What were/are your favourite school subjects? Do they still reflect your current interests?

[~Kilza~]

My favorite subject in elementary/high school was math. The explanation for it being my favorite is pure and simple: I was really good at it and I found it interesting. I initially went into university majoring in math, but then I ran into linear algebra courses that I hated. A lot. Which was actually just as well, since my high school never offered any computer science courses, so I never got the opportunity to take them until university, where I ended up loving them and excelling at them, and so it gave me the excuse to switch my major to computer science and never look back, lol.

Even though computer science is now my main focus nowadays, with it being the field I work in and all, I still like math for statistical/analytical purposes. Besides, it's intertwined to a degree with the computer science field, so I can never truly escape it, lol.

 

[DaisyFan]

In my elementary school years, I enjoyed math and music. In my high school years, I also liked math, but I enjoyed foreign language.

Math - I liked doing easy and some complicated math problems like multiplication, geometry, and equation.

Music - This class was extremely fun! My teacher put classical music, musical movies (I remembered watching Mary Poppins), pop/top 40 music, and more. I learned to play a recorder in class and I enjoyed it! I missed playing a recorder and thought I would get one soon.

Foreign language - I took French class and I loved it! I learned a lot of accents, words, grammar, culture, and food. My teacher put popular movies in French dubbed and English subtitles in class so we (students) could watch and listen in other language.

 

[JellyBeans]

throughout a *lot* of school i was one of those people who didn't really have a favourite subject, i just kind of enjoyed everything and anything - then moving into GCSE/A level things obviously ramped up and i was kind of forced to pick subjects. as much as i love the creative side of english, i was never really a fan of the analysis side of things in those subjects so heavily leaned towards science and maths. a level maths probably crushed any enjoyment i had in the subject and i really found my love for biology, leading me towards my impending neuroscience degree! i absolutely love the human side of biology especially. i also enjoy german but more as a language to speak than a subject to study in school if that makes sense

 

[-Lumi-]

Add me to the group of people who loved English! It was always my favourite subject, although some years were better than others due to what teacher I had. I love reading though and I always felt more comfortable in English class than other subjects.

Outside of the main core subjects though I also really enjoyed taking a hair styling course, an intro to psychology/sociology/anthropology, and a law class. In middle school I took a cooking class that was a lot of fun, too! I wish our home ec course (split between cooking and learning to sew) had been better because sewing is something I actually really enjoy now but I absolutely hated trying to learn it in school.

Math was always my hardest subject and when science ended up having math mixed in it quickly became another one I struggled with. I also switched schools pretty dramatically which made things tricky - I moved provinces and the school systems were totally different so they placed me in the hardest science course based off my middle school marks... bad move. I never quite recovered from that, lol. Having to take the general science course which included biology and chemistry was really tough but I did enjoy when we focused on environmental science, the little bit about space, and I was actually better at physics then I had any right to be lol. I wasn't good but the only reason I passed science was because I did well enough in physics to make up for me completely tanking the chemistry and biology portion.

 

[JemAC]

Maths was my favourite subject, and the one I'm probably still most interested in, as it's a subject I really enjoy doing and one that I often found quite easy to learn. I actually did an accelerated maths course in school so I could take my exams early and then did a further maths course so I could learn the things usually taught at a higher level and pick up another mathematics qualification, which probably sounds crazy to anyone that really dislikes the subject While I enjoyed every area of maths, with the slight exception of mechanics, my favourites would probably be algebra and geometry.

I also really loved History at school as I was, and still am, fascinated by learning about the past and seeing how the world has changed over the years, through both the good and the bad, and was also a subject that I performed well in during school. I liked Geography too, finding it very interesting to learn about, and one of my greatest achievements from school is getting 100% in every exam I took in the subject but I didn't really have the same love for it as I did for Maths and History. Likewise I could perform well in both my English exams (I studied Literature and Language separately and definitely preferred the former) but it was never really a lesson that I looked forward to.

Chemistry was another subject I really liked, especially when it came to chemical equations or taking part in the practicals, though exam wise I was slightly better at physics due to it generally been the more mathematical one of the sciences. I liked Biology too but it was the science I was least interested in and I was often bored with it by the end of the week, not helped by the fact my school specialised in science so my timetable was a bit too heavy on those lessons.

My least favourites would have to be PE, I'm just not sporty at all, and any of the art based subjects I learnt, before I could drop them during the later years, such as music, art and drama. I wasn't musically inclined in the slightest and having to do the music practicals always felt like some form of torture. I found the other two more enjoyable to learn overall, in particular art, but my teachers in both subjects didn't have a great reputation which, probably unfairly to the subjects, made me dislike them.

