MDST 2000

Took this class as a first-year thinking about majoring in Media Studies, and now I am, although I have to say I can't give the class itself the credit for that. What made this class for me was my discussion section- Stacie was my TA, and she was super sweet, helped us understand lectures better, and a relatively easy grader (although I believe she's left the department since). She always brought up very thought-provoking questions, and was good at keeping the discussion on track (she was super helpful with the readings too!). The paper topics were relatively short and interesting, but what's most time-consuming in this class are the readings and weekly reading quizzes. Make sure to do the readings- the papers require references to them, and overall they're usually a good read. Also, the quiz questions are taken almost exclusively from the readings. So, if you're interested in Media Studies as a major or even just an area of interest, I'd recommend the class since it's a relatively easy A and pretty interesting; just make sure to actually do the work!!

If you have the ability to take this class with a different professor- do it. Some people say the course isn't that bad. And it isn't life ruining. But Rubin is dry, unprepared, focuses on his specialty in music though music hardly has an stake in the course, and he can be petty. The paper assignments were pretty interesting and not that difficult or time consuming and the midterm was fair. The final was fair until the essay questions, which he made extremely broad assumedly to let everyone showcase their knowledge but it was very poorly constructed and a poor way to test everyone's ability and understanding of the course. The quizzes through collaboration are worth 20%, which is ridiculous because each quiz was 10 questions and 100 points. My TA- Gaelyn,- was very helpful and really tried to help us make sense of the unstructured nonsense Rubin threw out there. This class is unavoidable if you want to be a MDST major and for some other things so you just have to take it and you'll survive but it isn't fun

I got an A- in this class. Professor Rubin is not as bad as what others have said. Came in expecting a boring class, but instead, Rubin was funny, thoughtful and laid back. He's into music and gives a lot of music examples that really helped me understand the course material. Others in the class disagreed with this point though. His power points aren't very specific however lecture is entertaining, enjoy these. Your discussion section will highlight what's important to know for the class. Do the readings, I actually enjoyed the textbook, I thought it was pretty straight-forward and well organized. There are two essays, the first one, the day with out cell phones paper, had a rubric basically designed by the looney tunes. It's more of a creative writing paper than an academic one as you're grade is largely determined on how deep your observations are rather than how well you tie in course material. At least my grade was. The second paper, the comparative music video analysis was much more straightforward and Rubin provided many questions about the material to answers from. If you complete the study guides for the mid-term and final then they will be a breeze so long as you just re-call everything you remember about the material. Quizzes are more difficult than they have to be but do the readings and you won't fail them. The questions get specific and sometimes two answers will look correct with one that is more correct than the other.