Professor Perez-Montesinos is a gem. He’s so kind and helpful, and for that reason alone I’d recommend his class to anyone.

This class had weekly responses (300–400 words), a final paper (two prompts, five pages each), participation, and everyone had to lead the discussion once.

The professor uploads PDFs for every week except one book we had to buy. The readings were very heavy during the first two or three weeks. I actually almost dropped the class because I thought I just couldn’t take in that much information and actually absorb it, let alone take notes. Luckily, the readings got shorter for the rest of the quarter. I found the readings to be super dense, so it was difficult getting through them. Some authors were incredibly verbose and reworded the same idea over and over. I prefer authors that are more concise and direct. Even though the readings were dense, the topics were super interesting, and the professor explains everything really clearly. I honestly wish he wrote his own book and we just read that instead.

The weekly responses (only 8 total) were easy and participation just meant showing up and throwing in a comment here and there. Leading discussion will be a chore if you ask long, complicated questions because people will forget what you said halfway through. Write a list of questions and keep them short and clear so people actually want to answer. Leading discussion isn’t about showing off your knowledge, it’s just about getting your classmates to talk about the readings so that everyone understands better. You lead with one other student, sometimes two, so it’s not all on you.

The professor is also a super easy grader because he actually cares more about students learning than about nitpicking assignments. He wants you to focus on understanding the material, not stressing over grades. If you show up and write a half-decent paper, you’ll likely get an A. It would be really hard to do badly in this class. Great professor!