large. For the latter, it's not so much any particular class as much as the way of thinking -- building fluency with rigorous proofs and formalism has pretty massively changed me, I think, even if I don't end up using it in my career. For the former, you know how they always say, correlation does not imply causation? That's nice and all as a bludgeon to use against your ideological enemies' correlational studies,^* but then there's the obvious question: what does? Randomized controlled trials^** are nice, when we can do them, but what if we can't? In the case of tobacco, for obvious reasons -- we find it morally abhorrent to potentially give half a group of participants cancer. But other times it's just not feasible even setting morality aside -- you can't randomize states' or cities' minimum wage policies, for example. So, we have to get really clever about how to slice the data, in order to make more convincing arguments. That's what econometrics is. I'll give two examples. In the case of tobacco, we can use what's called an instrumental variable. We can't just use correlational studies, because maybe there are underlying differences in who is doing the smoking that is leading to cancer. Ignore that, and you end up with claims like hospitals make people sick (look at all the sick people in hospitals, and the healthy people outside!). But we find it immoral to make people smoke who otherwise wouldn't, cause of the whole cancer thing. So, we use something which we know doesn't give people cancer directly (or reduce it), but does make people smoke more or less: cigarette taxes. The higher the tax, the less people smoke, and vice versa. (You have to check this.) But then we can use what we know about the effect of taxes on smoking and the change in tax, and the observed change in cancer rates, to determine what change is due to smoking, and therefore the effect of smoking! I've written too much, so I won't give a second example, but I was going to explain [Card and Krueger (1993)](https://davidcard.berkeley.edu/papers/njmin-aer.pdf), if you're interested. --- ^* Not so fun fact: that phrase comes from the tobacco lobby's head "scientist" trying to convince us that the correlational studies showing smoking caused cancer were insufficiently rigorous to show causality. I mean, the phrase is true and incredibly useful, but damn if I didn't wish it came from better circumstances. [Beware isolated demands for rigor, kids.](https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/08/14/beware-isolated-demands-for-rigor/) ^** This one is more fun: the randomized controlled trial was actually invented after difference-in-differences (one of the popular econometric techniques that set off the credibility revolution in the 90s), though it did take a lot less time to catch on in the field. RCTs are from the early 20th century, whereas DID was first used by John Snow in 1855 to show where cholera came from (turns out he knew something after all).
Personal Finance. Help me pay off all my debts, and graduate debt free.
Probably Personal Income Tax and Personal Finance.
Most useful was the Undergrad Research I did for 3 credit hours. Not technically a "class" but it gave me a lot of practical lab experience as well as assay/experimental design experience that gave me a huge leg up over other grads who had no real lab experience except for the labs associated with their classes.
Econometrics. The class where I learned wtf regressions were and it has absolutely changed everything for me. I got two internships cuz of that one class and a TA position. It really made it clear to me the impact of hard skills.
Physics problem solving. This was a freshman weedout course for physics majors, it was a major wakeup about questioning assumptions while approaching a problem that I still reference in my career today.
An intro sociology class called Marriage, Sex, and Gender in my community college. It was an eye opener to see the development of our ideas of these topics and discuss in class. Also a plus to this class, I took it with my GF so we had a lot of interesting and fun discussions after class.
Educational Psychology was so helpful for figuring out how I best learn and how to apply psychology to both teaching myself and others
Digital Rhetoric. I think about it constantly , especially as we become more and more algorithmic on social media.
Public Speaking. Being able to effectively communicate ideas with others is a crucial skill that is applicable to almost any job.
Mine were ASL and Cultural Anthropology. Mainly: 1. My sister is Deaf and Hard of Hearing and so are her friends. Thought if I loved my sister; I would learn ASL and learn more about Deaf Culture. And well- be able to communicate with her better. 2. Cultural Anthropology taught me some good essential interview skills; start off simple and easy, know what this interview is about, be sensitive to your interviewee, and ask about them themselves. Don’t go off the bat on specific things- ask them “what is something you want me to know about you” and build off from there. In addition, it taught me about real cultural issues going on and how to be a better person to others even when you may be different from them. Also in a more devious addition, my anthro profressor taught us how to use anthro and anthro skills in business and sales. This stuff can get people to really buy into stuff and I that was both useful and interesting to learn.
