LAST 4050

While this class is a requirement for Latin American Studies majors, I suggest that you DO NOT take this class if you are not in the major. The idea of having a new professor every week sounds fun and interesting, but for the most part, this is just a glorified history class. While there are so many interesting things going on in Latin America today, not a single professor talked about something that has happened in the last decade. I found myself looking at the clock the whole time for almost every (2.5 hour) lecture.
Furthermore, the administration of this course was terrible. The only grades for the class are two participation grades and five 1250-word essays. The first essay I turned in, I did not get back for over a month. I know several students, including myself, sent anonymous feedback on collab about this and some other issues we had with the course, and they were never addressed. The grading is fairly harsh, even for participation. While the bulk of the grade for this course is in the essays, none of the classes were structured well to write an essay about. In fact, most of the time it was just a professor rambling for two and a half hours.
I took this class on my own accord to familiarize myself with an area of the world I am working in and plan to work in later in life, but I walked away from it without much more knowledge than I came in with and with a grade that was lower than I feel I deserved.