I am so grateful to have had the opportunity to have Jared Diamond as a professor. Though he does read off of his notes and rarely pauses, this is not much of a problem is you can write fast - which I could, handwritten, with few problems. He adds anecdotes in his lectures, which changes the routine flow with humor and random facts . Before he goes into the week's select country, he asks if anyone in the class has ever visited that country, and proceeds to engage in conversation with them about it. He also leaves lots of time at the end of his lecture for questions, and also has office hours weekly.

However, this class would not have been as amazing as it was without his TA, Ali Hamdan, which supplemented the course with great in-depth and multi-perspective readings and discussions facilitated by his sarcastic humor and brilliant mind. He made this class my best academic experience here at UCLA.

Participation is 40%, so you better talk and perform well on the weekly reflection papers. Midterm and final exams are easy because the students submit their own questions, so if yours are good, you could bet that many of them would show up on the exam. You also did not have to answer all of the questions on the test - there would be 40 MC, for example, and you'd only have to answer 30/35. Pretty fair. 10/10.

This class is structured exactly the same way as Geography 6. Honestly just go to Geography 6 and look at the reviews there. Professor Diamond is a celebrity after all with lots of wisdom and respect surrounding him, which motivates you to go to class more. He is a great lecturer albeit his soft voice and rather monotone fluctuation.

I took Geo6 before I took this class. The material is pretty interesting but it can't compare to Geography 6. Maybe I'm comparatively more disappointed with this class just because Geography 6 was so great. It's like a sequel to a great book and it just doesn't feel the same anymore. The class sort of feels like an extended discussion of the issues he spoke about in Geography 6 but applied to case studies, that is a different country each session to talk about. It gives you insight into how different countries dealt with crises in their history and common patterns on how they coped with those crises. Basically, it's about learning from past countries' mistakes with the implications of applying them to our world today. It's an interesting class, though discussion can be kind of a bore (my TA was pretty boring and made discussion literally a 2 hour discussion which was a nightmare). The class is pretty easy as long as you pay attention in class and know the material; what Jared says in lecture is literally the material you learn for the tests so be sure to take good notes.