OT: Easiest class at U-M?
So I and many others will be registering for senior fall semester classes this week. I was wondering what mgobloggers thought the easiest class was in their time at Michigan, because who doesn't want a senior year that involves less studying and more Dominick's and Charley's?
I liked Lieberman. He reminded me of the guy from L.A. Law. I still have some of the books from that class. And I just checked--he's still teaching! I think I took the course fall 1992, my first semester.
I took the Vietnam class by Lieberman - nearly got into a fist-fight with my dad (Vietnam-era US officer) at Thanksgiving dinner thanks to him LOL
I loved Lieberman, he chose me for a class debate on European colonization in his Southeast Asian history course.
I would recommend taking advantage of the pass/fail option. Makes pretty much any class easy if all you need is a C- and allows you to just enjoy it. Then take something interesting that you wouldn't otherwise take (no sense in wasting the tuition dough on something you don't care about just to get an A as a senior).
I took John Whittier-Ferguson's class on James Joyce (pretty sure he's still at UM) and it was interesting and also had a light workload. 2 or 3 short papers and the final was just reading Ulysses out loud in a big group (which does take a while, but you don't have to study for it). Also took a class on the writing/construction of the New Testament that was pretty interesting (I'm not religious at all). Getting the historical context for when things were written and why certain things were included or excluded from the canon was neat and with the pass/fail option I could just listen along without having to stress about it.
Surely not relevant this year but in the late 70s: Education 598 - Student Participation, basically getting a two credit "A" for being in a student organization; and Psychology 481 - Psychology of International Relations, taught by a true believer communist (please excuse the politics) who had each student say something about mainland China while sitting outside ingesting various substances, oh, and we graded ourselves.
The instructor on the first day of the REES mini-course on Polish rock music and the fall of Communism: "I promise this will be the easiest course you have ever taken at this university. And I'm proud to give it to you."
Yes, it was easy. But I learned a ton. I still listen to the music from that class all the time, almost 10 years later. Hopefully it's still being offered. I think it was like REES 490? "Rock Kills Communism."
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Nope. It was this guy:
https://lsa.umich.edu/slavic/people/faculty/pwestwal.html
He'd come to class with his soccer gear ready to go so he could make his rec games afterwords. Totally awesome teacher, knew exactly how to get us excited about the material. Pretty much everything you'd want in a class.
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Don't even remember why I took it or what the course number was but it was the dumbest class I took at Michigan. I 100% BS'd a paper the night before expecting to fail and got it back with "Excellent! Very insightful! 97"
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Greek Myth -- humanity requirement; show up and get an A
War in Greek and Roman Civilization -- humanity requirement; show up and get an A
Astro 101 -- Does this class fulfill the QR requirement for LSAs? There were a lot in there that couldn't do simple math, which is like a feast for engineers. Mean test scores way lower than I expected.
Accounting 101 -- It's just addition and subtraction, people
AOSS -- whatever the intro course is. I can't remember if this fulfilled an engineering elective or not, but it was easy.
MSE 250 -- used to fulfill an engineering elective for chemical engineers, but it's required now. Pretty much everyone took it even when it was an elective.
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And for vegetables, not weed.
But I suppose one could...
if you're in science already it's pretty basic and a truly awesome class to take either way. I believe it was only offered every other semester when I took it. Physics 390 (modern physics) also very cool and not too challenging, at least compared with the chemistry classes. I think organic 1 is the easiest chemistry class I took.
I'm really surprised neither of these classes have been said yet but by far the two easiest classes I have taken are:
Linguistics 111: This is the intro to linguistics class. Your grade is based entirely on showing up discussion, 4 easy short homework assignments where the answers are straight out of the book, and 2 exams that are open note open book online where you can literally look up any answer you don’t know. I got an A+ without ever doing any of the assigned readings.
Polisci 101: When I took it Mika Lavaque-Manty taught it and he was pretty funny/interesting. You never had to go to lecture and your entire grade was based on going to discussion, writing two small essays (one of which you could re-write), and 4 short blog posts that took maybe 30 minutes to write. The class was on a "game-ified" system so you had to assign weights to your blogs vs essays, but the way it worked out (there were more points possible for the essays for some reason) meant that you should just assign the maximum weight to the essays. An easy A class with no exams and no mandatory lecture attendance.
