Top Ten Most Labour-Intensive School Subjects

These subjects are not necessarily the hardest to learn conceptually. Nor are they necessarily boring or unsatisfying. But dear God, they require a lot of brute force to internalize.
The Top Ten
Chemistry

All of those unnecessarily long names for organic molecules. All of those intricate equations where dimensional analysis no longer applies. All of those hours wasted trying to memorise them, without much to learn from them. You're quite right, the equations and definitions in physics and mathematics are a lot more logically structured.

I always thought chemistry was more science-oriented, not something heavy on mathematical equations. It certainly gives me Vietnam flashbacks to the days of solving those accursed stoichiometry problems...

History

One can only read so many seemingly endless strings of dates, names, and socioeconomic ramifications without going bug-eyed.

It's even worse when you try to understand the chapters but realise that people in the past were idiots

All those dates and names to waste time memorizing.

Biology

Who really cares whether sea sponges belong in phylum Mollusca, Porifera, or Cnidaria?

French

Melons are masculine and bananas are feminine. Got it.

English

Even if you internalize rules of grammar through reading, you'll have to learn to differentiate between symbols, themes, topics, motifs, and allusions, all of which are shaded generously with grey. Then you'll have to pontificate on the significance of some minor occurrence for at least a thousand words.

Computer Science

Even students and professors who specialise in computational research spend their lives tearing their hair out over these tiny bugs, which are usually just because they used the wrong brackets on line 4683.

Not so much on the conceptual side of things as on the nitty-gritty syntax of programming languages and the seemingly inexplicable errors which arise and require hours of cursing at a monitor to debug.

Latin

Not that hard if you know a romance language.

Accounting

Remind me again of how to amortize intangible assets.

Law

I watched enough episodes of How To Get Away With Murder, thank you very much

I have enough trouble understanding an episode of Perry Mason.

Philosophy

In the words of Richard Feynman:

"We cannot define anything precisely. If we attempt to, we get into that paralysis of thought that comes to philosophers, who sit opposite each other, one saying to the other, 'You don't know what you are talking about! '. The second one says, 'What do you mean by know? What do you mean by talking? What do you mean by you? '"

The Newcomers

? Woodworking
? Meteorology
The Contenders
PE
German

I beg to differ. German is a very logically structured language, certainly more so than French or English, and it's easy to construct a clause from the basic words. What's more, you see a word written down, and you immediately know how to pronounce it.

Italian

At least it's slightly more easier than latin

Mathematics
Welsh
Chinese
Science
Sign Language
Geography
Statistics
Spanish
Professional Communications
BAdd New Item