What course in high school or college surprised you the most, either in a positive or negative way?

For me, I was surprised by a course I took called "Plant-Animal Interaction." It was a junior/senior level course at college and I had few expectations. I really hadn't done the prerequisites but managed to talk my way into the class, which had only six or seven students. However, the professor (a woman) was excellent and the class material was fascinating. I enjoyed doing the reading and research, and did well in the course. On one test, we had to design an experiment to test some aspect of plant-animal interactions, and for 25 years I have remembered the title of the experiment I designed for this test: "Does the Female-Skewed Sex Ratio of the Gall Wasp Violate the Trivers-Willard Hypothesis?" (I never actually conducted the experiment, I just had to design it.)

What classes surprised you in school?

--Bob

I can't say that I really had an surprises. I studied engineering and there wasn't a lot of room to take "interesting" courses. You only had room for 4 electives outside of engineering courses and I didn't take anything particularly interesting.

However, I do remember writing a paper in high school (and here I am dating myself)... Apartheid: A Black and White Issue with only Gray Answers.

ME

I took Etymology in undergrad as a way to get my science requirement out of the way, and it turned out to be one of my very favorite classes. We had to pick a pet cockroach or caterpillar so of course I opted for the three inch long Madagascar Hissing Cockroach. His name was Pookie. My roommate loved that, as you can imagine!

My classes are all pretty boring in law school, no surprises here. I would love a surprise, actually.

Michelle

when i was in college and i have a subject in algorithm... and i was the only student on our class who fail... (T_T) the instructor didn't like me... so sad..