Your most useful class

In the opposite vein of the most worthless class thread, of the classes you took in high school or college, which one was the MOST valuable to you in your career or your later life? No matter whether you aced it or barely passed it, if you still use stuff you learned from that class in your later life, which class fits the bill?

The one that immediately comes to mind for me was a class called Editing and Document Design. I got a "C" in it (and I think I had to work hard for that), but I learned a lot of skills I use today in copy editing. I also picked up some design principles that I was able to impart on desktop publishing students in a class I was TAing.

 

Non J-School division: Football Coaching Methods.

I think I was the only non-football player in the class and it was taught by the assistant coaches with the head coach as the 'official' instructor. It was very low key and taught spring semester, but I was actually covering the team at the time for the Big City Daily News and I learned a ton about football in the class and even got a few recruiting scoops in the process

 

High school technology. Not because of the material, most of which is outdated even less than a decade later, but because of what I learned from the instructor:

He taught me how to think.

 

High school - Keyboarding. I had to take it to fill an elective and I am glad I did because now I can type very fast with few mistakes, which obviously helps in this business.

College - American Authors of the 20th Century (or something like that): It was the class that caused me to change my major to English and eventually led me to this profession. It also gave me a bunch of people to talk to who liked to read as much as I do, which was nice.

 

Escape and Evade.

Techniques have worked very well on editors will brilliant story ideas they picked up at the country club or the last seminar.

 

Typing! Took it in 9th grade, got a C (one of only two in HS) and now type nearly 100 wpm.

 

Angola, thanks for mentioning keyboarding. I was about to put something else, but I had pretty much the same experience as you. I still don't know how some people get by with the hunt-and-peck method, but I have seen them do it.

 

I have had lots of co-workers in my time in the business that type like that. I can't imagine the errors they make and how long it must take them to type stories and agate.

 

Until my sixth-grade keyboarding class, I was very, very fast at the hunt-and-peck. Being stubborn as hell, I didn't think that typing "correctly" would make me faster. Well, it did.

 

Freshman year of high school -- Typing I (on a MANUAL machine).

 

Agreed. Typing, which I took in the ninth grade. I hated that class but I've certainly made the most of it.

In college it was either public speaking or "women in the workplace." The former because we learned not only to deliver a speech but the importance of delivery, arguments, organization and using facts to support our arguments. The latter because it was a class of six students with a male professor who insisted we debate/discuss instead of spoonfeeding us information, so participation in the course was critical.

 

Senior year of college, I took a class in which we discussed life after college. It wasn't supposed to be that, but he took about 6 weeks to discuss things like job searching, interviewing, proper follow-up techniques, how to negotiate an offer, dressing for an interview, dressing for a job, 401(k), health benefits ... and a bunch of other stuff similar to the last two items that you don't learn about in college otherwise.