There’s a wide variety of college classes that make students enthusiastic about the material and excited to enhance their education. Yet for every engaging or fun course, there seems to be on that’s almost universally dreaded. The common thread among the classes on this list is that they’re disliked by those students who aren’t in their target group, and there’s some truth to that; accounting majors are probably going to dread math classes far less than would, say, an English major. Some of the other entries are also more about types of classes than specific courses. Still, the classes below are among the most dreaded, since they’re on every campus and almost impossible to avoid. If you’re staring down a long semester with one of these courses, all I can say is: good luck.

1. Speech: It’s an oft-quoted statistic that people’s biggest fear isn’t death but public speaking, and you don’t have to look far to find people willing to confirm it. Yet public speaking is a necessary evil in life, which is why almost every university requires its students to take a speech course. The reasoning goes that, since these students will one day be professionals tasked with guiding colleagues and giving presentations, it’d be good if they knew how to stand in front of a group and talk for three minutes without passing out or soiling themselves. As a result, every speech course is an exercise in practiced torment for its students. No one wants to take the class and deal with the awkwardness of making trivial speeches — or worse, listening to people with no speaking skills at all — so the class becomes one of the most dreaded on campus.
2. Any foreign language you’re not majoring in: Majoring in a foreign language can lead to a variety of careers in education and government. But for many students, foreign language courses are the absolute killers, the ones you just want to pass and forget. The goal of a required language course is ostensibly to create a more rounded graduate, but a majority of students often don’t work in jobs that randomly require bilingual skills. The challenging courses become causes for resentment, and their hurdles feel like pointless exercises to students who aren’t specializing in them.
3. Accounting: Even accounting majors can come to dread the complex ins and outs of the numbers and practices of an accounting class, and that goes double for non-majors just looking to fill out a business credit requirement or take an elective to help them become better financial planners. Accounting courses deal with everyhing from calculating taxes owed to learning how to balance a business’s books, which are useful but often difficult areas of study for most students. Math is also a dry, unforgiving subject, which doesn’t exactly help its popularity.
4. Physics: Speaking of math: there’s not much to be done to make a physics class easier or more entertaining. Even with the best and brightest professor, the course is still a difficult muddle for some students, especially when they realize that many of the finer skills in physics won’t be directly applicable to their life. (Unless they ever get a hankering to start solving distance and velocity problems in their spare time.) Again, science majors are probably more receptive when it comes to physics lessons, but for most students, the course is one to dread.
5. Astronomy: Astronomy lures in hundreds of students every semester (I was one) looking for an interesting and new way to fulfill science credit requirements, but in the hands of the wrong professor, the course can turn into something as dry and complicated as a physics class. The course winds up dreaded not for what it is, but for what it’s not: it’s a lot heavier on physics and math than some students believe, and requires more than just a passing familiarity with the material and the sky-watching labs.
6. Anything early: College is the first time students have control over their academic schedule, and that freedom after 13 years of rigid schedules usually means sleeping in as much as possible. But invariably, students find that a course they need to take to meet a degree requirement is only offered in one time slot, and it just happens to be at 8 in the morning (or earlier). There’s no getting out of the class, but there’s also no getting around the fact that it’s going to wreak havoc on your sleep schedule for a semester. Every day it meets will be greeted with dread and probably a few choice words at the expense of whatever professor scheduled the class so early.
7. Anything that interrupts a mealtime: Next to sleeping, college students most cherish their time spent eating and relaxing with friends. It’s not uncommon for cafeteria meals to span hours, or for students to subsist solely on food squirreled away in their dorm. Yet every year, students inevitably find themselves in a class that meets at an unusual time like 5-9 p.m. on Tuesdays, which means any chance of having a normal dinner or chance to unwind are shot for the night. These classes tend to involve labs or longer projects, but they’re also dreaded for the sheer inconvenience of eating up a huge portion of the day.
8. Anything with a lab: Every academic discipline features classes with labs that require students to come back at a later time in the week to conduct experiments, work on projects, and collaborate with classmates. These classes are dreaded for a variety of reasons. For starters, there’s the time commitment: instead of just three hours a week, students are also expected to spend three or four in a lab, often at night. Lab classes also tend to be higher-level ones, and quite a few are closely tied to major requirements, so they’re among the most challenging and punishing that students will take. There’s also the dread brought on by knowing that these classes are unavoidable. You’ll get through them, but they might not be a picnic.
9. Basic Composition: One of the reasons college students dread the intro-level composition and rhetoric course is because it’s repetitive: this is the same stuff that’s drilled into students’ heads every year by different English teachers. Grammar, spelling, how to write a paper; all useful tools, but the subjects are stale by the time students get to college. Those who aren’t comfortable with the subject dread the class because it’s one more trip through difficult terrain; those who are comfortable with the class will dread it because it’s boring and redundant. Everyone has to take the class, and no one wants to.
10. History: There are some teachers who can make history come alive, but there are just as many who turn the course into a dull recitation of dates and facts that feel disconnected from modern life. Like some other courses on this list, history is often a requirement for degree completion, but that doesn’t mean students find themselves revved up at the thought of explaining how the rise of capitalism shaped the growth of the Colonies. For some students, the dry reconstruction of ancient eras is a chore, and though history courses are vital for understanding modern politics and world affairs, that doesn’t make them any easier to take if you’re just trying to earn a degree. Your best bet is to just grin and bear it.