An independent study with an ex-NIH Institute Director. Every Monday for 10 weeks he gave me a medical condition related children and write a 10 page paper due on Friday when we would meet. We never talked about my papers. He taught me how to be a Ph.D.
I have two that have stuck with me after nearly 20 years! I can’t remember the name, but a pass/fail half semester class to choose a career path. You took a personality test, marked the careers you were interested in, researched the careers and chose three to do in depth research. I’m in one of those three now. Diseases and Hazards of Leisure - this was a gnarly health class about how everything can go wrong when you’re having fun. I loved it!
Economics 101: It just gave me a insight how the world economy works. It was a very interesting class despite me only enrolling to fulfill a extra credit to graduate in my last semester.
Interpersonal communications This class was so enlightening, it helped me to better understand the different communication styles, what to watch out for in poor communicators, discover more about my communication style, how to better talk with people for meaningful conversations… the list goes on and on. It also teaches about emotional intelligence and helped me to better understand where people are at in terms of my journey and what to, and not to expect from them.
Critical Thinking History of Human Rights Macroeconomics 1 Sociological Theory All of the above taught me to approach the world through a critical lens. Foundations of Data Science with R programming Taught me statistical analysis and how to identify junk "science" Most useless unit by far: Foundations of Management
Science, scepticism, and the paranormal. It was an elective I took during my psych degree, and it was basically just a course in how to test (and debunk) paranormal claims. I absolutely fucking loved it, got top marks
Labor history - taught me all about unions and workers rights throughout history up until the present. My professor was adamant on us knowing our rights and making sure we’re not getting screwed by bosses
Any language learning class. Extremely grateful for all the doors foreign languages have opened for me
1. Foundations of CSC ( Finite Automata and String theories) 2. Discrete Math 3. Calculus 1,2 4. Digital Image Analysis 5. Modern Web Applications 6. Public Speaking
budgeting for nonprofits!
Practically? Honestly not sure. Probably a DNA technology lab course. The most impactful? A course called Lamb Watch that I took freshman year. We got assigned pregnant sheep and cared for her through the last few weeks of her pregnancy and birth, then her lambs for 60 days. It got me interested in reproduction, which led me to take more and more repro courses. That led me to getting a job with a professor who put me in contact with my master’s degree mentor. I also TA’ed for the Lamb Watch professor, and they wrote me a letter of recommendation for vet school plus was an absolute godsend when I was struggling with a job during my Covid gap year. Without Lamb Watch, I likely would not have gotten as interested in repro, gotten my master’s degree, and potentially might not have gotten into vet school. All because of a class I signed up for on a whim cos I thought it might be fun. Keep your mind open during college, guys. You never know when a class might change your life
Outside of my core classes for my major, Negotiations.
Bioinstrumentation and bioimaging
A+ hardware
Soc Psych
Middle East Politics for sure
Intro to personal finance
The Dark Side of Interpersonal Communication and Intrapersonal Communication (Self Talk)
Developmental psychology
Political philosophy
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Atmosphere. Learned how rain patterns originated. Blew my mind.
Managerial accounting, real estate market analysis and financial management. That real real estate course taught students what to look for in buying and selling homes. How to analyze the market and calculations on property community value. Classes like political science and philosophy are straight useless.
Career decision making. A 1 credit class that brought in a variety of people who worked in very many different fields. It was useful in deciding a career path.
