In terms of complete and total domination of the field, I would have to go with Typing as my best. I can't remember if I had to take shop classes in high school or but that would probably be the worst, then. YOU GOT TO SAND IT. But I sanded it! BOY YOU DINT SAND AT NOW GO SAND IT.

(in high school or just middle school)

I believe I once spent half an academic year forming three pieces of wrought iron into a plant hanger.

I was good at English and Spanish and artsy things like chorus and drama and humanities, and bad at algebra and chemistry and government. Actually, I was bad at just about anything that didn't come naturally and required concentration and effort on my part. Teachers loved me, however, because I was so nice.

BEST: Hunting Prey.
WORST: Atomic Dispersal.

I lettered in Thought.

Best: Physics.
Worst: Biology.

In high school my best subject by far (and I was the top student for the final 3 years) was French. I was good at chemistry and math, but had the bad luck of being friends (and in the same classes as) a future PhD student of Stephen Hawking so I was never going to win the maths prize.

My worst subject, interestingly enough, would have been science in (the equivalent of) 8th and 9th grade. Later on I got a PhD in Anatomy and Cell Biology, so that didn't stick. I was very influenced by the teachers, so if I had a personality clash with the teachers I hated the subject.

I always hated physics.

Best: English and Jazz (Fun fun fun!)
Worst: Chemistry (I tried, I mean really tried, and still got a C.)

WORST: The only subject I ever flunked and had to re-take was algebra.

BEST: English.

Best: Math
Worst: History--because I didn't understand why these people--kings and such--were important. Who cares who was the king?

I didn't go to high school. I worked as a stocker in a toy warehouse to make enough moolah to piss off to college asap.

Best: Probably English. (Even though I sat for both AP exams, but of course, didn't do well enough on either of them to be anything more than an expensive waste of time.)

Worst: Anything involving math. I remember senior year I had the joys of being in Pre-Calc and Consumer Math. (Consumer Math being the math class for idiots, even though it did cover fun things like Soundex, and I thought it was vastly shit upon unnecessarily. I only got into it because I failed out of AP Stat. Why the fuck my parents thought it would be a good idea to put me in AP Stat when I squeaked by with Ds in Algebra I and II, I have no clue. I guess it was more of their 'GODDAMNIT WE WILL MAKE YOU TAKE MATH' bullshit that is still causing me problems, even now.)

Fuck me, I am a bitter asshole today. That's it, I'm kicking myself off the internet. I've got actual work and a meeting later today anyways.

Best: Most definitely English. I had a great freshman English teacher, a somewhat manic and bizarre individual who did terrific things like have us research a stage a mock trial, between Zeus and Hera, for divorce. We had to bring up onto the stand all the gods and mortals Zues and Hera had had affairs with and cross-examine them. A blast. He claimed to believe in the Ancient Greek gods as his religion; in retrospect, I don't believe him, but it added to his slightly crazy aura, which was effective. After freshman year I only took one more year of English class, and then I migrated into this arts program that had 3 periods of Creative Writing, which included the English curriculum. I wrote a lot in high school, submitted work to contests and publications, stuff like that. It's a little funny I didn't become a writer, but I still might. I wanted to try some other things. I did major in English in college, though, and have not regretted it.

I was also quite good in biology. I really loved studying the world of life - even dissections. I enjoyed the taxonomy, understanding systems and cycles and marvelling at how well everything went together. Also, drawing the artwork for lab reports was a lot of fun and a good excuse to play with colored pencils.

Worst: Unquestionably Algebra. We had to take a minimum of three years of math, and I had a really terrible freshman Algebra teacher. I was lost from about October on. I remember calculating "slope" at some point and saying to myself "I don't even know what 'slope' means." In retrospect, I should have asked for some additional help and taken this course more seriously. Even though the teacher was terrible, I still could have learned it. But I'm afraid I had a 'who cares about math' attitude not at all uncommon amongst English majors. I passed freshman Algebra with a 67 and Algebra II with a 65, real squeakers both. Conversely, I got in the high 90s for Geometry, which I loved. I wish they had offered Advanced Geometry.

I was great at English and Social Studies. Terrible at Math and Science. But here's the thing--I'm not terrible at math and science AT ALL. And I find both subjects way more interesting than I ever thought possible. I just had really, really severely crappy teachers in those subjects. Like Miko, I got lost somewhere and never really got back on track in those subjects. And I did ask for help, but the conversation always went like this:
Me: I don't understand.
Teacher: What don't you understand?
Me: Any of it. I just am not following what I'm supposed to be doing.
Teacher: Well I can't help you if you can't tell me what you need help with.
Me: Well if I could pinpoint where I got lost, I wouldn't be lost.