 

[princess.looking.for.frog]

I love social studies, I just love learning about cultures and people and history, it's so interesting! I also love biology and visual art, though I'm not taking art anymore because I replaced it with digital solutions..

 

[Autumn247]

When I was in grade school it was English, writing, literature, etc. and still was one of my favorites when I was taking college classes, and is probably my best subject next to Psychology.

music was also something I loved. I played violin in the school orchestra for 4 or 5 years. I also had a guitar class. I never was in choir because I chose to play violin. I don’t like singing.

I also loved art. I was in an advanced placement art class in 12th grade.

In college my favorite subjects are/were (I’m currently taking some time off college to get a job and work for awhile) foreign language (Italian), and Psychology, especially abnormal psychology. I enjoyed sociology as well.

all my favorites still reflect my current interests except art, I’ve taken a break from that.

I hate math probably because I’m so bad at it.

 

[SinnerTheCat]

My forever fav subjects in high school were maths, biology and chemistry. I was lucky enough to find a class where all of them were on an advanced level, so I was very prepared when I was going to university.
And they do reflect my current hobbies in a way, because I'm currently studying pharmacy at a medical university, so we have a lot of chemistry!! Biology is, of course, important here too, but I'm honestly grateful that it's more chemistry than biology, to me chemistry is more interesting and easier to learn ☺

 

[Envy]

In high school I realized I really enjoyed history. That interest has remained ever since.

Of course, I also loved music... but in high school this was a bit complicated. Outside of marching band I did not really enjoy band in high school. Because of drama, because of me being not as good as I would have liked, and also because I so desperately wanted to switch instruments (back then, to bassoon) and did not like what I played back then. I had a very love/hate relationship with band in high school, I hate to say. Negative feelings were largely - if not all - on me, though. (once I got to college, I switched to bassoon and I was happy with band)

(Also, I took Music Theory in my senior year and it didn't click for me at all. I was so bad at it that the teacher pulled me aside one day and told me that I shouldn't major in music when I went to college if I'm struggling so badly in music theory.

How funny, because music theory clicked for me pretty much immediately in college)

The thing is that also in high school, I took a huge interest in classical music and ultimately music history itself. In particular I had this book on the history of woodwind instruments that I adored back in late high school and read it all of the time. In my eyes, this is the foundation of what I would ultimately go in to - music history. Music history was not offered at my high school, but you can bet if it had been I would have taken it and it would have easily been my favorite class.

 

[DinosaurDumpster]

My favorite subjects in school have always been art and music. They feel a lot less like a chore unlike the core classes (math, science, english), which those just stressed me out, even if I was at least decent at them.

Art allowed me to express my creativity and expand my... questionable imagination. Though not my number 1 favorite anymore, I still really like it and just looking at finished pieces was nice. My teachers in grade school often just let me do my own thing most of the time since I just really get into it a lot.

Music has just been a lot of fun (yet stressful) lately. I bet its just in my genes or something since my siblings and parents did something with the arts. Dancing around in choir or just figuring out rhythms is soo much easier to remember what the heck the respiratory system is or what x equals. Its really cool when the music is all put together, along with visuals and such, and it just a lot of fun to work on it.

Least favorite is probably math or pe. I'm not a huge physical person, so when high school came I just chose a performing arts credit instead of pe. I'd probably pass out on the gym floor if i took it.
Math... who put letters in there? I don't even have to know 1+1 for the job I want. Makes me have a mental breakdown every time I look at an equation. And how you have to do things a very specific way.. ;v;

 

[skarmoury]

In high school I really liked chemistry and hated physics. In college when our classes were more advanced and the topics became harder, I realized I liked physics and hated chemistry, haha. I remember topping an exam in chemistry once in high school which made me think chemistry was for me, but in college somehow I flunked a lot of chemistry tests LOL. Alternatively, I got low scores on a lot of my high school physics tests but somehow suddenly understood physics in college to the point where I almost perfected basic physics. My favorite physics memory was when I took one advanced physics class in college and found it too hard so I just took the first exam and dropped it, only to be told a week later that I had gotten the highest score in class and was definitely far from failing. I feel like my classmates hated me for doing that idk LOL.

All throughout though, biology was a top favorite (and I was a biology major in college, so it was a lot of fun). I surprisingly did well and topped some of my biology exams; I wasn't a listener at class at all (I slept or cut a lot of my classes bckjsbdf) but I really liked reading biology textbooks and that somehow got me through and earned me a latin honor. I went into medicine after graduating because I thought it was going to be a lot like biology. Medicine is definitely harder and I don't feel it to be as fun as when I took my bachelor's degree in biology, but oh well. Medicine still has a lot of biological aspects and that's cool, but I do miss ecology and field work and all that as well.

