RELB 2165

Probably one of the most useless classes I have ever taken at UVA. Lectures were horribly disorganized- there are two professors who focus on different things each day and it never made any sense. There are no tests, which is a plus, but that creates an apathy to not do the readings, which are needed for later assignments. You get to meditate in discussions which is pretty cool and interesting, but can sometimes be really weird. I had Eva as a TA and she was GREAT in discussions. Still, even though this is considered an easy class, I would not recommend it to my worst enemy because of how boring and disorganized. Do yourself a favor and spend your tuition money on something where you will actually learn. Even if you are interested in Buddhism, you probably won't get much out of this class.

Never take this class. Its the worst class I've ever taken.

Worst class I've taken at UVA. Premise sounds interesting, and admittedly the discussion sections where you just meditate are fairly interesting/useful. But you're better off just finding some videos on YouTube if all you want to do is mediate. Germano is the worst professor I've had in my four years at UVA; he'll walk around the classroom screaming incoherently at times, and his lectures are very stream-of-consciousness and impossible to follow. The five writing assignments are strange, confusing, and arbitrary. They attempt to use technology, but neither Germano nor Schaffer knows how to use it effectively (or at all, honestly), and it just becomes a waste. Germano often goes off on rants about subjects like academia and dodgeball; both of which he hates for reasons unknown to everyone else. Most of my gripes with this class are with him, honestly; Schaffer seemed like a decent guy, even thought his lectures too were fairly disjointed.

In short, don't take this class. It's obnoxious, boring, and the professor is awful.

This class was not hard but it was terrible. The lectures were disorganized and I basically showed up to nau hall to sleep every tuesday and thursday. Germano makes no sense and just stands up there and talks...and talks...and sometimes yells. Schaffer was a little bit better but his lectures were still impossible to follow. The writing assignments also made little sense and were not organized at all - it was impossible to pinpoint how exactly to do well on a paper. Also, it was said that attendance and journals were going to be 10 and 15% of the final grade. At the end, like a week after exam week, we were told that the max grade on those two categories were a 95/100. So basically even though I attended every lecture and wrote every journal on time, I still got penalized and got points taken off? That really bothered me - I felt blindsided.

The only thing I enjoyed were the meditation labs - nice hour to relax and try some meditation and yoga. Katarina was nice enough as a TA.

Just don't take this class.

I took this course during J-term, so my experience may have been different from the other reviews here. Note: my work/week numbers are really work/day because each day corresponded to one week. Personally, Germano was not as bad as the other reviews described, although his lecturing was confusing. His textbook chapters were somewhat esoteric but not indecipherable. A lot of the content was pretty interesting, but not extremely useful. It was great to have real Tibetan Buddhists come talk to the whole class. Overall a pretty easy class (especially if not over J-term).