The class material was not connected to the assignments at all. While the lectures themselves were interesting and the professor did an okay job with that, the assignments were very poorly designed and arbitrarily graded. All of the assignments were graded by the TA (as per usual for most lower divs), but the TAs, at least for my section, did not provide any sort of rubric or information on how grading would occur. Rather, they just assigned grades without any explanation. I heard from several other students in the course that they spoke with their TAs at length about assignments, trying to perfect them before submitting only to receive a B with no explanation. Something similar happened to me as well in a few of these assignments. The class just seemed to be badly organized in my opinion and the professor was not really open or available to making the class more accessible. Would not recommend the course to anyone with this professor, or especially the TA Niamh.

In PA 70, there is an inherent disjunction between the lectures and the assignments. The lectures focus on persuasive/informative techniques, but your entire grade is based on a few essays (two Op-Eds, an issue summary, and a policy memo for the final), as well as discussion attendance and presentation. I found lectures dry and not engaging. You can choose to write about any topic, so I learned more about my one issue than anything else.