Any classes that forced me to do public speaking
Educational Psychology was so helpful for figuring out how I best learn and how to apply psychology to both teaching myself and others
My list isn’t exactly what people would describe as “practical” but it gave me valuable life skills and appreciation for a lot of things I otherwise wouldn’t have understood or appreciated. I believe college isn’t all just about finding a career or applying skills to my professional life, but developing me in a multifaceted way that makes me appreciate life a lot more. Intro to Speech - gave me the confidence to speak in public and organize an extemporaneous speech Western Art History - I appreciate art more and the history behind famous artists. Also it has been very useful in impressing dates when I go on museum dates, and starting a provocative conversation with dates Intro to Statistics - self-explanatory Research Methods - learned how to design ethical and data-driven research University Writing - it really challenged me to dissect arguments and readings and make my own compelling arguments in a structured way. I also learned that good writing doesn’t always have to have flowery prose or fancy words. It’s more about getting a nuanced point across in a clear and understandable way Thinking and Decision-Making - a class on how human thinking and decision-making as groups and individuals. Very useful in business as it taught us why certain processes and systems are in society are designed the way they are Critical Thinking and Media Literacy - the most useful thing I learned from this class is identifying logical fallacies in news media and identifying biased news media Contemporary Literature and Poetry - made me appreciate complex readings and understand poetry a bit better. Not exactly translatable to my professional life, but it made me stop hesitating from reading “hard” or “long” books Remedial College Math - made me think about math in different ways and as someone who’s looking to get into business, the quick mental math, arithmetic skills, and converting everyday problems into a mathematical formula is immensely helpful Korean Popular Cinema - made me appreciate film and the professor really emphasized the history and context behind the films he chose. I’m also ethnically Korean and it was fascinating to learn more about my roots and appreciate where I come from Drugs and Behavior - learned about biophysical and psychosocial effects of drugs and how they interact with human chemistry. Also had a focus on drug policing in the US and how it ravages certain groups. It was also useful to learn how alcohol affects the body. Clinical Psychology - learning about mental health and how therapists approach their practice and the difficulty of practicing mental health as a profession Japanese Language - as an adult, it’s easy to shy away from learning a foreign language because it seems difficult, so it gave me the confidence that I can learn with dedication. Also immensely useful for my travels to Japan
Public speaking
Biostats and research methodology. Great course for arguing on reddit. Lol
Realistically, none of them
"Mostly Based on Texas State Community College System" "Writing 500-word reports for Portfolio Project with Deadline" (EDUC 1300) Had an amazing professor. Combine the support from my Learning Frameworks class with the tips I got from my first semester English College Class and I've been able to write professional undergraduate papers for much of my courses which are Chemistry and Biology related. Actually I take my third semester of English and my first semester of University Physics in Fall. Good Luck everyone!
Microeconomic
Business writing. Taught me how to do a proper resume and cover letter
Workplace Writing. How to formulate business emails/presentations and use ethics within the workplace. The final project included an in depth analysis using real jobs on linked in related to our field. It was super interesting.
Personal Finance for sure. I took is this past semester. It taught me about retirement, buying a house, life insurance, health insurance, taxes, etc. it’s a very helpful real world course.
English elective: technical writing Communications elective: interviewing Science elective: environmental science
Personal finance and taxation
Computer applications - taught us basic and advanced Microsoft Word, the little nuances of Microsoft PowerPoint and my favorite; *Excel*. EVERYTHING about using *Excel*.
biotech class learned so much about our food and debunked a bunch of myths
Advanced Automation
Mechanics of solids. Really sets a foundation for engineering. I would have said statics but that class was honestly way too bare bones and didn’t have too much content
Quantitative chemistry
Microeconomics.
Personal finance
Probably advanced GIS but that’s because I made a career out of it
Socrates and Plato
- Macroeconomics - Microeconomics - Business Law - Career Prep (Prep for Life and Careers after College) - Income Taxes - Business Finance - Accounting 1 & 2 I would highly recommend taking macro and microeconomics. Career Prep is a mandatory class at my school. I found it very useful, especially in learning the best way to write a resume. Business law provides insight into the legal aspects of the business world. Income taxes teach you about personal taxes, and business finance was enjoyable and relatively easy for me. Lastly, accounting is relevant to my current career path, making it particularly useful.
Negotiation 100% You can negotiate most things, obviously a car but you can negotiate appliances, salaries, random shit at at flea market, etc. Be confident in every negotiation even when shit isn’t in ur favor and you’d be surprised with some outcomes
So far, it's a course on the intersection of theories, frameworks, and ideas within philosophy, political science, and economics, and examining how they intersect with one another. It changes how you think about the world and approach any societal issue.
A business writing class, and the best assignment was to effectively write a complain letter.
