POLS UN3631

American foreign policy. Very informative.

Ridiculous amounts of reading. No papers or other assignments.

Amount of readings is average for poli sci, 1 ID's midterm, 2 short simulation papers, 1 take home 2 essays final exam.

There are random pop quizzes on the readings which are literally one sentence questions about the reading which is doable if not easy. The problem is not the workload but the professor and how random his grading criteria is. it is perfectly reasonable for you to write a five paged paper, give your all and receive an F because he doesn't like how you structured something. His feedback is never to encourage but to mock and I find him to be a total waste of time and energy There are 2 papers which are 25% of your grade each. 6 top quizzes which are worth 15% section participation is worth another 15%

First off, he is intimidating. He seems to love nothing more than to scare the crap out of you with his ridiculously dense lectures and proclaiming the difficulty of his final. There is an ungodly amount of reading, which you will have to accept that you will never, ever complete. If you can get past these issues, then the class isn't half bad. For one thing, Parent is a very engaging lecturer, although he does have the tendency to use the word fuck quite unnecessarily and his sequences of ideas can be convoluted and hard to follow. You are also only graded on a midterm, final, and discussion section participation grade (which you get just by attending). While Parent claims that his standards increase exponentially between the midterm and the final, I somehow managed to go up an entire letter grade, so it can't be as cutthroat as he claims. Also, you don't have to do ALL the reading. I asked my TA to go over the core 20 or so, and just focused on those and did fine.

Now, those people who keep saying that Pr. Cronin's lectures are extremely boring, I would recommend to take Pr. Marten's class and see how you going to be overwhelmed by her overly enthusiastic/extremely dramatic lectures. It is true, there were no fireworks during his classes, but I did not fall asleep either. He is a really nice, funny, and easygoing person. The material was interesting, some of the readings were even extremely interesting, but, of course, if you are a conservative, you might not like them too much. The simulations were fun to do and the papers, including the final take home exam, not too hard to write. Now, I would not say this class is 'easy, easy, easy", but it's absolutely doable. The TA that I had was Seva and he was great - very knowledgeble and helpful. Overall, a good class, although I expected to get an A instead of A-, but, again, I didn't have any experience in poli sci before this semester so I am not complaining.

I am a graduating senior, currently taking this course to satisfy my IR requirements. This course is not for anyone who wants to learn, it is simply an outlet for the professor to be able to read a regurgitation of his opinions in someone else's handwriting. He prides himself on not giving out good grades and will flat out tell you to drop the course when you go to speak with him. His TA's are a little better, but they don't grade you. If and when they do, this professor will go back and RE-grade you (and rest assured that your grade will certainly drop). Despite having had many professors, witnessed many different styles,this man is by far the most unhelpful. I have never been this upset about a course since I've been here. And sure, i'm frustrated so do take my review with a grain of salt as maybe working in this kind of classroom environment will work well for you, but do note that In signing up for this course, I read many poor reviews for this professor under another rating platform. I didn't heed the warnings because I thought they were just cranky about one bad grade (I was wrong). He is every bit the crappy professor students said he was. His lectures are dry, he's rude, condescending, and finds failing people to be his calling in life. Save your time, energy, and effort on courses where the professor is here to help, encourage, and help foster a healthy learning envir…

Background of American foreign policy concepts and how they apply in the current age. A historical evolution of American foreign policy debates, issues, and frameworks.

A lot of reading. 200 pages a week and in between the entertaining stuff, some is really dry. It's like trying to chew through pieces of cardboard to find a nice jewel of historical fact that changes how you look at the world. In class midterm and final. That's right kids. That means if you didn't take notes throughout on all that long reading so that you can recite the thirty plus author's names and their major arguments to re-gurgitate on the in class essays... you will be caught. Read well. Take notes well. Consider this your warning. And, it's worth it.

Midterm, decision-making simulation (two 2-page papers... seriously easy), final.