Smash Bros Theory: 6 Absurd Classes Taught at Actual Colleges
Universities everywhere base their entire business model on forcing you to take half a dozen completely useless classes for each one that will actually help you get smarter and find a job.
As a result, post-secondary education can be a mine field of dubious courses peddling the equivalent of academic snake oil, and some of them get downright ridiculous:
#6.
Super Smash Brothers Melee Theory and Practice
Offered At:
We admit we've never heard of this college, but at first glance it seemed like a legit school of higher learning. We found out that it's actually a 175 year-old private and selective school, and one that is fairly well-regarded even though their mascot is a Yeoman. What would the 19th Century founders say if they could see their own classrooms used to teach a course on Super Smash Brothers Melee?
Well they'd probably say something about how the magical box appears to be possessed by warring devils, at which point they would declare the whole operation to be the work of witchcraft and flee the room. But after we calmed them down they'd probably say something about how getting course credit for playing Smash Brothers is a bunch of bullshit.
Pictured: Final Exam.
Most pseudo-classes like this come with a course description that tries to play up the supposed academic value. Here they've tried to tell us the course covers "controversial issues concerning video games." However the extra $3 course fee for wear and tear on the controller pretty much gives away the real purpose. The only controversy being discussed in that class is whether to tell your parents that this is how you are blowing your college fund that they put off kidney surgery for.
Amazingly this course has 2.5 hours of class time a week, which is probably about 40 hours less than most of the students would normally play video games. Half of the course time is dedicated to time outside regular class time to practice and refine skills, time that may otherwise be wasted learning things that might actually lead to employment or sex.
#5.
Psychology of Exceptional Human Experiences
Offered At:
This school is located in Coventry, England and the course shows that Queen or no Queen, England can do stupid just as well as America can.
At first the course sounds pretty good. You've got a very normal-sounding title, and the description says students are required to have a Bachelor's degree and will be drawing from the fields of psychology and religion and doing quantitative analysis. But, much like a bad strip joint, once your eyes adjust to the light you realize that not everything is as it seems. This is in fact a class on psychic and paranormal experiences.
If there was any doubt as to what you would have to look forward to, this interview makes it clear that this course is not the resume builder you thought it was. It turns out the instructor will be teaching students in the course to "chase poltergeists, talk to the dead and understand telepathy."
It does not make it clear whether he will also teach them how to catch Leprechauns or battle dragons, but we think he should because those would be way more useful skills. Instead of learning anything legit you're going to spend your time hanging out in haunted houses with tape recorders and cameras, trying to find your last shred of self respect.
The course will be like this, except without anything you see in the picture.
We have a suspicion that this course was started by somebody who saw the opening scenes in Ghostbusters and immediately told their guidance counselor they wanted to go to whichever college had the best ghost-hunting department, like in the movie. When the counselor told them that in fact no real college had a ghost-hunting department because that would be ridiculous, they decided to spend the next 20 years trying to right that wrong.
#4.
Stupidity
Offered At:
Occidental College.Occidental College is a liberal arts college in LA. The Princeton Review has it on its list of The Best 361 Colleges, otherwise known as The List of All the Colleges in the U.S.
The course is supposedly an examination of stupidity "... ranging from the presidency to Beevis (sic) and Butthead (sic)." They don't name the president but we're going to guess it's not Lincoln. Also, right away we're doubting the quality of a course that wants to teach you about stupidity but manages to spell Beavis and Butt-Head wrong. These guys may know stupidity, but apparently they don't know Google.
The description slaps together a bunch of absurd academic jargon to try to legitimize the whole operation, with phrases like "Stupidity is neither ignorance nor organicity, but rather, a corollary of knowing..." or our other favorite, "Stupidity is always the name of the Other, and it is the sign of the feminine." Is there some kind of college course random word generator they use for these things?
Also, what's the supposed benefit here? We don't think analyzing stupidity is going to make you feel any better about it, any more than telling us exactly what's in dog poop will let us better cope with stepping in it. Even worse, you'd be paying someone thousands of dollars to point out things that are stupid, when you could have just came to this site and let us do it for the price of free.
I once took a course on rhetoric. I think I'd rather learn about being thrifty.
ReplyU of A offers a class on the works of Tupac Shakur like he's some poetic genius like Sheil Silverstien or James Joyce. It's retarded.
ReplyI think what these classes might be are college's attempts to offer a way to fill up grant requirements to have X amount of credits, provide a release valve for harried students, weed out the dumb students who take them, or are just liberalhippyfeelgooddeadpoetsociety "teachers" who think Montesorri teaching is the best method. All while making a little bit of profit. Most Universities operate like a business. U of A sure as hell does.
It's Shel Silverstein, not Sheil, and I'd hardly consider him one of our brightest poetic geniuses. Very good, certainly, but genius? The poetry of James Joyce, of course, is relatively unknown because he was primarily a novelist. Maybe YOU should take a poetry course or two, eh?
There's a school on the east coast (CT, I think) that has a course on the History and Mythology of the Wu Tang Clan.
ReplyWhy am I not surprised that the course on cybering was offered in San Fransisco.
ReplyI know what you mean. "Exploring Cybersexualities? Wait, what? *scroll scroll scroll* Oh. San Fransisco."
Im surprised Alfred University has only one class on this list. Most of our honors program is on thissort of list already.
ReplyThe community college I went to offered a class called the Ethics of South Park. Basically it was an ethics class that used episodes of South Park as examples for the the philosophies we studied.