And on and on it went. I often wonder if I would have chosen a different path had I found a teacher who had been a little more encouraging or even enthusiastic. (I'm kind of bitter about it, actually. If we accept that a good teacher can have a positive impact on the lives of their students, we also have to address the damage done by bad teachers--but no one ever seems to want to talk about that.)

Best: English or art. Because I was reasonably adept at both (and because I moved from school to school), I never got enough instruction in either; instructors saw that I was doing well and left me alone or skipped me ahead. I could have benefited from some rigorous teaching and some discipline, rather than being told I was doing well enough on my own.

In defense of my many teachers, I suspect they were having enough trouble triaging the struggling students without paying attention to the bored but proficient students. If they had had adequate time and resources, I think my adult academic career would have been very different.

Worst: I had a similar problem in chemistry, jrossi4r: I just got off track --- I muddled along, but I missed the point so badly that, when I left boarding school for public school, I chose to repeat chem. I was certain that there was something there I could grasp and enjoy, if only I could find a way in. Happily, that year, I had a marvelous teacher who gave me tutorials and extra reading, and who had a great ability to adapt his language and thinking to connect with a student's intellectual and cultural vocabulary. With his help, I pulled my grade up from a possible F to an A.

Thank you, Mr. Stephanopolis! He retired that year, and I counted my blessings that I got to meet him.

Best, English and music. Also did really well in French, which is weird because I went to France during high school and couldn't understand a single thing.

Worst, science and anything where they made you memorize a million things (names of plants, dates, etc.) Luckily, the history teachers (am a total buff) were more into the "concepts" thing and not dates, and I got away with a lot because I was one of the best writing students.

Best: Biology
Worst: Physics.

I am now quite good at (some advanced topics in) physics.

Best: Spanish and English. I ended up pursuing Spanish in college and beyond, but my classes in high school were extraordinarily boring.

Worst: Math and Chemistry. Likely the latter was worse than the former, but in college my Calculus professor's teaching style conflicted majorly with my learning style. I got a horrible grade on the first exam after attending class religiously. Once I stopped going to class and started teaching myself from the book (getting assignments from classmates), I ended the class up with an A-.

There really wasn't much of a distinction for me, as my enthusiasm came and went. I skipped a year of Spanish, but the next year I skipped 15 days in a row (of just that class -- couldn't tell you why) and got a D. I was actually good at a lot of things, or could have been with minimal effort, but high school was pretty eh.

Best: Biology & Art
Worst: PE & Math, particularly Algebra

I'm not sure if playing volleyball was like the common sport to do in 3-6th grade in the mid-70s but at my elementary school, it was the only team sport that was played during PE. I absolutely hate volleyball. I sucked at it: couldn't hit the ball without causing excruciating pain to my hands, had zero ability to anticipate the ball's trajectory and hated the resulting mockery from my teammates when I missed every time. To this day I can't watch others play volleyball (a very common sight on California beaches) without wincing.

It's been interesting observing my son struggle through elementary school: he so very strong in Language Arts (what schools call "English" nowadays) and just flailing in math. I have great sympathy and patience for him as my parents used to really come down hard on me for my poor math performance (much shouting and recrimination; they attributed my Cs in math to laziness because I brought home As in every other subject). I love helping him with his homework because I finally *get* Algebra so in my son's darkest moments of self-induced math despair, I tell him the important thing is to just keep trying to wrap his head around it because his Mom didn't get it until she was in her 30s and his Dad still doesn't get it.

Best: Art, History, French, Biology
Worst: Math (fuck you, cosines. I still don't get you), Physics, Chemistry

Best: Computers and Math

Worst: Typing. My only high school C. Fortunately the regular typing teacher was out that year so we had a sub who didn't really give a shit. I'd have gotten an F otherwise.

so, this reminds me to ask: Is there such a thing as typing classes these days? Do they still have that in school? And if so, do they use actual typewriters or do the schools have laptops/notebooks, or what? Is typing wrapped into a computer skills kind of class? That makes a lot more sense, doesn't it?

/little old lady

I was bad at math; I was good at most things. I was very, very good at anything that had to do with writing or reading. I would have weird report cards like: A, A, A, A, D, A.

Best: English, History, Art, Choir
Worst: Math and P.E.

The last required science class was in Junior High and that's the last one I took even though I liked most of it. I just couldn't cut open dead animals.

Managed to scrape through Algebra, but that was the last math class required and the last one I took. Math and I don't get along.

Is there such a thing as typing classes these days

Yes, it was called "word processing" for quite a while, not sure if that's what they call it now.

It's generally called keyboarding now and can start in elementary school; maybe with some block of time devoted to it specifically or maybe integrated with other things. I think people are still really trying to figure out how to handle it. The kind of vocational typing course I took in high school is either extinct or so near as makes no difference.

