For anybody interested in comparative politics or who needs another lower-division course, I highly recommend POL SCI 50 with Professor Homola. It's very well known that PS 50 gets a bad rep for being difficult due to hard professors who normally teach the course, but Professor Homola was an amazing professor. He is very caring and interested in student learning. Throughout the course, Professor Homola communicated with the class about how he could improve our learning and also accepted feedback for the format of the final, whether notes were allowed, and where we felt we needed the most help. For this reason, I found the class very enjoyable and one where I learned a lot. The grading structure is typical with a midterm and final, as well as a few homework assignments based on a country of your choice.

There was A LOT of content in this class. Everything within the textbooks, lectures, and additional readings was fair game on the midterm. The average was okay on the midterm but he gave a very demeaning speech about how he was disappointed with the midterm grades (which was in person and closed notes). The grade distribution was 20% attendance and participation, 20% country assignments (these were 4 one page assignments about a country of your choosing and were pretty easy and had averages in the 90-100%), 20% midterm, and 30% final. After the midterm, he took a poll and the class decided to have the final be online and open note. The final was super long for the time period given, but it was a lot better when open note as long as you did a good job of preparing the material. Overall, Homola is a very nice person, and a great professor who is very knowledgable, just the sheer amount of content made this course difficult.

I liked this class a lot despite not really having much interest in IR or comparative politics. Prof. Homola lectures in a way that really helps to understand the concepts and he genuinely wants you to do well in the class. In my opinion there was a perfect amount of work:reading & if you didn't do great on one assignment/test you could still do well. There are 4 "Country Assignments", basically a sustained investigation on one country broken up into very loosely graded essays (I got a 10/10 on all 4 and never spent more that 3 hours on them). There is a midterm and final, our midterm was closed note & in person with a monitored browser - our class did not do well - so he offered to give the final in a class-picked format, which was on BruinLearn and open-note). Honestly I didn't find either test to be particularly difficult, got a B on the midterm and A on the final, you just need to review and understand the major concepts of the class-especially anything gone over in heavy detail or the assignments. Sections were mainly review of lecture, but tied in specific readings - I never did a single one of these readings and kept up fine. Overall, this class was not graded strict or too much of a workload, but I actually learned a lot about the topics discussed.