Introduction to the workings of various political systems with an emphasis on governmental institutions and political processes. Comparison of political systems using some of the basic concepts of political analysis.
5
UnitsOptional
Grading1
PasstimeNone
Level LimitLetters and science
CollegeExtremely boring lecturer, one who is severely monotonous. Lectures were insanely boring. She has lots of field experience from Mexico but didn't use that knowledge to excite the class. Also, my TA was a very harsh grader and practically whispered in every section.
Pretty relaxed class, lectures weren't super crazy but her stories are interesting. The quizzes are super easy and the 2 essays weren't super hard. The rubrics for them are pretty clear and she always answers questions about them if you ask. I like her but I can see why some would call her boring. Nice class with little stress.
Just give a reasonable effort and you'll get a reasonable grade. Some of it was entertaining, most of it was not, but it was never putting anyone to sleep. All of the quizzes were online and the lowest one was dropped. The midterm was an online essay and the final was an in-class essay and wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be.
Lectures are a lot of information being thrown at you but she's not a bad professor. Grade consists of the final and two papers which have wordy prompts and no rubric - graded by your TA (Marc Anthony was #1 opp - excessively harsh grading, especially for an intro course). TA MATTERS!!!
Good teacher and the content isn't difficult, but she does move fairly quickly through a lot of info. There are two (out of class) essays in which the prompts are long, poorly worded, and lack a full rubric. Grading is largely reliant on your TA and how helpful they are in describing expectations.
She is a good lecturer and she posts all her slides. If you do the readings, which aren't always necessary since she basically covers the textbook in her lectures, they are very dense. There were two essays which didn't have any rubric and were graded harshly, but the final was basically the canvas quizzes and a prompt she had already given us.