Lee Davis

I took this class because I am not from California and I wanted to learn about it. I did! The professor talked about a lot of topics, history, art, culture, sociology, and took the interdisciplinary approach she mentioned at the beginning of class. I enjoyed the readings on the ethnic group histories as they gave me a chronological view of the history of the state. On the other hand, her lectures and the work we did in groups were organized more topically (not chronologically) so I felt that gave me a view of how the state became what it is today, through the relationships among various peoples. The tests were detailed, and I did poorly on one, but she lets students do extra credit work, so I did that, and I got an A in the class. By the way, I liked the way the students got to know each other in the groups (since I was new to the state). The main thing is that I learned more than I expected about this complex state, and I am really grateful.

I also went into this class excited to learn about Californias people and cultures. But instead I went to class to watch slides of California artists. Her tests are a little difficult considering she never goes over the readings assigned for homework. For the tests its basically up to you to get the right answers because she never reviews what she assigns. You have to do a project with a group on a specific decade that takes up a lot of time. Her midterm and final involve writing essays and citing your sources correctly from the readings and videos. She expects alot, I think, when she doesnt give any additional information. She has a funny bubbly personality but I can say I didnt learn as much as I wanted from this class.

I signed up for this class hoping to learn about the various cultures of California. Unfortunately, I didn't receive the experience I was looking for in this class. What we did in this class is write 25 pages of in-depth research papers on a California topic and place (which must be perfectly cited because they may be published), do various unproductive homework assignements, and worse, if you attend lecture you'll have to sit through hours of slides just to take a quiz on the reading at the end of class. While, I'm not knocking the challenging aspect of the class, there was a problem with organization. The teacher changed her instructions many times throughout the semester. This was frustrating, and worse, the lectures were too long. More discussion may have made this a more interesting class. However, the teacher is very understanding of student's busy schedules and gives everyone time to earn an A, if they're willing to devote extra work to the class.