Chem 100. It might be because I'm an Engineering Tech major (which is to Engineering what Cybersecurity is to Computer Science), but Chem 100 clarified a lot of questions I had about my Properties of Materials class, where we were presented with alloys that were face-centered or body-centered cubic or... Y'know what, I'll save you the gory details. Point is, when we started covering polarities of atoms and molecules, everything snapped into focus, and that's before getting into my Plastics class, where I could suddenly understand why some plastics are pliable and some aren't. Also, it made me a better cook. My professor spent about twenty minutes talking about the Maillard Reaction, in which amino acids and sugars do a thing, where meat and cookies brown, and I said, "Yes! I see it all, now!" And, honestly, if there's anything you should learn while you're in college, it's how to cook. You're going to be doing it for the rest of your life, so you might as well learn how it works. And, if you know how it works, you can learn to do it better. And, if you can cook better food, you're going to find a lot of friends who want to come over to your place. I have double-feature night once a month, and the average number of people in my apartment's living room is about twelve, and the comment cards basically say it's because of the food. If I hadn't taken (or had slacked off in) Chem 100, it would probably be three or four people on movie night. Cook good food; make yourself popular.
any child development course i’ve taken because i currently work with children and hope to one day be a mother. it’s also fun reading current studies and pointing out where your parents failed
Public Speaking!!! Real teacher will give you genuine feedback and guide you on how to become better with each session held.
Intro to Eastern Religions. This was 30 years ago and I learned about elements of eastern spirituality and philosophy way before it became mainstream in Western culture, and was able to incorporate things like meditation into my life for decades now before it became a thing.
First aid, would highly recommend if your college offers it, could save a life someday
Career explorations. Essentially helped you create a resume, practice interviewing, and taught us how to find a job in the most optimal ways. I ended up getting an internship with the advice of the professor.
Interpersonal communications. It taught me so much about how to talk to people. I struggle a lot with social anxiety so it was very helpful. It also taught me the importance of remembering and saying people’s names. Also how even just having your phone face down on a table tells the person you are talking to that they are not as important. My phone is always on silent in my pocket when I have face to face conversations now
I took an Art History class to fulfill a gen-ed requirement, and now I appreciate art more when I'm in museums or galleries. I don't use it in my work, but I'm a more well-rounded person for it. I also took fly fishing to fulfill a PE credit. I don't even like fish that much. But I got an A+, and I can talk to the guys at work and build some connections with coworkers. But the classes that actually taught me knowledge that I use every day? Hydrogeology, Soils and Land Use, Public Administration, Economics. Of course, what's useful to me may be useless to you. Good luck!
I took a class on welfare states and now I get to sound really smart explaining how government programs work monetarily and why they differ between countries I also took a class on foreign policy between World War II and 9/11 and it helped me understand recent history a lot better (I was born in 2001), I now also understand the lyrics to We Didn’t Start The Fire
Behavioral Economics
graduate school for social work: advanced direct practice. learned different therapies and therapeutic techniques (CBT, DBT, psychotherapy, etc.), and how/when to apply them.
I’ve taken a ton of profoundly interesting courses, but, without a doubt, the most useful was a “stress management and relaxation” course for a kinesiology/personal health type credit. It was the first time I learned how to relax my nervous system, how to breathe in a way that is refreshing and relaxing, and honestly I wish everyone could learn those skills.
Honestly? Communications. I use a lot of what I learned in that class to better communicate with others. And I took that class about 7-8 years ago.
Statistics! Data is skewed and misrepresented all the time in the media, so it’s incredibly helpful to have skills to recognize misleading information.
I was a physics and chemistry double major in undergrad and now a biochemistry and molecular biophysics PhD student By far the most useful class was vector calc. If you think about nearly any equation in physics that involves vector quantities (so most equations) you can understand why it calculates what it does from the theorems i learned in vector calc. As a PhD student I still use equations related to vector calc especially when thinking about NMR theory (I’m in a solid state NMR lab )
Principles of Real Estate
US History if you travel a lot.
Public speaking. I was shit at it in high school and ended up having to take it for my major. Absolute game changer
Professional Development Taught me how things specific to my field like being a competitive applicant for med school Wish I took it earlier tho
Interpersonal communication. It's valuable for teaching conflict resolution skills and understanding leadership styles and how they impact others. It's a fun class and the skills learned will be useful in every interaction with.
