GSGS 2000

Prof Farmer is nice and approachable. Her slides are pretty unhelpful though. They're often just pictures and don't explicitly state and outline information necessary. She records her lectures though so it's not too bad if you wanna review information after or if you miss class. Lectures were very boring and kind of all over the place. I felt like she didn't explain topics very well and would use words people didn't know and brush over topics without giving us a good understanding. She has poll everywheres for attendance so just do those from home if you miss class.

That being said, exams were pretty fair, just sometimes hard to prepare for since you didn't really know what exactly to study. True or false questions, a couple short answer/free response questions, and I believe 2 essays. I felt like there were a lot of topics covered in each exam so I struggled making an effective index card that had all the information needed. It was inevitable to not be able to fit everything covered. She doesn't provide any practice exam questions so I never knew what to expect. For one exam (I think it was the final), she did have some sort of study guide where she put a bunch of terms to know on a spreadsheet and we filled it out collaboratively as a class. I believe she curves/gives grade bumps sometimes though.

I wasn't a fan of the structure of the class in terms of outside work. Nothing too hard, just tedious, time consuming, and annoying. She split us into two groups, one group does annotations for the one of the weekly readings/video/material and the others reply to the annotations and we switch. Readings were extensive and sometimes difficult to read and comprehend fully. Not really necessary to read in depth about in my opinion, would focus more on whatever she ends up talking about in lecture and going back to the reading if you want more information.

I took this as a pre-req for Global Public Health. Warning to the pre-health GPH people-- there is barely any actual public health stuff in this course and you probably will not enjoy it very much if you aren't interested in global studies. But most of GPH stuff isn't actually science-related and focused more on systems/policies anyway. Pre-health people who want an easier major than bio, I would look into Human Bio. It's much more focused on the body and medical-related topics with social/public health aspects, and I think it would be a much more helpful major for pre-health people or people interested in research over GPH, since the basis of GPH is Global Studies.

Not too bad of a class, definitely not a favorite though.

Professor Farmer has a very confusing way of explaining things, it feels like she speaks just to seem smart and not to genuinely teach course concepts. A lot of terms taught cannot be found online and are contradictory of each other which is pretty rough if you happen to miss a class. The quizzes aren't very hard and the readings aren't really essential, it's just a hard class to sit through.

Look. If you are a humanities or global studies person. Take this course. If you're a math/science guy like me... I'd be careful. Prof Farmer uploads slides to Canvas, but they are not content-filled, and most of the content you will be tested on, she says in lecture, verbally. She does not record lectures; she allows you 3 missed absence days. Don't try to email saying you are sick; she doesn't care unless it is "documented". When she speaks, it is fast, and it is hard to understand. She uses big, hard words, like PhD-level words. You have to be very attentive in class. You can not procrastinate. 3 quizzes (exams really), and 1 cumulative final. The quizzes are around 20 mc, 2 t/f, and 2-4 short-answer questions. I find the quizzes to be rushed and, honestly, pretty difficult. She is not the grader, but the TA's are. The TA's tryhard, and are ruthless when it comes to grading short answers. The final was 4 essay prompts in which you could choose 2 to reply to, each response being 500-750 words, in 1 hour 15. For the final, she gave a list of all the concepts we should know, it was around 50 concepts. Each prompt mentioned 2 concepts....so that was a little annoying. If you attend lecture, take active notes, and review your notes every week, you will get a good grade. If you are like me, a procrastinator who doesn't like to write, read, or study. Be wary. I took notes, studied for around 10 hours before each exam, and earned around a B-, hopefully (grades haven't been released). Prof Farmer makes herself available and isn't necessarily a bad instructor, but it's just hard to follow her and the concepts. Unless you want to major in some type of global studies, I do not recommend this course (and i wanted to study GPH...not anymore).

Awful class, tessa made the content hard to follow and it was difficult to do well in her class if you weren't attentively listening to her monotone voice for an hour and 15 minutes. The graders are extremely harsh and will penalize you if you forget even a word in the long definitions you are given to memorize. This course is the reason why I am not applying to GPH anymore.