Posted on 10/24/2018 5:13:51 AM PDT by reaganaut1
We’re used to hearing that American college students don’t like reading and avoid tough courses where they have to. But a new course at the University of Oklahoma (OU) proves that many students are eager for a demanding course.
Here’s the story.
In the fall of 1941, as a visiting faculty member at the University of Michigan, the poet W.H. Auden offered an undergraduate course of staggering intellectual scope, entitled “Fate and the Individual in European Literature.” We know little about the origins or trajectory of this remarkable course: how it was conceived, how it was taught, how it was received.
It is mentioned in passing in some biographical accounts of Auden’s life. There are a few testimonials from students enrolled in the course (among whom was one Kenneth Millar, better known by his detective-fiction pseudonym Ross McDonald), but it has otherwise passed down into the memory hole—until recently.
Seventy-one years after the course was taught, a faded, marked-up copy of Auden’s original one-page syllabus was unearthed in Michigan’s archives by the literary scholar Alan Jacobs. He then posted on the internet for all to see. Soon it was circulating widely, eliciting a surprising amount of commentary.
Scholars were excited by the discovery, for it provided them with a list of texts that Auden himself, one of the greatest poets and critics of the twentieth century, considered central to the Western intellectual tradition. In a way, it was like a guided tour of the intellectual furniture of a great poet’s mind.
The course was enormous. It was as if Auden had put together an idiosyncratic and mainly literary version of a Great Books curriculum and compressed it into a single semester.
(Excerpt) Read more at jamesgmartin.center ...
You want to take a remarkably hard college course, take Differential Equations, or any advanced calculus class for that matter.
No! C'mon! Why'd you have to say that? The nightmares stopped only recently, and I'm almost 20 years removed from my undergrad years. Why?!
“love your crooked neighbour with your crooked heart.”
“No! C’mon! Why’d you have to say that? The nightmares stopped only recently, and I’m almost 20 years removed from my undergrad years. Why?!”
I graduated college and it only took 38 years. In 2013 I decided to go back for my BS in Ops Management. I didn’t take a math class since I was 15. First course I took in college was statistics. That was not fun.
It doesn’t get better 50 years removed.
Multi variable calculus and linear algebra did it for me.
Differential equations and Integral Calculus were relatively easy compared to multivariable.
Electricity and Magnetism II
I passed by the hair of my teeth - and it was cut short back then.
Almost entirely 3 dimensional calculus...I kept the book and open it when I need a good scare...
restores a bit of my faith in the next gen
I got one ‘C’ as a EE undergrad and the was in “Signals and Systems”.
We used to call it “Difficult Equations”.
Advanced Differential Equations was the most difficult class I took in college while obtaining a BS in Engineering, a BA in History, and a JD. Knowing in advance how hard it was going to be I took it from the best and hardest professor and got a D while actually learning the subject matter. Then along with a classmate who failed we both retook it from another teacher and easily got A’s.
meh--DiffEQ wasn't that bad. My hardest course was "Computer Architecture" where we wrote (from scratch) a linker, loader, compiler, and VM to execute a program in a made up computer language--all within 10 weeks.
We were not graded on style, choice of programming language, or methods--strictly on output. If our system output the correct results from the Professor's program (in his made-up language), we passed.
I got an A in that course--which I took one quarter where I had 19 hours of school, was married, and had a job.
I didn't get much sleep. :)
Yo-Yo wrote: “You want to take a remarkably hard college course, take Differential Equations, or any advanced calculus class for that matter.”
Also at the University of Oklahoma. Back in the sixties, the course was “Differential Equations for Engineers and Scientists”, Math 201. There was one section at 0800 and two sections at 0900. Earl LaFon taught the 0800 and one of the 0900 sections. One passed the course by getting into the 0900 not taught by LaFon.
This course was legendary. One heard about this course even in your freshman year. You were advised to structure your course work to allow you to take 201 multiple times. I passed the second time when I got a professor named Bernhart.
The first time I signed up, I got LaFon. When he walked in a whisper spread through the room: “It’s him, LaFon.” Four guys walked out to drop the course immediately. I thought, this can’t be that bad so I stayed. Glad I did, just to hear what happened next.
LaFon opened the class with these words: “It’s nice to see those of you back from last semester. I fully expect to see many again next semester. Each exam consists of four questions. All answers are either right or wrong. No partial credit. One mistake and it’s a C. Two and you fail. Let’s begin.” That’s when I left to drop the class.
I enrolled again the next semester and my professor was “A/B/C Bernhart”. He graded on a curve 40% A, 40% B, and 20% C. I made a C.
You may have noticed the course was “Differential Equations for Engineers and Scientists”, Math 201. The math department taught a different course for Math majors. “Differential Equations for Mathematicians”, only open to math majors and satisfying the same pre-requisites as 201.
Organic Chemistry
Three courses in stochastic processes toughest courses I ever took.
I found DiffEQ quite easy compared to Calculus III. I took thermodynamics twice. One professor made it impossible, the other made it comparatively easy, but it still took at least 30 hours a week to fully grasp and do well in the class.
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