Because kids these days don't have the attention span to finish a 5-minute drill.

Best: Biology
Worst: Physics.

I am now quite good at (some advanced topics in) physics.

Proving we're opposites (or complements), I dropped my physics major in college and finished up with a degree in Psychology (which required quite a bit of neurobio. No, I'm not a shrink, that's psychiatry but yes, you're very clever).

Excellent points about bad teaching, jrossi. I too look back now and go "WTF? I'm a reasonably intelligent person, obviously I should be able to understand this material if it were presented with some ability." It's frustrating that there didn't seem to be a way in.

We've been watching "Freaks & Geeks" on DVD, and it has me revisiting my youth in a series of harsh memories. I now remember that, as the daughter of a much beloved teacher, I always felt a dim sense of pity for really bad teachers. (And fury and resentment, yes, but pity too.)

Good teachers, and even half-assed teachers with a sense of enthusiasm, might do some good and have decent lives.

Bad teachers, teachers who obviously dislike their work, and teachers who despise the wide and varied student body are obviously misplaced and miserable, slumping their hopeless way through the days. They're so deeply unhappy, and causing exponentially more unhappiness in their students.

Best: Electronics
Worst: Chemistry... I managed to pull through the first year enough to take a second year that I totally bombed. Though in those two years, I picked up enough to get a respectable grade in college.

Best: Math and the sciences (except biology)
Worst: Civics

Best: English
Worst: Art, Needlework and PE.

*shuffles feet*

I was pretty much a straight A student especially in Latin and German (I went to a specialist language school). For my final exams though I ruined my score with a damn B in English.

Best was English (which I majored in in college), but I was pretty much straight As as well, with an occasional B+ in History.

Except for Calculus. I liked math up until that point (there's something very comforting to me about fairly basic algebra), but Calculus was the first class I ever took where I was just absolutely lost. I think I managed to pull out a B, but I never took another math class again, because the class had just been so painful that I figured I had reached the limit of my math ability.

I did great in all the humanities-type courses (English, Lit, History, Spanish, Music, plus I was a Glee Club and Drama queen, etc...)

I abjectly failed Algebra I, twice, and never officially took another "hard" math course. That particular teacher was one of those old-skool math teachers who was convinced that blathering through the same incomprehensibly boring drills and steps twenty-seven times was sufficient.

I breezed thru Chemistry (including Intro to O-Chem!) and the advanced maths stuff and entry-level Physics that came with, along with computer programming and related items, on the advice of my amazing teacher who taught all of those courses and told the high school principal to basically scrap the course prerequisites on my behalf because she was convinced I'd "get it" via osmosis (the required math, that is. I did).

I flunked Typing spectacularly, and was bored out of my mind by all the abysmally dry law-related stuff in Government classes, so I barely squeaked through, which on review is pretty ironic considering what I do all day these days.

Best: Math, Computer Science.

Worst: Absolutely every single other class. I think that I had a 1.5 average after tenth grade. By graduation I had pulled it up to about 2.5. I was the worst student: never studied, never took notes, didn't even carry a notebook, never did any projects or wrote any papers, sometimes I just wrote random words on test sheets instead of answering questions. Mostly I just sat in the back and read sci-fi novels and ignored the teacher. I'm sure that I drove the poor teachers and administrators to drink.

My punishment 25 years later was that my son was exactly the same in high school.

ugh, I phrased this badly. I should have said "favorite" and "least favorite"

For me, anything to do with maps just rocked my world.

Yet, I hate earth sciences HATE HATE HATE

Best: Spanish
Worst: Math. Solving for x never clicked with me.

Before I started jr. high I thought I would love my English teachers, but I didn't get along with most of them.

Best: languages and maths. The former always came easily, and I had to work really hard at the latter, so my A at A-level is one of my proudest achievements.

Worst: PE and, while I was OK at sciences, I really regret giving them up aged 16. This is regrettably possible in the UK, where people are made to specialise quite early, only continuing 3 or 4 subjects to age 18. One of these days I'd like to get more science qualifications at night school.

Best: Russian
Worst: Everything else, but especially math.

I hated school and pretty much majored in "smoking behind the gym" :D

But I loved studying Russian- though all I can remember how to say now are useful phrases (a la Eddie Izzard) such as: "I have an extra pencil", "It's the Leningrad postman!", and my personal favorite, "I love hedgehogs".

I should have said "favorite" and "least favorite"

In that case? Maybe drama for the favorite. P.E. for least favorite - a sadly missed opportunity, as I didn't realize how much I enjoyed sports yet. I felt too clumsy and arty for sports. Now I love the joy of moving my body around.

Well, then. Biology was by far my favourite. I read my textbook for fun. I can still remember getting excited learning about protein synthesis.

I hated math, even though I was pretty good at it.