AAS 3157

wow, this has easily been one of my absolute favorite classes at UVA. Professor Siwaju is amazing and one of the best lecturers I've ever had. She is incredibly knowledgeable and uses the class time really well, but isn't dry at all. I had so much fun in this class and was excited to go every week. This class is not easy, there's about 100 pages of reading a week, 6 700 word essays, a presentation, and a large final; however, none of it is graded harshly and prof. Siwaju wants to see you succeed. Extra credit was also a godsend and I was able to end the class with an A+. I honestly just started skimming the readings towards the end of the class and I still ended up ok. This class is so much fun and I learned so much from it. Especially as someone who hasn't taken very many AAS courses, I didn't feel out of my comfort zone and was able to absorb all the content. This class is very open to people from all backgrounds and is a worthwhile experience. I really want to try to squeeze another one of prof. Siwaju's classes into my schedule before I graduate cause I truly loved it so much. I highly-highly recommend this course if you're considering it!!

#tCFS24

Professor Siwaju was amazing! This is a well-crafted course that challenges you intellectually. About 100 pages of reading per week, but well worth it. This class is a great overview of the Caribbean and provides a deep dive into different topics each week. We were assigned 6 essays. They were open every week but you could choose what weeks to do. The final is worth 40% and is 3 essays but the other essays well prepare you. She also offered 3 points of extra credit which brought my half a letter grade up. There are weekly presentations that each student (sometimes pairs) sign up for that is also a good size of your grade. There is also a participation grade so you have to be a little brave, but I didn't talk much in the beginning and still got full points. This is NOT an easy A, but if you strategically read (some beginning, some middle, and the end) and spend more than a day on your essays you can definitely do well.