Replymeh, you guys can have take the classes about video games and what not....I'll stick to the science and math.
ReplyMy university offers an upper level English class over Bob Dylan. You listen to his records 3 hours a week then write how it made you feel
ReplyAlso...survey of beverages = alcohol tasting class.
do you get to light up while you listen to dylan?
Most likely, or else the "how did it make you feel" part doesn't make sensep
Regarding the course description for #4, it actually seems pretty valid to me:
Reply""Stupidity is always the name of the Other, and it is the sign of the feminine." Is there some kind of college course random word generator they use for these things?"
"The Other" is English major jargon for a representation of the ideal enemy. EG - America's "other" is the mid east. A racist's "other" is the race he hates, and so on.
From the look of the course, it seems to be about teaching how people are branded to be stupid in society as a means of division. In other words,
-Group A wants power
-Group B wants power too
-So does Group C
-Group A has media control and makes Group B look stupid
-Group C makes fun of Group B for being stupid
-Group A remains in power while Group B and C bicker.
Honestly, that course seems very interesting. The feminism aspect of it is especially interesting. It is true that women are branded as stupid more often than men. I'd like to read about some theories as to how and why.
kinda. the other is actually a sociology thing. dunno where you picked it up as an English thing, but ehh...close enough.
The other is used in literary criticism too, I think. Lit crit borrows from a number of other field, so lolwut14 probably learned it in an English class first.
Apparently one of the unis near me had a class basically about porn. They called it "Adult Entertainment" or something. And literally, you watched porn, you discussed porn, you f*****g studied porn.
ReplyNow that's a course I'd take.
Jerking off in class would still get you arrested, lolwut14. Even if it's a porn class.
I think the class on the supernatural is actually a legitimate, useful class. Open your eyes people stuff like that is being proven to exist every day what is wrong with wanting to take a class that allows you to be in on something like that?
ReplyAnd that's why there should be a course on finding invisible pink unicorns. OPEN YOUR EYES, PEEPLE!
I liked the part where you said "proven to exist." Have a chat with James Randi, he might want to give you some money.
As a current Oberlin student, I'd like to offer a note of defense on behalf of the truly first-class academic institution I attend. Oberlin has a unique program called "Experimental College", in which students, faculty, staff and community members can teach small courses on subjects in which they have a personal expertise. Topics range from crafts to languages, dance and music to grassroots activism, post-war German cinema, card games, comic books, niche histories, etc. Last semester I co-instructed a small seminar on Martin Buber's I and Thou. These are not 'real' Oberlin classes and are typically not taken for credit; they're an opportunity for students to share their passions with other students. It's dishonest and misleading for the writers to ignore that fact.
ReplyThe five people who voted this up are also Oberlin students, I'd guess.
#6 was offered as part of ExCo (experimental college)- ExCo classes are proposed and run by students and they don't fulfill any requirements. They're just fun classes that you can take for a credit.
ReplySome of the courses seem at least somewhat legit, like how to save money, but cybersex? Not examining the cultural/psychological aspect but...how to find and, erm, properly participate in it. Even the course syllabus is dripping with perverse sardonicism. Cracked writers must be infiltrating the SanFran university system..
Reply"Please complete all assignments:
(1) Chat
More chatting! Spend at least an hour chatting (or lurking attentively) on your own. Take notes, save the chat as a text document, if you like, and come to class prepared to share your chat experience with everyone. (If you feel like endangering your credit rating, you can try out an interactive strip show, or if you have a QuickCam, you can try out CU-See Me, and tell the class about it.)
(2) Look at the Links
Spend some time checking out the variety of cybersexual experiences available on the Web. If you find additional links of interest, please let me know.
...etc."
I think I just had an Smashgasm...
Reply"Just two months of being a college student, regardless of which classes you take, will teach you that you can get two meals out of a single family-sized box of macaroni and cheese"
Reply...I only cook half a normal size box of mac & cheese at a time, and even then I usually have enough left over in the fridge for a second meal. Either I'm doing it wrong, or they are.
why is he using a classic controller pro to play melee?
Reply Hide All See All 3 RepliesThere's the fact that they're two completely different pictures (e.g. a picture of a tv and then below, a picture of a banana, does not mean the banana is being used to control the tv).
Other than that, I'd assume that person is the younger sibling that wasn't smart enough to play, so you gave them a controller that wasn't plugged in.
That's also the controller-attachment design for the Wii, that way lazy people don't have to get up and exercise.
LMeire, most Wii games don't require you to get up an exercise.
This reminds me of the class I took at UW-Madison last semester: Vampires in Film and Fiction. My prof. called himself a vampirologist. We even had another guest vampirologist from Texas (probably the only other one in the country) come in to guest lecture. XD
ReplyI want to take that class. I may have to transfer just for it.
Taken in the proper direction a class on a video game, as long as it's a good game, would be a perfectly reasonable look at game theory and strategy. A lot of the writer's objections to these classes are on the, "I already know everything I need to about this subject," level. Which works for something like "Tightwaddery" but the super hero science class would actually be super cool. It's actually pretty impressive how many things are reasonable, given the single miracle exception. Think of all the articles on this site pointing out glaring misunderstandings in movies and television. A class like that makes people more aware of the world they are in and makes them think about their entertainment.
ReplyAll of these classes could be really great as long as the teacher is good.
At my school, Franklin & Marshall College, there is a class about the role that chocolate has played in the development of society
Reply