PLIR 3310

As much as it pains me to say this, because I really liked Professor Smith, I did not enjoy this class all that much. As the semester progressed, I just became less and less sure of what I was supposed to be learning and taking away from class. I would attend most lectures (which were via Zoom), but would quickly become lost and just stop taking notes. Eventually I would get distracted and start messing around on my phone or computer. While you could say that's on me, I know I'm not alone in feeling this way because I watched the participant count steadily decline throughout the semester, to the point where less than 2/3 of the class was ever attending on any given day. (Although tbf, lectures were recorded, but I know lots of people were just skipping.) Essentially, the lectures were just not engaging, and that made it difficult to follow along with the material. That being said, I liked everything else about Professor Smith, he seemed very nice, smart, etc., but I just could not focus in his class. As for the workload of the course, I found it fairly manageable. The midterm and final were fairly straightforward assignments: pick from a selection of prompts and respond to them by referencing class readings. Granted, I did not do said readings, but it was not hard to see which ones would be necessary for the essays and go back to them. The book/film review assignment was very interesting to me, mostly because I really enjoyed my movies and found them fun to write about. That being said, I was a little uncertain what they were looking for in your analysis, and it was hard to incorporate plot summary without going over the page limit, but it wasn't that bad. Lastly, there was an assignment to follow one ongoing international issue for the whole semester, which... I did not do. Long story short, I just read a few articles relating to my issue at the end of the semester and did just fine with it. Essentially, this class has very interesting material and a nice professor, but it is just hard to focus and really grasp what you are supposed to learn. Overall, I'd say I'm neutral in terms of recommending taking it to someone else.