Professor Bodiford is a great lecturer. His lectures are very organized because he follows an outline from the syllabus. He lectures pretty fast and he goes through a lot of information, so unless you write really fast, I suggest bringing a laptop to class. I like how he takes the time to ask the class if they have any questions because it creates a very casual setting in class. The tests are based on his lectures, and the books are just supplements to them. At first, for the midterm, I read the chapters that went along with the week's lessons, but after I learned his test structure, I just memorized his lectures for the final. Basically the midterm consist of information from the first 5 weeks of lecture, and the final is the last 5 weeks. If you're good at memorizing information, my best advice is to print out notes you've typed and just memorize them. Most of the lectures are like stories so you could tell them to a friend and you'll be able to remember the information. Introduction to Buddhism is a great GE class and the writing section is also pretty simple. At first it may seem overwhelming, but the assignments are pretty simple. I don't think a lot of people would have trouble writing about, for example, who is the Buddha?