<p>PE requirement - aerobics. An older nun taught the class, therefore it was really easy. The fun part of the class was each student had to put together a workout class set to music.</p>
<p>As mentioned in the other thread, Children’s Literature. Easy and fun, but so worth it, getting to hear Margaret Hamilton and Maurice Sendak. I think they were by far the most famous but I also remember a guy with a falcon and a hawk that was pretty fascinating, and some of the costumes the engineering students pulled together for our play writing unit were pretty impressive. The PE courses were also easy but were not required. Since I loved writing, I though some of those classes were “fluff” but I know the engineers sure didn’t think so! They had me helping them with their writing. Anyway, I’m glad I went to a college where even the engineers had options to take classes that were not all “nose to the grindstone”. </p>
<p>A sociology class, “Co-ops and Communes.” We had to form groups and once a week do something together and write about it. My group did a lot of Happy Hours and dinners. </p>
<p>I took bowling, too. </p>
<p>Adobe construction. This was a miniscule amount of credit, but on my transcript regardless. After learning some theory, we went to the instructors house, and built a banca (bench). Formed bricks, laid them up, covered with a slurry for plaster. </p>
<p>I did so much fluff. Modern dance, karate, folk dance, ceramics. However ceramics, despite the reputation, if you cared about it, involved hours and hours of wheel throwing to perfect technique, not to mention the other steps involved in making a glazed pot. </p>
<p>I took a story telling class. It was one of those one week courses during a summer…all day for,a full week. I gained about 5 pounds eating candy bars while listening to a variety of story tellers. They were great…but the course was…meh.</p>
<p>That spring, I got a flyer for a “story telling cruise” where you could also earn three college credits. Seriously! I passed on that one, but really! </p>
<p>Needed a fine arts credit my last semester… Flower arranging . It was through the Ag College and actually hard to get an A. (notebooks with various types of arrangements pre internet meant you had to have Mom send you Better Homes and Gardens…). Had to enter displays in the flower show in May…
I took it because I thought it was interesting, not for an easy A. </p>
<p>As an engineering major, I didn’t have many fluff courses. Maybe fluid mechanics?</p>
<p>Then again, there was a course that I thought was going to be total fluff, my first year in community college, Womens Studies. The instructor assigned us to watch porn. One movie was Deep Throat, and I don’t remember the other. It was kind of bizarre. But out of all engineering courses and masters courses I took, I most vividly remember being taught one thing in my Women’s Studies class. How to kill a man with your bare hands.</p>
<p>Fortunately, I haven’t had to use that knowledge yet.</p>
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<p>Doesn’t seem very “fluffy” if you have to paddle back to your starting point after floating down the river.</p>
<p>Yes, I was an engineering major too… not much fluff. But there was a requirement to do 4 quarters of PE. I did tennis (a bit of a pain when mornings got colder), badminton, and racquetball (2x I think). </p>
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<p>Oh, believe me, the final was very difficult! We had to paddle solo up river through a floating buoy obstacle course. </p>
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<p>Were there any actual (housing or otherwise) co-ops at the school?</p>
<p><a href=“https://www.nasco.coop/membership/directory”>https://www.nasco.coop/membership/directory</a></p>
<p>I took art history but I didn’t think it was fluff. But I took 2 flower arrangements classes, 2 ceramics classes and numerous badminton classes after college so maybe they don’t count I’m this context.</p>
<p>I was thinking about the movie class I took back in the day. I suddenly remembered that a group of us would chip in for a pitcher of beer at the Student Union after the movies. </p>
<p>Did any of your schools sell beer on campus back in the old days?! When I was in college, the drinking age was 18.</p>
<p>At MIT in the early seventies, I took a few courses that were challenging, interesting, rigorous–and graded on attendance. Survey of Modern Mathematics: taught by Gian Carlo-Rota, who lectured on a different topic each week (three one-hour lectures per topic, 15 weeks). Miss no classes: A, miss one: B, miss two: C. There was also a paper, ten pages, any math topic. (I wrote on theory of real numbers.) I loved the course; he was a gifted lecturer. And the A. </p>
<p>I also took History of Modern Film. Also graded on attendance. We watched two movies a week and wrote a one page paper on each of them. If you saw all the movies, went to all the lectures, and wrote all the papers, you got an A. </p>
<p>Yes, drinking age was 18 and beer was sold on campus. </p>
<p>Pocket billiards. For the final we had to choose from a variety of trick shots with points assigned for difficulty. I needed to perform the most difficult shot to guaranty an A, and by some quirk in the universe I pulled it off to massive applause from classmates. It remains one of my proudest accomplishments.</p>
<p>UCBAlumnus, I don’t think there was at the time I was in college ('74-'78) though very likely informal ones. Boulder is on the list in your link. </p>
<p>We had a set curriculum and it was a double major STEM program, so even summers had required courses. The only opportunity for fluff was PE. My friend talked me into taking weight training which I hated and almost flunked, LOL. I also took badminton which I expected to be fluff but the instructor was very competitive and had us beating all the other badminton classes. That was actually fun.</p>
<p>The drinking age was 18 at least at the start of college but I think it went back up to 21 before I graduated. I don’t recall beer on campus but there was a bar about 5 feet from it and probably still on campus property. The campus newspaper was headquartered next door-I was at that pub a lot.</p>
<p>Hi-fi and Laser Beam - a fun, creative intro science class for the non-science types.</p>