Edit: Oh I should mention that I really like writing too, in high school I took an elective on creative writing and in college I enjoyed my English writing classes as well. I don't write all that creatively anymore, but on rare occasions I try to write some short and sweet fanfics just to get my creativity rolling a bit. I don't publish them though or anything; just for personal fun.

 

[Geoni]

I always enjoyed Biology more than any other subject in school. Especially Bio 102 in college because that's when I got to geek out about how all the different forms of life became interesting and distinct based on their adaptations. It's that course between the building blocks of Bio 101 and more focused courses in Bio 200 onward. Seeing how life forms started simple and progressively got more and more complicated is one of the events in my life that influenced my perspective the most.

I also said social sciences because I enjoy history as well as sociology and psychology.

Lastly my "other" is creative writing. It was my artistic calling in high school and early college.

 

[dizzy bone]

In high school my favourite subjects were Art and P.E. I really loved team sports and running and I played in varsity soccer. Never even considered a career in sports but to me I had the most fun in that class. To be honest, I wasn’t super passionate about art and drawing but I was good at it. I wasn’t strong in other subjects so I thought going into the art field was my best option. I went to an art school and I’m still working in an art field, but I now I will run out of breath just walking up the stairs Safe to say I’m not a very physically active person anymore. I ended up working in a more technical field (printmaking) because I liked the process and labor involved in it but churning out drawings constantly is not something that comes naturally to me. I‘m just content with the process and getting my hands dirty.

 

[CrankyCupcake]

In school, I loved English and Art. English because I've always enjoyed reading and writing, Art because I liked to draw and paint. I liked Art so much, I opted to take it as an A level subject in junior college even though I was in the Commerce (and not Arts) stream. In the university, I'd wanted to take English Language. But I remembered the wrong date and missed the deadline for signing up.

Eventually I chose Sociology and Philosophy as my majors. I've always been fascinated by human behaviour and why we act the way we do.

After all that studying, I wrote for a living. It was what I'd wanted to do since I was little. I worked as a journalist for a daily broadsheet. Then I worked in advertising as a copywriter. Retiring from fulltime work, I did freelance writing for the daily broadsheet which included my own fortnightly column.

The last time I returned to the classroom, I was in my late 30s. I wanted to study Japanese. Just because I wanted to read manga, watch anime and listen to my favourite seiyuu in drama CDs. So I took weekly part-time classes for 5 years. Looking back, I'm glad I did. But returning to the classroom felt weird. I was the only parent in class, almost twice as old as everyone else.

It's been some 35 years since I graduated. I guess some of what I've studied in school still remains relevant to some of my current interests. I'm still bewildered by human behaviour and it's still almost fun to talk about it with my family and friends. Yet, at the same time, the more I learn about the human condition, the less I want to interact with people. Earlier this year, I told my husband I want to retire from the human race. He laughed.

 

[Orius]

English. I used to write lengthy essays because of how much I loved to come up with stories. I still do, though I haven't written in a very long time (aside from a few scripts in my film scriptwriting class a year ago).

I would like to think that my love for English is still with me, considering it's my preferred language over my native language of Chinese Mandarin. However, having been an anime fan for such a long time, sometimes I wish I could understand Japanese as well. It's a cool language, and the culture is interesting.

 

[Chris]

English, history, politics, and languages. I studied three languages in school: French, German, and Spanish. My most detested subject was science.

I still have an interest in all of these things, however I actually went on to become a scientist. I did my (second) undergrad in biomedical science, have worked in molecular and microbiology labs professionally, and I am about to start a postgrad course in infection biology.

 

[Belle T]

When I was in school, I tended to enjoy art/music and foreign language classes, and I still very much enjoy both those things to this day.

But what I wouldn't give to be able to turn back time, so I could go back and take my science and especially literature courses more seriously. Of course I can always go back and re-read those books, but to be able to have a classroom to discuss them and a teacher to guide you through them and help you appreciate them is a chance you really only get once. And regrettably, I totally squandered that chance.

 

[TheSillyPuppy]

I don't remember much about how I felt about various subjects in elementary school.

In high school, though, I felt like I was genuinely interested in pretty much everything I had to or had the option to take.

