I'm not sure why the reviews are so harsh, she's a very kind and knowledgeable instructor. She's not a very harsh grader, and the course material is interesting if you actually pay attention in lecture. She really loves the topics she teaches, and earning a good grade is super doable.

Second time taking her. She knows what she's talking about and has a clear rubric. Makes it easy to get an A.Section is a big chunk of your grade, and 5 commentaries that are graded for completion help balance out your grade against the paper and midterm/final...I don't understand why the ratings are so low! She always comes to class with a smile

Prof Freeman gets a bad rap for being a bit disorganized at times, but she is super passionate about her work in Japanese politics and the topic at hand. I highly recommend taking this class here. I heard her lower division classes weren't so great, but I loved her Japanese politics class. It wasn't hard or that time consuming.

She is not mean or anything like that. She's just not very good at teaching. Her lectures are unorganized and all over the place. She had us turn in two "mandatory-not graded" commentary which expressed how we felt about the class. She sort of copies concepts from the documentaries she shows. Attendance to section are mandatory but not to class.

Professor's very knowledgeable and knows what she's talking about. The lecture slides are hard to follow, so I mostly listened to her talking (which was helpful). She's super fair in her grading. I remembered the average for the paper was 27 out of 30 points. She let me turned in an assignment late and didn't mark off points. Class was interesting

She is well informed on the material but the lectures are hard to follow. She gets easily distracted and off topic. It is also unclear what is expected to be studied.