What was your favorite high school elective

Another vote for photography.

I took small engine repair, too, where pairs of students rebuilt old lawnmower engines. Ours came with a beat-up base that didn't have a handle. We were both not tall, so without the handle, we didn't have enough leverage to properly pull the cord. 

A taller dude in our class had to start the mower for us, but it came to life on the first or second pull. :) 

Nicole Suddard said:

In reply to vwcorvette (Forum Supporter) :

Tom is in the shop today and might not be able to answer, but we were both IB class of 2012 at Spruce Creek High School (Volusia County, FL school district). It was a great experience and our teachers did a great job of preparing us (some might say over-preparing, but I'm not complaining about it) for college and life in general :) 

Another IB'er! I was IB class of 2004 in Land O' Lakes High school in the Tampa area, though I didn't get the diploma and only the certificate. I had to take HL Bio and that was my worst class along with Chemistry (though Chem clicked for me in college, teacher was a great person, but not as good in explaining some of the concepts). It was probably the best experience in high school for me. For the critical thinking courses in history, English, etc the transitition was seamless for me. My only issue with my school's program was it was not fully established yet (2nd graduating class), so I was required to take Bio which was a huge struggle for me. The options were limited on IB electives I could take. 

I also enjoyed TOK, some great discussions were had in class that I remember all to well. 

Still sort of keep in touch with a lot of my classmates and I find it interesting how a lot of my classmates hold similar worldviews on several issues .

How about the worst? My mother made me take College Religious Poetry with her when I was in the 12th grade. It was as awful as you can imagine except for the time a student brought in the lyrics to the Moody Blues' song,"Breath Deep" and we analized it word for word. It was a good thing that I was stoned that night.

SpeedwayFan said:

In reply to 914Driver :

Clearly you need to research what forensics is

You could tell us. I'm curious as well.

Ranger50 said:

Lunch.  
 

HS sucked. Had to travel to another district to take calculus. Rush back to take physics. 

I was in a different boat, but maybe the same lake. I didn't have lunch for three out of my four years because the high school I went to couldn't fit in. So I took art and music classes. I didn't have many opportunities for electives unfortunately. I'm thankful my college had many more offerings for me to satisfy my curiosity.

As an aside, in a strange plot twist in college, I once took a magazine publishing class, but it was four hours on a Thursday night. That was too much class at once, so I dropped it. At the time, I thought, "What's the likelihood I'd ever work for a magazine?!" Well ...

I'd like to say auto shop, but it was boring. Mechanical drawing was cool because I could just draw stuff for an hour and a half.

Sports aren"t an elective per se'  but I sure liked football and loved wrestling. My dad pulled me out of sports to work after school, which was a shame because I was a pretty damn good wrestler and probably could have gotten a scholarship out of it.

I went to tiny private schools so missed out on these "electives" you are all talking about; however, my daughter has "e-Sports" on her schedule so looks like she won't be missing out lol.

Field Maintenance. In reality we were the baseball coach's free labor. We painted the lines on the soccer and football fields before the games. We also hand picked all the weeds from the infield of the baseball field. We had two tests. One was the dimensions of a football field. The other was the dimensions of the soccer field. 

In reply to gearheadmb :

It's criminalistics 

Kreb (Forum Supporter) said:

I'd like to say auto shop, but it was boring. Mechanical drawing was cool because I could just draw stuff for an hour and a half.

Sports aren"t an elective per se'  but I sure liked football and loved wrestling. My dad pulled me out of sports to work after school, which was a shame because I was a pretty damn good wrestler and probably could have gotten a scholarship out of it.

I took mechanical drawing as well and found it boring. We never seemed to progress beyond the most basic shapes. It really turned me off from considering engineering.

Also, four years in high school, never could get home ec. I was in home ec for like a day and then got moved to shop (again) due to class size. 

David S. Wallens said:

Kreb (Forum Supporter) said:

I'd like to say auto shop, but it was boring. Mechanical drawing was cool because I could just draw stuff for an hour and a half.

Sports aren"t an elective per se'  but I sure liked football and loved wrestling. My dad pulled me out of sports to work after school, which was a shame because I was a pretty damn good wrestler and probably could have gotten a scholarship out of it.

I took mechanical drawing as well and found it boring. We never seemed to progress beyond the most basic shapes. It really turned me off from considering engineering.