1. Humanities. I took an introductory course to psychology, sociology, and anthropology. Psychology was definitely my of the three subjects.
Though I personally didn't enjoy the mandatory history course I had to take in high school since it was limited to Canadian history, I enjoy learning about world history. However, I find it challenging to learn about history from any medium since I find the bias injected into historical perspectives detracts from the true value of learning about historical events, major historical figures, etc., especially now that I'm older and would much rather use my own critical thinking skills.
I'm starting to expose myself to the basics of macroeconomics, since I think it's practical information to have a basic understanding of and didn't have the space in my school timetable to take economics as an elective.

2. Sciences. I find all three major branches very interesting. It's fascinating to me that we're able to explain the universe around us and that we're always learning more about it.

For physics, it's funny to me that I once considered not taking it. I ended up taking Grade 11 physics in summer school and Grade 12 physics so that I could apply to undergrad engineering programs. The theories presented in physics were very fascinating, though I struggled the most with the calculations—I think, in part, because I have very poor spatial awareness and struggle to always have full control over my body, especially my limbs.

For chemistry, the stoichiometric calculations were very fun to do. Organic chemistry later caused my grief in university (more on that later).
When I got to university, I realized in my first semester that chemical engineering has very little to do with chemistry. Please don't make the same mistake that I did.
I had to take organic chemistry in my third semester and I literally bombed the midterm exam (got 12% on it). That was the worst grade I had ever received in my life, so I studied really hard for the final exam, participated more in class, and went to my prof during lecture breaks to ask questions. He noticed my improvement, and I'm happy that he had a policy of counting the final exam grade as our overall course grade if students bombed the midterm. I ended the course with a 72%.

For biology, my high school teacher was very focused on the application side, which is probably why I was so interested in it. I'm turned off by rote memorization, so being tested on real understanding of theories and concepts was amazing (and how we should be tested on materials, in my opinion). While I'm not a "health nut," my interest in biology is what eventually got me into learning more about nutrition and fitness on my own.
In university, I had to take biology in my second semester. Our prof was terrible—read off the lecture slides, gave no homework, and didn't provide us with a textbook reference. His final exam was brutal—literally a third of the final exam covered content that he had never taught us. We ended up getting our grades inflated; otherwise, a significant portion of the class would have failed his course.
In my third last semester, I had to take bioprocess engineering. This course was more calculations than theory. It was so boring and the prof couldn't provide explanations for why certain assumption were made, why one formula was used over another in a specific scenario, etc.
Suffice to say, my cohort in university did not have positive experiences with the subject of biology.

3. English. I took AP English Language and Composition in Grade 12, and I absolutely loved it. Rhetorical analysis is such a practical skill to have. Practicing for the AP exam is probably what lead to my ability to read quickly and synthesize my thoughts today, so I'm super grateful to have taken this class.

4. Math. I love solving problems. I think my favourite types of problems to solve were proofs of trigonometric identities. High school AP calculus came pretty intuitively to me, which helped me out greatly when I got to university and had to take Calculus 1.
Calculus 3 in university was rough. When we got to multivariable calculus, it's like my brain decided to stop functioning. I still remember forgetting the left-hand side of Stokes' Theorem for my final exam, which was worth 10% of the exam.

5. Foreign languages. I took French all throughout high school. My French teacher in Grade 9 was so sad that I wasn't able to take his Spanish course starting in Grade 10—I wanted to, but I literally had no more room in my timetable. I'm still friends with him to this day and he still doesn't let me live it down.

6. Music. Like the stereotypical Asian kid, my mom forced me to learn piano at the young age of 4. Later on, I joined choir as an extracurricular in middle school then took vocal class and joined choral ensemble + jazz choir in high school. I really missed being in a music ensemble in university! I don't play piano much anymore, but I still enjoy singing and my S/O likes listening to me sing, hehe.

Nowadays, I have a list of non-fiction topics that I (try to) rotate through while reading—organizational psychology, motivational psychology, product management, professional development, history, technology, systems thinking... Yes, my interests are all over the place.

 

[Millysaurusrexjr]

Mainly Art and learning a foreign language. I hated phys ed most of the time (because I hated team sport stuff) but oddly I loved when we had to like, run a mile or whatever. In my last year of high school they had a phys ed class that was *just* walking, and I LOVED that, best class ever

 

[Snowesque]

I was mostly interested in art, literature, & science (particularly biology).
I've an associates in communication design and was always pushed into the direction of the drawn arts. While I do enjoy it, I just find it doesn't come naturally to me, moreso when I had to do it for a directed purpose. Now it's sort of gone into the direction of fashion expression which I'm very much into and loving. As for lit and bio, I unfortunately was a person who never studied so my interest in them sort of fell to the wayside. My teachers always hated that because they always saw how interested I was, but I'd never follow up with super good grades haha.