MDST 2000

I only attended the first two lectures, and I ended up with an A on the class. She's extremely boring and monotone and she pretty much just reads from the slides. Don't go. Just read the slides and study them every week. That's what I did and that's literally all you need for the midterm and the final. You might miss two or three questions but everything pretty much comes to get an A- without the curve, and an A with it. I'm not even kidding. My friend study the triple amount I did, reviewed all her notes from the lectures, from the readings, and she ended up with the same grades on the exams. Make sure to attend your TA discussions, they make a difference. Participate participate participate. Take the Friday TA discussion so you can use the lectures if you forgot to do the readings. They are all connected. The quizzes are due 5 pm every monday, don't forget, I almost got a zero on the first one because I thought it was due midnight. The quizzes are important, take them seriously. They are very nitpicky. They are easier ones and from time to time there will be one that's a lot harder. You don't have to but take notes in the discussions, sometimes they offer a better of way of thinking about the material, than just the slides. If you don't attend to lectures, don't be dumb and actually read the slides, don't leave them to the night before the test. It will be your personal torture and you will think you missed out on stuff and freak out. This class is designed for first years, so they want to make it doable. Just put some effort and you will be fine. Also if you like these topics, the material should be very basic and simple to remember. It's extremely straight forward. Just make sure to remember names (usually in the exams all the names come from the power points). Even names from random quotes that have nothing to do with the readings. Aside from that, get a study group if you like that kind of think. You got two essays. They can be as fun or as boring as you make them. As long as you have concepts from the material you're learning, you have pretty much free rein on how to write it (just follow the guidelines, those are very important to get a decent grade). I had so much fun writing the final essay and it took me like three hours because it was about a tv show I loved and seen like ten million times so I knew everything about it. Choose a piece of media you could rant about for hours. How much interest you have in the material (not the lectures) and the essays could probably tell you if you would like to pursue the Media studies major. if you're just doing it to get it over with, might not be for you, but if you like the small things or cool facts about it, or you really get into your essays, it might. Something to think about.

This class is really easy, but incredibly boring. I was hoping it would have more information about different types of media, but it’s more similar to a class about the history of media. Going to lecture is optional and also pointless because the professor just reads off her slides the whole time. By the halfway point, the class went from having 200 people to about 50 during lecture. The class itself has little homework, just a weekly reading quiz due on Monday nights and 2 papers due throughout the semester. She gives about 70 pages of reading per week and gives you from Thursday to Monday to do it, so make sure you leave time to read. Your TA really makes the class; I had Tanner and liked him a lot. Generally the TAs are easy graders and are super passionate about media studies which helps make the class more interesting. If you’re willing to put in a little work, the class is an easy A.

Professor Rao's lectures are fairly entertaining. She tries to make the class content approachable, and she often roots media studies concepts in real-life examples so that it's easier for students to remember and conceptualize.
My one complaint would be that she doesn't seem particularly knowledgeable about the mediatization of politics, which is a very nuanced topic and deserves to be treated as such. Everything else was okay.
Professor Rao is approachable and kind, also open to questions after class if anyone has them. She is good about holding office hours and generally accessible via email.

- The class had two papers. The first is about your personal experience about going a day without screens (worth 10% of final grade) and the second is an ideological analysis of a media text of your choice (worth 20% of final grade).
- There are weekly reading quizzes, with occasionally difficult questions. These are closed book, though administered at home, via Collab. The combined reading quiz score is worth 20% of your final grade.
- There is a midterm exam that had 20 multiple choice and two short essays, worth 20% of final grade. The questions were very nit-picky, although she listened to student complaints about this, and she curved the exam 5 points.
- The final exam had 30 multiple choice, four short essays, and one long essay (800-1,000 words) written in a Blue Book, worth 20% of final grade.
- the remaining 20% of your grade is discussion section attendance and participation (an easy A, usually)

My biggest complaint is that my TA rarely responded to emails. He also did not attend classes himself, so it was insanely difficult to contact him. He gave me a 94 on my first paper, with the only comment being that I explained some concepts in "too much detail." I've heard similar complaints from friends who had the different TAs, so I'd say don't expect much help from them.

Professor Rao teaches a lot of very specific information, and she quizzes and tests students on very specific details that do not seem important in the grand scheme of the class. The multiple choice questions are extremely nit-picky and seem pretty useless in terms of learning. Some questions have answers that are more a matter of opinion than fact. She likes to ask questions what quotes were said by what scholar, even though the scholars themselves are hardly mentioned. She will not respond to emails, so if you want to talk to her, you will have to do so in person. There is a lot of material in the textbook chapters and there are a lot of supplementary readings as well, all of which have very specific details that could be on a quiz.