I took ***Japanese 50*** with Carter as a requirement for my Japanese minor and I was surprised how much I enjoyed his class. When I took his class, I was a freshman and it was my first time taking a north campus class (I'm a south campus major), so I was afraid of things like writing papers, entirely free response exams, etc. Thankfully Professor Carter's class wasn't bad at all!

First thing's first Carter is a really cool guy. He is extremely laidback and friendly--not once did he come across as mean or intimidating. You can tell he really has a passion for what he teaches. But I also liked how you could tell that his world didn't just revolve around Japan and Japanese studies. There were a few times during class he'd make reference to rap music which surprised me and showed me that he really is a cool guy with lots of different interests. He shows lots of interesting videos during class and always has lots of cool stories to share about his experiences in Japan. He also did the JET program (teaching English in Japan), so if you have any questions about getting into the program he'd love to answer them.

As far as his class goes, I was extremely happy to find out that we never actually had to write any papers. We had 2 pop quizzes the entire quarter, and one of them he didn't count at all cause he felt bad that he caught so many people off guard. You have weekly selected articles that you must read and make a post about on CCLE. DO NOT SUMMARIZE--analyze. I managed to get a perfect score every single week for these but some students kept getting low scores because they kept summarizing and not putting any actual thoughts into the responses to the readings... The midterm and final were extremely fair and you were never expected to write more than a paragraph per question at most (most questions only required one line per answer). Here's how to get an A in his class: do the readings, go to lecture and copy down everything on the slides (he does not post slides online), and memorize what you wrote. You will literally only being asked questions whose answers come directly from his lecture slides--there are no surprises. A word of advice though is to always remember the pictures he shows during class and their significance, as the midterm and final have a portion on identifying pictures.

I got an A in his class and learned a lot about Japan. I went to Japan over the summer and it was cool to show my Japanese friend how much I knew about the country's history and the many temples and shrines we visited. If I have a chance to take a class of his again in the future, I will!