Professor
Michael Suman
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Most Helpful Review
Fall 2020 - To be brief, I would not recommend taking this class unless you are 100% CERTAIN that you want to major in Comm. I lost interest in doing so (for reasons unrelated to this class) around the second half of the quarter and felt like I was wasting so much time and energy to do well since I couldn't drop or P/NP. Anyway, the first half of the class was on interpersonal communication and I found the content pretty interesting. I was excited for the second half (on mass communication) but it was DREADFUL, like so boring that I stopped listening to the lectures and, instead, skimmed the lecture transcript for information related to the key points in the lecture guides. The essay was kinda fun since you are encouraged to exclusively use your experience and observations. I wrote about the "politics" of kissing in American culture, completed it in a day's time, and did fairly well on it. If you really resonate with an essay topic and dedicate a couple of days to it you shouldn't have that hard of a time writing it. The midterm and final were straightforward and open note, so if you take decent notes and study a bit you will probably be fine. The midterm consisted of ~29 short response questions (~50% related to lecture content, ~50% related to assigned articles) and two long response questions (one on lecture content, the other on Tannen book), where the final consisted of ~26 short response questions (mostly related to lecture/assigned articles with a few on Price book) and three long response questions (two on lecture content, the other on Jones book). I didn't really prepare for either of the exams except for making all my notes and the readings easily accessible (AKA Ctrl-F-able). So if you're taking this online, digitize EVERYTHING. This will definitely help you pass if you're struggling to find the motivation to study hard during these difficult times.
Fall 2020 - To be brief, I would not recommend taking this class unless you are 100% CERTAIN that you want to major in Comm. I lost interest in doing so (for reasons unrelated to this class) around the second half of the quarter and felt like I was wasting so much time and energy to do well since I couldn't drop or P/NP. Anyway, the first half of the class was on interpersonal communication and I found the content pretty interesting. I was excited for the second half (on mass communication) but it was DREADFUL, like so boring that I stopped listening to the lectures and, instead, skimmed the lecture transcript for information related to the key points in the lecture guides. The essay was kinda fun since you are encouraged to exclusively use your experience and observations. I wrote about the "politics" of kissing in American culture, completed it in a day's time, and did fairly well on it. If you really resonate with an essay topic and dedicate a couple of days to it you shouldn't have that hard of a time writing it. The midterm and final were straightforward and open note, so if you take decent notes and study a bit you will probably be fine. The midterm consisted of ~29 short response questions (~50% related to lecture content, ~50% related to assigned articles) and two long response questions (one on lecture content, the other on Tannen book), where the final consisted of ~26 short response questions (mostly related to lecture/assigned articles with a few on Price book) and three long response questions (two on lecture content, the other on Jones book). I didn't really prepare for either of the exams except for making all my notes and the readings easily accessible (AKA Ctrl-F-able). So if you're taking this online, digitize EVERYTHING. This will definitely help you pass if you're struggling to find the motivation to study hard during these difficult times.
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Most Helpful Review
Fall 2023 - I really liked this course! It was so interesting to conduct research "in the field" without having the pressure of conducting an actual research project. Our findings were pretty surprising. Suman is very helpful when answering questions: from structuring our experiment to organizing the data - we could always count on his input. He also seemed to be intrigued by our experiments and findings just as much as we were, which I thought was sweet. Highly recommend taking it as a fun addition to Comm 10!
Fall 2023 - I really liked this course! It was so interesting to conduct research "in the field" without having the pressure of conducting an actual research project. Our findings were pretty surprising. Suman is very helpful when answering questions: from structuring our experiment to organizing the data - we could always count on his input. He also seemed to be intrigued by our experiments and findings just as much as we were, which I thought was sweet. Highly recommend taking it as a fun addition to Comm 10!
Most Helpful Review
I took this class over the summer, and thank god it was open notes, but not open book. Suman is a harsh grader, points are subtracted for no apparent reason. He teaches from a biological/evolutionary perspective, and one of the books he uses (Gender Gap) has the nerve to speculate men are better at math and more creative than women. Bottom-line, men are geniuses, while women are merely muses whose job is to applaud the men???!!! Wow,they actually allow this B.S. to be preached in CS classes where 80% is female? Evolutionary psychology reinforces gender stereotypes, promotes homophobia, and justifies the status Quo. This is a pretty disgusting pill to have to swallow being a feminist myself. Be prepared to spit out every insignificant detail on the exams, because just like CS 10, it is all about memorization. One might expect that upper-division classes are designed to stimulate our critical thinking skills, but alas, regurgitation it is.
I took this class over the summer, and thank god it was open notes, but not open book. Suman is a harsh grader, points are subtracted for no apparent reason. He teaches from a biological/evolutionary perspective, and one of the books he uses (Gender Gap) has the nerve to speculate men are better at math and more creative than women. Bottom-line, men are geniuses, while women are merely muses whose job is to applaud the men???!!! Wow,they actually allow this B.S. to be preached in CS classes where 80% is female? Evolutionary psychology reinforces gender stereotypes, promotes homophobia, and justifies the status Quo. This is a pretty disgusting pill to have to swallow being a feminist myself. Be prepared to spit out every insignificant detail on the exams, because just like CS 10, it is all about memorization. One might expect that upper-division classes are designed to stimulate our critical thinking skills, but alas, regurgitation it is.
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