15 Bizarre College Classes That Shouldn't Be Real

• What college has a class about walking?
Where can you go to learn Elvish as spoken in the Lord of the Rings?
From tree climbing to Judge Judy, here are 15 of the craziest college classes you’ll
ever find in a course catalog.
15 – Wasting Time on the Internet • This is a creative writing class at the
University of Pennsylvania, and it’s not as crazy as it sounds.
Between Facebook posts, Reddit threads and *cough, cough* YouTube comments, people are
reading and writing more than ever before.
• Normally we think of those things as wasting time on the internet.
This class is about using the writing people already do on a regular basis and making it
better.
• If you can write a good Facebook comment, you’re on your way to making sense as a
human being.
14 – Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse • This Michigan State University class is
exactly what it sounds like – a class in survivalism.
• It shows you how to survive an inevitable zombie apocalypse, and what to expect in an
emergency situation when society has broken down.
• MSU also has an unrelated campus-wide zombie survival game that takes place for
entire weeks during the summer.
The “zombies” are marked with headbands and try to attack the “survivors” who
defend themselves with Nerf guns.
• So you know who will be prepared in an outbreak.
13 – Tree Climbing • This is a class offered at Cornell University,
and it’s exactly what it sounds like it is.
• It’s a PE course geared at arborists and botanists who may have to hang out in
a forest canopy to do research.
• But it’s not just grabbing one branch after another.
This class teaches how to use ropes and technical climbing gear, too.
12 – Philosophy and Star Trek • This class at Georgetown University has
a relatively simple premise: Watch Star Trek and talk about philosophy.
• Some of the questions being posed here are things like, “What is time?” and “What
is Free Will?” and “Is Data a person?”
• This isn’t entry-level stuff, either.
This class has prerequisites in the Philosophy department.
11 – #SelfieClass • This class at the University of Southern
California sounds like it’s just 50 minutes of people holding their phones up at arm’s
length and winking at them.
• But this is actually a writing class that talks about the cultural value of the selfie.
• After all, 100 years from now, people are going to look back at our dumb selfies
and consider them historical documents, the same way we look at black-and-white family
portraits now.
• Imagine future historians trying to explain the duck face.
10 – Street-Fighting Mathematics • Unfortunately, this does not appear to
be about Street Fighter the video game, nor actual street fights.
• The reason it’s called “Street Fighting Mathematics” is because it’s about doing
improvised and estimated calculations on the fly.
That’s probably as close as mathematicians get to an actual street fight.
9 – American Pro Wrestling • Nothing confusing here.
It’s just a media studies class on the cultural evolution of American pro wrestling dating
back to the 1950s.
• There are some themes of how the drama is manufactured, and the nature of the hyper-masculinity
on display to make it work.
• But yeah, students at MIT in the spring of 2007 got college credit for talking about
the WWE for 16 weeks.
8 – Learning from YouTube • This is technically a writing class at
Pitzer College, but it’s really about YouTube.
The class was primarily taught via YouTube, and viewing and producing videos were as important
as reading and writing . • Even assignments and correspondence happened
on YouTube.
And those assignments were public, so people from around the world were welcomed to comment.
• Imagine all your school assignments being the victim of YouTube comments.
7 – The Sociology of Miley Cyrus • Most people look at Miley Cyrus and just
sort of wonder what’s going on.
• This is a class at Skidmore College about figuring that out.
It’s about Miley Cyrus, and how her behaviour reflects on the nature of modern pop culture.
6 – The Art of Walking • Some of the greatest literary minds in
history got their inspirations from simply walking around in parks, gardens, and forests.
• This class talks about those authors, but also actually sends students out to do
some of those aimless walks themselves.
That’s actually what the class is at Centre College.
5 – Kitchen Chemistry • Imagine if, instead of doing chemistry
in a lab, with beakers and test tubes, you did it in a kitchen with pots and pans.
• Kitchen Chemistry is a long-running class at MIT that studies how chemical changes take
place in everyday cooking.
• It also throws in a couple of experiments that you’re probably not going to try in
your kitchen any time soon.
4 – Elvish, the Language of Lord of the Rings
• The linguist who created the Elvish language for Peter Jackson’s “Lord of the Rings”
trilogy just happens to be a graduate of the University of Wisconsin.
• David Salo taught the course as a study in linguistics, he just did it with the spoken
language, vocabulary guide, and book he’d created for the language itself.
• So you came out of there smarter about the structure of languages, but also able
to speak with Legolas.
3 – Jay Z and Kanye West • There’s a case to be made for rap artists
being the legendary poets of modern day.
• This is a class about those two artists – and more specifically, the complex relationship
between them.
• The University of Missouri class uses Jay Z and Kanye West as a way to talk about
other historical creative pairings and friendships like Paul McCartney and John Lennon, and how
those relationships change the art people produce.
2 – Arguing with Judge Judy • It’s not about actually arguing with
Judge Judy.
It’s a class at UC Berkeley examining the threads of logic followed on reality TV courtroom
shows.
• So if anything, this is more like a course trying to understand other people who argue
with Judge Judy.
1 – Because Dave Chapelle Said So • At its core, this is an African-American
Studies class.
But it approaches the subject of race and culture in America from the perspective of
comedians and celebrities.
• • Bamboozled, The Boondocks, and even the
Ali G show are under examination here, as a look into how African-American culture is
expressed through comedy and parody.

15 Bizarre College Classes That Shouldn't Be Real

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