pseudo-meme, inspired by stoichiometry in the morning

[cellomusette]

The three most useful classes I took in high school were the following:

1. Chemistry
2. Freshman-year English (learning to write a proper essay)
3. Biology

(all taken at the honors level)

What were yours?

[Note: by "useful" I mean a class where you remembered a good deal of the content, and/or you're able to put it to use now.)

Comments

[trisloth.livejournal.com]

History
Economics
Orchestra!

[watercolorblue.livejournal.com]

I'd have mentioned orchestra, but we had a crappy music department overall. Chorus/choir wasn't bad though.

"When I look back on all the crap I learned in high school/It's a wonder I can think at all"

[bikergeek.livejournal.com]

1. I took a typing class. Not common for an honors/AP-track student 25 years ago; computers were a rarity back then, and honors students weren't really expected to be able to do much more than hunt-n-peck their way through a term paper.
2. Freshman English. How to write a five-paragraph essay and present facts in support of a thesis.
3. Economics. (Yup, seniors got to pick from a handful of social science electives at my school.) Got to understand how markets work and how people behave both individually and in groups when confronted with choices.

I could talk more about the academic side of high school and what it means to my life today, but I think I'll shut up....

Re: "When I look back on all the crap I learned in high school/It's a wonder I can think at all"

[watercolorblue.livejournal.com]

Yes, I agree that learning the 5-paragraph essay format in Freshman English was the most important thing I learned overall...nowadays with the field I work in, Chemistry has proved to be more useful day to day.

[ommango.livejournal.com]

Typing

[scarlettj9.livejournal.com]

1. Principals of Accounting I & II and Typing.
2. Televison Production.
3. All of my Science classes. Most of these were A/P classes and I took a lot of them as electives instead of basket weaving and ceramics: which is how I graduated without the required foreign language. :)

4. Chior. Everyone needs a hobbie.

I really wanted to go into Marine Biology but my Mom pushed for computer science and that's what I reluctantly took. I didn't finsh college. I tried going for a teaching certificate once but that fell through as well cause I just wasn't up to dealing with kids that much and knew I'd never teach at a college level. So I fell back on the accounting classes and that has been a good thing.

[watercolorblue.livejournal.com]

Oooh, Marine Biology! Too cool. That's one of the biology fields where women dominate the profession. Sorry you didn't get a chance to go into that, it sounds like you dug science overall.

choir

[hammercock.livejournal.com]

*nod* I learned the basics of choral singing in my senior year of high school and went on to sing in the choir in college, then a community choir for a couple of years, and now in a band. I suppose that, in terms of what I'm actually using today, my participation in choir was more useful than my French classes. Everything I've mentioned has been more useful to me than any math or science class I ever took.

[hammercock.livejournal.com]

1. Typing
2. English (all four years, accelerated)
3. Not sure what #3 would be, honestly. Maybe all four years of French, also acclerated. Not that I'm fluent anymore, but it enhanced my language skills.

[watercolorblue.livejournal.com]

*nods* I didn't take Typing, but I agree with the English part. Had a great teacher freshman year, and my soph year teacher taught me basically nothing except for some fun vocabulary words. I went to college instead of going into my junior year of HS.

[42itous.livejournal.com]

"useful" is an interesting word. Possibly geometry was the most _useful_. But the three that I feel I remembered the most from, and therefore are the ones I recall most often:

1) Art. For some reason my mind has a knack for remembering things like "the angle in this painting is brilliant because it points the eye in the direction of that important detail in the corner." This makes my appreciation of art more intense: in museums, books, films.
2) European History. Mainly details having to do with art: see above.
3) Ancient History.

Now that I think of it, this is odd: in college, I didn't take a single course in the history or art departments. But I learned a ton of stuff in those categories, much of it building on knowledge I picked up in high school. History of Philosophy, Costume Design, Ancient Inventions, Shakespeare, Modern European Drama, overview of English Literature... it was all art and history in some way or another.

[watercolorblue.livejournal.com]

Sounds like you had an excellent art department at your high school. We didn't; it was the theater department that was exceptional.

As for geometry, I'd say it wasn't too useful if you didn't remember a lot from it. ;-)

[42itous.livejournal.com]

I remember all the geometry I need for quilting and other art projects. ;)

The art department sucked because it didn't have much funding. The teacher was awesome and managed to teach a lot without spending a lot of money.