[tedkalaw]

One of the top three classes I took at my university (next to "Algorithms" and "Data Structures") was "Introduction to Drawing." It's changed the way I look at aesthetic beauty. I would have had a hard time motivating myself to have that experience otherwise.

[cyang08]

I couldn't agree more. Steve Jobs is an interesting example in this case - although he dropped out, he credited a random calligraphy class as the inspiration for some of the Mac's beautiful typography:

"Because I had dropped out and didn’t have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and sans-serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture, and I found it fascinating.

"None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But 10 years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography."

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/06/steve-jobs-designer...

[enraged_camel]

My sister is currently in college. The other day she was complaining about having to take classes outside her major to graduate. I made her watch the video of that speech and her opinion changed completely.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UF8uR6Z6KLc

[Retric]

I generally thought I was fairly well rounded before collage, but oddly enough it was fairly technical classes just outside of my specialty that I found most enlightening.

'History of Math' (Algebra was not developed until the dark ages? etc) 'foundations of geometry' (starts with logic and builds to counting and Euclidean geometry) 'Information Security' (Mostly a people problem.)

Where the purely technical classes like C++ and Databases where fairly useless by themselves.

[prawks]

Ditto. My favorite class during my CS undergraduate aside from databases or probably autonoma was Sustainable Agriculture. I've purchased Michael Pollan's books for multiple people as a result, it's a very interesting field if you cut through the fanaticism of "being green" and made me reconsider what it is to be a "healthy" eater.

[cdcarter]

I ended up taking an ethics class to fulfill a deck requirement, and I loved it so much I declared a minor, five classes later. It's pretty hard to begin philosophy study outside a formal setting, so it would have been near impossible for me to realize this passion without the weirdness of college liberal arts requirements.