Midterm misery has you down? You may have three essays and a problem set due next week, but at least so do most of your peers. In a new segment in honor of midterm season, Cross Campus Checklist scouts the most notorious courses at Yale. Reporting by Hope VanBronkhorst, contributing blogger.
Finding the right classes can be something like navigating a wired minefield. Regardless of where you went wrong this semester— if you attempted to “academically challenge yourself” or “boost your GPA by taking extra classes” or “explore other fields,” it should comfort you to know that most of your peers are no less miserable than you, particularly the ones in these following courses. Cross Campus took the initiative to find some of the classes students most regretting signing up for this semester…
CHEM 220
“Organic Chemistry” still holds the #1 spot for ‘class most similar to a hazing process.’ Any student who signed up for this class has boarded a one-way train ticket to medical school and is in for a bumpy ride. Veterans will be forever haunted by nightmares involving ‘Orgo psets’ and that one midterm most people got a 30% on. The former professor was apparently fond of warning that “when we became doctors, we would kill someone because we thought all white powders were the same,” according to students interviewed.
MATH 230
Please keep in mind that your problem set for “Vector Calculus and Linear Algebra 1″ is a marathon not a sprint, an approximately twenty hour marathon according to students interviewed. “It takes longer than all of my classes combined times two,” a student told the News. We don’t doubt his math on that. Oh, to be a mathematics major…
ECON 131
“Econometrics and Data Analysis I” is the organic chemistry of the humanities. In fact, this notorious economics major requirement is rumored to be worse than its scientific cousin. According to one student, the class is a magnet for future investment bankers who “thought that Econometrics would give them a leg up in their finance interviews, spoiler alert: it doesn’t.” She added, “if you have to take this class for your major, rethink your major.” Does Wall Street still sound appealing now?
CHEM 117L
Chemistry comes into the list again with STEM pre-requisite, “General Chemistry Lab II.” As if it isn’t bad enough spending four hours in one class 2,640 feet up Science Hill, one student compared the course to a “pressure cooker waiting to explode.”
ENGL 125
Of course, it’s not only STEM majors and pre-meds that suffer each semester. As riveting as exploring “English Poets Chaucer to Donne” isn’t, the course material isn’t the only downfall to this infamous English major prerequisite. According to students interviewed, the class interactions themselves can be quite awkward when students say things like, “People who don’t like Proust are bad people.” Typically, other people then respond with comments like, “I think the lake represents the fact that this was written near a lake.” And the truth is nobody finished the reading anyways.
At least nobody has a schedule consisting of exactly these five courses as far as we know. What class is making you most miserable this semester? What did we miss? Will someone please help us figure out which course is the Art major equivalent of Organic Chemistry? Complain to us at crosscampus@yaledailynews.com with Midterm Checklist in the subject line — the most insightful remarks will get some online (and completely anonymous) glory in the next part of our installment.