What Were Your Favorite Courses in College?

By Jan Bushfield, P.H.Ec., London, Ontario
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I have always been somewhat of a rule follower. I have always preferred activities that had clear instructions and expectations, with well-defined beginnings and endings. Writing an essay or short story or book report for school assignments was never my forté. Being asked to interpret what a poet or novelist meant, and then discovering that my idea was wrong, was both puzzling and frustrating to me. I excelled at cutting and pasting and underlining the titles with a ruler and red ink…neat and tidy processes not open to interpretation. So, math and science appealed to me more than English or History. I liked the neatness and practicality of a math problem where following a logical process produced the correct answer. And the end of the homework assignment was well defined by the completion of the final question.

I was naturally drawn to practical hands-on subjects in high school. When I was first introduced to Home Economics, I immediately loved sewing. There was something so satisfying about constructing perfect seams, impeccable buttonholes, and ruler-straight hems secured with precision hand stitching. So, choosing to attend Macdonald Institute at the University of Guelph and study household science was a good fit for me. I might have chosen to pursue Mathematics or perhaps Engineering, but the idea of females in those professions was totally outside my experience, so, inspired by my much-admired Home Economics teacher, off I went to Guelph to join 100 other female students in first year ‘Mac’.

Our 4-year degree program included a wide mix of science and humanities courses as well as the more practical classes I preferred. Some of those courses were quite challenging and I no longer attained the straight A’s of my high school days. Before long I had the added distraction of a boyfriend—spending time with him often displaced studying. My biggest challenge was a course in organic chemistry. It made little sense to me, our professor was both pompous and boring, and I could see no possible use for learning the structure of amino acids. But my boyfriend had taken the same course the previous year and aced it. He entertained me in restaurants by carefully diagramming those amino acids on the paper napkins, and assured me that the professor was known for giving out lots of exam clues in his last lecture of the term…all I had to do was take good notes that day and study those topics. Imagine my dismay at the final lecture when there were no clues. And imagine my disappointment when my exam mark was 44. Supplemental exams during summer break were offered for those who failed, so after spending a good part of my summer studying, imagine my horror when my next effort produced a mark of 33. At a follow-up interview with the professor we bonded over having grown up in neighbouring rural communities, and he kindly recommended that I should study especially the previous exam. I guess he was as tired of setting exams as I was of writing them and sure enough, I managed to correctly answer enough of those now-familiar questions to finally produce a passing grade. The experience left me a bit leery of “good advice” handed out by boyfriends. I married him anyway, but organic chemistry was never a popular topic of conversation in our long and happy marriage.

But there were lots more practical courses that I really enjoyed. Our first three years included things like food and nutrition courses, clothing and textiles, housing, home management, drafting, statistics…all hands-on classes where I was learning things that I thought might possibly be useful someday. In my fourth year I majored in clothing and textiles, and even textile chemistry made more sense to me than organic chemistry had.​

After graduation, marriage, and moving to London, we discovered the joy of evening classes which were offered by the city, the public library, and the local community college. The course offerings were many and varied, quite affordable, and short enough to not require abig time commitment. Every term we poured over the printed lists of courses that appeared in our mailbox and selected something interesting to sign up for. We registered for our choices by filling out a form and sending a cheque in the mail! I took classes in pottery, ceramics, furniture upholstery, antiques appreciation, interior decorating, flower arranging, watercolour painting, tole painting, stained glass, weaving and more. My husband chose woodworking, ornamental welding, wine making, chair caning, and bartending. Sadly, most of those opportunities no longer exist. I guess YouTube has become the teacher of choice for learning new skills. Not having to go out at night is a perk, but there were good conversations and fun camaraderie that happened in those classrooms. I miss those opportunities to learn new things. 
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Jan Bushfield, P.H.Ec. – London, ON