COMM 1800

Not a hard class at all, you just have to commit to studying for a few days before the exams. There are 3 exams, each worth a significant amount of your grade, making it difficult/basically impossible to get an A if you get a B+ or lower on any of them. Exams are very straightforward if you go to class, do the additional readings, read the text book, and do the practice quizzes. Each are 100 MC questions with about 80 from the practice quizzes on Cognella and/or directly from the textbook, and the remaining 20 from Additional Readings and take-aways from current events. Some of the reviews claim it's not worth it to watch all the Additional Readings (they're all videos), but I would say it absolutely is! It is impossible to get the last 20 questions right unless you've watched them (ignoring the possibility of randomly guessing correctly). In addition to the 3 exams, there are "Discussions" for each chapter (19) and 6 "Problem Sets." The discussions are essentially completion grades and take maybe 15 minutes max, but watch out because it's really easy to forget to do one. Those were worth 1.9% of the grade. The problem sets are a bit lengthier. They took me around 3-4 hours, mostly because I had a problem with staying within page limits. Those were also very easy to get a 100 on. In fact, I don't even think they were graded on accuracy, only that you answered all the questions. Usually they were around 5 pages total in writing. Overall, I enjoyed the class for the most part. I learned that I want to go into the Marketing concentration (and that I really don't want to do Accounting). I would recommend going to class, but don't sweat it if you can't make it. Have a friend write down the take away of the day for you. Also, DO THE EXTRA CREDIT SURVEYS!!! You will be VERY thankful at the end of the semester. I ended up with an A. His quote before every exam is "if you do what I say, when I say, and how I say, then you will do fine in this class." That is absolutely correct. Just study what he gives you. Also it's not impossible at all to get an A like commenters before had mentioned, but an A- is much easier. There's no reason to get anywhere below a B+. It's entirely your fault if somehow you manage to do that.

Kemp is actually pretty solid as a professor. He pretty much repeats what is in the textbook during his lectures but they are important to go to if only for the takeaways. These takeaways are often not real facts but just sentences that sound sort of redundant, "The takeaway is that you should appreciate how important *insert business term* is to creating value." The problem sets are pretty easy but if you have a bad GA, they can take off points for pretty stupid things. The discussions are pretty much just graded for completion but make sure you do them because it is very easy to completely forget they exist.

Ohhhhh man, nothing gets me excited like a lecture from Bobby "Off of this thing" Kemp. The passion that he exudes as he reads powerpoint slides and offers insight into his unparalleled level of business acumen makes this not only "the most comprehensive introductory business course in the country," but the most fun introductory business course in Wilson Hall. The end result of his dynamic teaching style is an absolutely packed, 300 person lecture hall of some of the brightest kids at UVA frantically taking notes, trying to absorb all of the knowledge that he has to offer. While you might get away with online shopping in your organic chemistry lecture, that simply won't cut it in Comm 1800. All in all, this course provides a riveting look into the world of business, emphasizing critical thinking and creativity rather than rote memorization to address the problems faced in making business work.

How to ace the exams:
1. Read the chapter before class or else you will have no idea what he's talking about.
2. Do the practice exams thoroughly on the text website until you can get a 100% on all of them. 70% of the exam questions come from this. Also, all exams are 100 multiple choice questions, no curve.
3. Thoroughly watch every single video on the text website. This includes videos from discussions, additional readings, and out of class lectures. Random, pointless details will show up on the exam.

Easy to get an A-, hard to get an A

This class is not hard by any means as long as you're willing to put in the work. The lectures are dry, but as long as you read the book and do the practice quizzes, you should be golden. I will say this, however, it is easy to get an A-, but quite difficult to get an A, partially because Kemp doesn't round. About 90% of the tests are very reasonable, but the last 10% are very specific and tricky. He does give 2% extra credit towards your overall average though!

I honestly don't wanna waste another second of my life with this course so I'll just copy and paste what I put on my course review on collab:

This is what I put in the comment section of my course evaluation for Comm: Professor Kemp is an absolutely awful professor. This is not a difficult class in any way and I currently have an A, but this class is terrible. It is unfortunate that a class in which 600 students take every year, many of which are future McIntire applicants, is instructed so poorly. Professor Kemp's tests are essentially 100 question vocab quizzes, meaning for each test students must memorize hundreds of vocab words. Some of the things we're forced to memorize would take dozens of hours to do so. For example, we were forced to memorize the members of about a dozen different trade agreements each of which has dozens of members because on the test there were questions like, "Which of these nations is not part of ASEAN." Almost none of the test questions actually tested our ability to apply what we learned, only how well we could memorize it. And for some of the questions, the answers are direct quotes from class so even if you learned the information, you might get the question wrong if you didn't remember how it was phrased. Going to lectures is useless because Professor Kemp spends about half the class telling completely unrelated stories bragging about how successful he was and the other half teaching directly from the text. Additionally, students are required to purchase the textbook, which professor Kemp happened to write, which costs over $150. I hope professor Kemp retires soon and this class can be taught by a professor that actually wishes to teach students how business works, and not just waste their time by forcing them to memorize vocab words.

I felt like this class was taught about all common knowledge topics. While I do see the point of having an introductory commerce class for pre-Comm students, I feel as though this class only deterred interest in the Comm school. There was really no incentive to go to class as all the information was in the book, and Professor Kemp's takeaways were all very vague and hard to decipher.

This class is extremely straight forward. Most lectures are fine to skip, but make sure you go to the guest lectures and can get the take-aways somehow. Looking back on this course, I wish I had taken Kemp's advice and actually watched the online videos and done the additional readings. On the first two exams, I didn't do any extra readings and got a B+ on both, for the final I watched the videos, did the extra readings, studied my notes from the guest lectures, and got an A+ on the exam. 75% of exam questions are taken word-for-word from the practice quizzes online so memorize those, and watch the videos/do the readings the night before and you'll be fine. Also, don't skip any problem sets or discussions. There are 6 problem sets which are worth 2% each and 19 discussions which are all worth .1%. The TA's, at least this semester, graded everything extremely easily, and everyone got a 100 on every problem set/discussion just for answering all of the questions. Problem sets took about an hour and discussions took about 10 minutes. I skipped 1 problem set, so my grade could've been 2% higher, which would've gotten me an A in the class. Definitely do the extra credit because the 2% boost at the end is extremely helpful, especially because he doesn't round grades. It's annoying, but do exactly what he says to do.

Ha! What a joke. I'm just glad other incoming first-years won't have to put up with Kemp anymore. Waste of time!!!