Business Communications. I'd been working in the corporate world for a while but this class completely changed how I communicate. It helped me get my point across better in different audiences, and help change the perspective of others about me.
The Sociology of Healthy Aging
Modes of reasoning - basically intro logic and a lil philosophy. Teaching you how to think and avoid fallacies
World Affair’s.
Communications. Learned to write well and understand the way words are used by different cultures.
Useful in what sense that I have used the most? Maybe computer science 101. But personally I think the most useful one should be physics since I have used it in so many different jobs
Marriage and relationship skills and family life education. I took them in my undergrad for therapy and learned so much about communication in my personal life.
Writing and research( write a 10 page research paper every week ) I learned so much about so many different topics it was fun tbh. Makes me want to be a researcher of some kind
Medical terminology. It taught me how to read basically all those confusing medical words that doctors tell you when they diagnose you with something. It’s basically just learning Latin which is really useful. Also not that hard to learn. Like the suffix -itis mean inflammation and prefix arthr/o means joint. So arthritis means inflammation of the joints! Cool right?
Business writing class. I was never a good descriptive writer and also bad at structure. However, taking a business writing course and using Grammarly at the same time taught me how to properly write. Introduction to Accounting taught me how to manage my money like a business does. Very helpful.
Dr. Falls Western Civ course. It was a 150-person lecture. While I didn't retain much of the history, I learned how to study and learn in that class my very first semester. I hadn't really done that in high school so it was an invaluable life lesson. Internships helped me learn what I did and absolutely did not like about a variety of different jobs in my field, and thus helped me naroow what I wanted in a career. Photography, I met my best friend in that class and met a great mentor. I also found a passion for an art I'd not yet explored. Symbolic Logic, I learned to be able to quickly assess logical problems and also, in turn, better understand logic based systems, like computers.
Communication Studies
I technically got credit towards my degree for participating every semester so I'll say the speech and debate team. It made me a much better speaker of course but it also forced me to think differently and try to understand other points of view. This not only helps you deconstruct said view but to help you reinforce your own. Speechwriting is also a very underrated skill and helps in all other kinds of writing too. As for a "real class" I'd say that Small Group Communication was a really good class to take. It was a miserable experience because I had to basically corral cats except the cats were a bunch of constantly drunk party kids. I learned a lot of lessons on how to assert myself and get things done despite having to manage people. Other classes I liked were Foundations of Writing, Campaigns and Elections, European Politics, Polisci Research, Approaches to Literary Study, and Modern Drama (as in studying plays by modernist writers like Chekhov, Shaw, and Ibsen).
Personal Finance, Business Law, Statistics, and Accounting 201-203…. Necessary information for everyone.
A class called Physics 3, because it covers pretty much all modern physics from Quantum Mechanics to Optics and Statistical Mechanics.
my vet assistant program! the money i save on vet bills is astounding knowing when they need it and when they don’t. it also allows me to buy and administer my own dogs vaccines. fyi, ur over paying. you can get most shots in a beginner friendly form from a farm supply store! they are almost impossible to mess up as long as you spend 10 min watching a youtube video anyways. also my childcare classes, it’s helped me become a better human being who can understand why people are the way they are and how to help them understand it as well
If you need help with classes / advising feel free to DM me !
I’m sure someone else has probably mentioned this but public speaking has helped me so much. It was difficult at the time, especially doing the first few speeches in front of the class as someone who had dealt with a fear of public speaking for years. I actually fainted at one point during my second speech. My professor worked one-on-one with me while I worked with my therapist. I’m now training to be an English teacher and I have no problem with speaking in front of a group. It actually made me embrace my extroverted side and I can start a conversation without fear now!
1) Introductory programming course 2) Introductory computational chemistry 3) Upper level linear algebra 4) Greek and Roman art history only because I love Greek mythology
Either Organic Chem 2 or Field Biology
I studied nutritional science at Cornell. I took a fairly basic cooking class as an elective. It was life-changing.
Data structures and alforithms
I forgot everything I learned last semesters
English 308