RELB 2100

Class is easy but Braun isn't the best professor to take it with.

I actually ended up liking this class a lot more than I thought I would. Erik Braun is very approachable and really cares about his students. He loves buddhism, but sometimes the lectures were a little dry. The readings are kind of long, but towards the middle of the semester I stopped reading them. Braun goes over a lot of the readings in class. There were 3 papers throughout the semester that were 3 pages long. Each of those I only started a day or two out from the due date and did fine. The final paper was based on a book we had to read but it was graded pretty leniently. We got a study guide/vocab sheet for both the midterm and the final, which told you exactly what to study. This is a good class to fulfill the religious studies and midwestern perspectives requirements for the college. I would def recommend this class!

For an intro level course, Braun assigns a decent amount of reading a week (when I did it, I usually ended up spending 2-3 hours reading extremely dry Buddhist religious works). Lectures (fairly dull) were just a condensed version of the reading so it wasn't really necessary to do all of it. Your grade basically comes down to a midterm and final (which are easy if you put in the work) and four papers (one of which is 8 pages, the other are three each). My TA, Sam, was awesome and fair with grading - if you're a good writer and actually understand the material you'll go far. The bottom line is that this class is an easy A as long as you put in the work, but if you're not at all interested in Buddhism (I wasn't really) you're not going to have a good time.

This class was the worst and I regret taking it. Lectures are pointless because they don't matter for the papers, but there is an attendance sheet so you have to go. There are three 3-page papers and an 8-page paper which was due the day before the final. The TA's grade the papers very harshly for an intro level Buddhism class. The final and midterm were easy because you just had to memorize Sanskrit/Pali. Don't recommend class with Erik

Took this class at the recommendation of some friends but it wasn't nearly as interesting as I was hoping. The lecture material is pretty boring but it isn't that difficult to understand. The readings are often long and hard to grasp in context to what we learned in lecture. The papers are pretty easy and the midterm isn't bad. Overall it isn't a particularly hard class it just never got that interesting to me.

It was a good class. Lectures helped with the readings. Buddhism is interesting.

This class was incredibly dry and the lectures were pointless but he took attendance so it was necessary to go. The midterm was fair but graded way too harshly and the essays were fair but the final was completely unfair. I wouldn't take this class unless you just love Buddhism.