I'd also recommend any Ross class you can get in, as many are open to LSA students. TO 411 (basically how to use Excel) was extremely easy and also useful, and the median grade is an A- since its on the Ross curve.
LSA 2000. It was called "Oceans" in the AOSS department. Not to be confused with "Oceanography" which was kind of hard.
Oceans was a total athlete class. 90% of the students were athletes and the other 10% were people who heard of the class through athletes. Quizzes were attendance quizzes where you wrote your name on a piece of paper and handed it in. There was a special study session before exams that was only told to athletes. A baseball friend of mine told me about it and myself and another non-athlete showed up to it and the GSI was like "who told you about this?". They were just giving the answers to the test. Notes were given to you and you were only expected to listen to and watch slide shows during class.
With that being said, I really enjoyed it. You learned some cool stuff about oceans without the stress of difficult exams or taking notes. Yey!
Organic chemistry really wasn't that bad.
I recommend not taking Organic Chem and Stats 402. But the Science Fiction (English 300 level I believe) class is interesting if you like that subject and want to take a more challenging class.
check out some of the Health and Fitness/Movement Science courses. Took one this semester and it was the easiest A of my life
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Back in the day it was Classic Civ 352 Greek and Latin Elements of the English Vocabulary. Otherwise known as the words class. Interesting. Great Prof. But definitely easy.
I'm ashamed of this. I took a colonial American history class (can't remember prof), and the grade was three parts: a test at the beginning of the semester for 1/3 grade; seven short papers during the semester, five of which were graded, and you could rewrite every single one for a better grade, for another 1/3 grade; a term paper for 1/3 grade.
I scored the highest in the class on the test (thank you 11th grade American history). I then proceeded to turn in three (3) papers during the semester - that would put me at most at a 60 for that part of the class. So, I'm looking at a C-minus max heading into the term paper, due to laziness. I never saw how my term paper was scored, but I ended up with an A-minus in the class.
I still have nightmares about not going to class (specifically econ and a lit class) for the whole semester, and then showing up at the wrong place for the exam with no time to spare to get to the exam forum. Good times.
There's a reason for those nightmares, however -- they were entirely plausible. I have them regularly, and I graduated in 82.
It was a very easy class. It certainly did not hurt that Randy was about the most chill professor (and, overall, just a really nice guy with plenty of interesting stories) that I encountered over the course of my undergrad and grad studies.
I should have searched this thread for Tessier before posting my comment below. Agree, I had Randy 2 or 3 times. The first was random chance. The second (and third?) times were intentional on my part.
Anthro 101. We took the final in the Modern Language Building lecture hall. I sat in the front row and finished it before they were done handing it out.
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Randy Tessier teaches fun (and easy) English classes.
Intro to Musicology was probably the easiest of all that I took.
However, the other cakewalks were History of Art classes which either were invite-only or proseminars with 6 other kids in the class.
I honestly wished I knew about some of these classes back in the day...
Sports and Life in Ancient Rome was pretty easy, though.
I'm gonna do you a huge favor right now......
Education 462 - Instructional Simulations
You will probably see a lot of athletes in that class.
I found the class to be pretty easy and scored the highest on the midterm (out of 360ish people), second highest on the final, and had an A+ on my homework. On those alone, I had something like a 99.3%. However, 10% of our grade was participation and the professor tracked it via cold calling. I only went to three classes all semester (the first three), and he gave me no credit for it. B+ it was for my final grade!
(I argued and failed for a 1 pt participation grade so I could get an A-.)
Well, aren't you special.
I didn't realize the thread changed from "easiest class" to "brag about how well you did in a class."
Do they still have Dinosaurs and Other Failures? If you aren't sure, ask one of the hockey players; they'll know for sure.
They were harder than they looked but they were relatively easier than a lot of other science courses. I recall the one on ice and glaciers being pretty easy.
I wouldn't be surprised if this wasn't even offered anymore, but there was a series of American Culture (Amcult) classes that were an absolute joke and easy. Amcult 100 was all about the history of college football. My GSI lost my final paper and implied that I shouldn't ask questions - I got an A. Freshman year, good times.