The 5 Most Worthless Classes You Can Take In College

ItalianStallion7 years ago

Yesterday, the most trusted name in college news (us) reported that College of The Ozarks in Missouri is offering a mandatory patriotism class as a graduation requirement. I love the move.

Most of us, however, weren’t blessed with such awesome mandatory classes for graduation. We were stuck with some mind-numbing bullshit courses that were apparently oh-so-essential to our degree that they were required despite giving us no degree-applicable skills. Here are the top five worst bullshit classes one can take in college.

#5 Philosophy

The generic introduction to philosophy class is a mainstay of college course offerings. Anyone who thinks they’ve been having some deep existential thoughts since high school graduation rushes to enroll in it. They think the course will change their way of thinking, and how they think of life. Nope. The only thing this course will do is make you binge a bunch of worthless readings by people smarter than you and complete assignments that make you realize you and your existence are more worthless than you previously thought. Sorry to break it to you, but you ain’t coming out of this class the next Socrates; you’ll just be one step closer to your (most likely) liberal arts degree.

#4 Ballroom Dancing

Just like philosophy, every single college on Earth has performing arts classes. Hell, some of them are great and easy. Read a few lines, pretend you’re the next George Clooney, easy A — piece of cake. Well, my college decided, “You know what class kids will love? ballroom dancing!” Yup, a bunch of undergrads had to Beauty and the Beast-style dance and get graded on it. They had to pretend they were going to be on Dancing with the Stars dancing with damn Rick Perry or some shit so they wouldn’t fail out of college. Sorry, but I prefer to keep my dancing in the basement.

#3 Underwater Basket Weaving

When I was in high school, my old math teacher tried to teach us that college classes were important by saying, “Don’t just take a whole semester of underwater basket weaving classes.” I’d heard of some stupid college courses, but I refused to believe this existed. It seemed like a myth. After all, isn’t basket weaving just something the Amish do to sell roadside souvenirs in Pennsylvania?

Nope; apparently underwater basket weaving is an actual course offered at places like Rutgers (which I learned yesterday from all you TFM fact checkers is actually in New Brunswick — not East Brunswick — New Jersey). So if under-the-sea arts and crafts is your thing, sign up. I’d steer clear, though.

#2 Anything Involving Gym

Colleges offer gym and physical education classes, which I was surprised as all fuck to find out freshman year. Gym classes seem like one of those things that should have been left in high school along with rolling backpacks and virginity. You really do need physical education during those formative years. Now? Not so much. If you thought third period gym class was bad in high school, imagine having a gym class while hungover on a Thursday morning.

#1 Tourism

Buckle up for this one, fuckers, because I have a personal vendetta. Back up a few semesters and I only needed one more class to meet a requirement for my degree. The only two applicable courses available were some shit like “Nutrition of the Third World” and “Tourism.” Obviously I chose tourism. After all, it sounded like we’d learn about cruise ships and Las Vegas, right?

WRONG! I was wrong. So, so wrong. It was actually a deep, inquisitive anthropology (whatever that means) course. A large portion of the course was devoted to answering the question, “Why do we hate our lives so much we have to go on vacation?” We also did a “scholarly analysis” to determine if Disney World was racist and sexist. After, we learned about how golf courses and hotels kill the environment. That wasn’t what I (thought I) signed up for.

I could forgive all that — all of it — except for the course’s biggest let down: we had zero field trips. If any class needed field trips, it was this one. A nice class field trip to Mexico, say around spring break time? That really would’ve enhanced my learning in the course..