The class content is great and well worth learning. However, Professor Lacayo struggled to effectively engage students in lecture (especially in the online format). The grade is composed of 3 writing assignments with very vague prompts, and during the writing periods you have no access to help from TAs or Professors, making it difficult to increase your grade or gain clarity on the assignment. Also, this class was hard to take online. The Wednesday lectures were asynchronous, but professor Lacayo never posted the on time - sometimes they were posted as late as Friday or not at all. I appreciated Professor Lacayo giving us the whole week off for Thanksgiving break and having no weekly readings the weeks of writing assignments, but the class was still difficult to navigate alone and without guidance.

The format of the class was hard to keep up with. I always planned to get all of my work done for my classes from monday to wednesday but because the professor would post the wednesday lectures late, I was not able to stick to this plan for any of the weeks. My TA was flexible and nice so I did not struggle with harsh grading. Overall the readings were long, but it was not necessary to read the entire thing. I felt that the monday discussion with classmates and the wednesday lectures reiterated the most important points from the readings which helped me write my papers.