We hit prospective drawing pretty hard and I got a lot out of it:

Toyman! said:

Drafting. This was in the days of mechanical pencils, multi-sided scales, drafting powder, and T-squares. I was extremely good at it, too bad it was a dying profession. 

By the time I bailed on school, the writing was on the wall. Computers were going to be the new age of drawing. Faster, more accurate, minimal skill needed. They sure did take the soul out of it.

 

 

I agree. Drafting was a fun class in HS, although Stage Crew was probably me favorite elective. Especially since it got me out of a lot of classes during my senior year as we didn't have an "official" teacher that year to run the stage during school assemblies so I was often pulled out of class by one of the administrators to run the stage lights and what not. Scared the crap out of me the first time he did it - getting your name broadcast over the school wide announcement. 

Stage crew did a lot for my confidence and abilities to take charge of a situation and make decisions on the fly, although it did little to improve my adolescent awkwardness. 

I never had an elective in HS. It was "college course" all the way whatever those courses were. I did it by rote to get the grades. But in the end it was all so much bullE36 M3. I made my own way after high school. I got a college degree in engineering and went on from there. I'm retired now and doing just fine.

My favorite class was Metal Shop we had 4 years of it at Rootstown High. I sill have the hip roof toolbox, file box and 3x5 note card box I made 50 years ago. 

Toyman! said:

Drafting. This was in the days of mechanical pencils, multi-sided scales, drafting powder, and T-squares. I was extremely good at it, too bad it was a dying profession. 

By the time I bailed on school, the writing was on the wall. Computers were going to be the new age of drawing. Faster, more accurate, minimal skill needed. They sure did take the soul out of it.

 

 

Ditto.

Intro To Sociology.

Basically Dr Murphy, a very catholic man, would play Devil's Advocate for pretty much anything
He'd open up discussions on everything from race relations to religion to UFOs.

Here's a fun one - our high school had a student parking senior class only and a student was the guard and had to only let cars in with stickers.  Also it went towards your gym class credit so no gym class for you.  

My brother-in-law was the guard and was a big party animal as he graduated in 1975 so maybe weed was around the campus but everyone knew this guy.  

He once told me this was the best gig ever. I miss the knucklehead.  
 

Autoshop....I took it all three years. Loved being down in the basement of the school with outdoor access......

BUT! I would have been a more well rounded individual had I taken some classes that were outside my comfort zone. 

I took typing, just to meet more girls (it worked). Then, in the 90s, computers came along, and it turned out that it was the best class I could have taken. My coworkers were all slowly pecking with two fingers, and I was ripping out reports in moments.

World War 2 History.  I would have easily passed the test before I took it, but it was a good class that I really enjoyed.  I signed up for teacher's assistant my senior year with that teacher (to help with his AP American History class) but the guidance department screwed something up, so I ended up doing the TA stuff in the WW2 class.  We pretty much just watched movies or interviews with vets, but anything that had to be "taught" was me.  He even had me come up with a new test for the class because nobody was paying attention to the class.  

Community Service

I had 3 real favorites: Shop, Concert/Jazz Band, and Electronics. 

Shop in our high school started in 9th Grade, and you split the year between Wood Shop and Small Engine Repair. The teacher for the latter was actually my dad's old Auto Shop teacher; he had him his first year teaching, and I had him his last year. Great guy, and he taught me a ton of stuff. I got to rebuild an old Ariens Sno-Thro from the early 60's, and we got to test it in the snow! It was so old it had a glass carb bowl. Auto Shop got taken over by the absent-minded Wood Shop teacher, and we used to get away with murder in that class. He definitely couldn't handle us. 

Concert/Jazz Band was a mainstay for me since I was a drummer. I served as 1st chair for 3 years in Concert Band and we did a bunch of sponsored trips all over the place. I got to go to to Annapolis, Atlanta, NYC, and Montreal. All of those were a lot of fun. In my school, the "cool kids" did Jazz Band; the ones who knew how to party were all in there, and I was pumped to get accepted. Tons of fun there as well. 

Electronics was a blast. Our teacher was a former IBM engineer, and a funny, cynical SOB. Somehow, that class ended up being 99% close friends of mine, so we used to have a blast. We also did things that would likely end up getting us arrested now, like charging up capacitors and discharging them on other kids' braces on a bet, hooking people up to the bench power supplies to see how much voltage they can take, etc. That said, I learned a lot in there. 

Honorable Mention: Graphic Arts. Had some fun in there experimenting with film and doing screenprinting. Made some cool stuff in that class that I still have kicking around.