Professor Yokoyama is a very nice person. She likes to crack jokes during her lectures and dresses snazzy on holidays. As for her lectures, I wouldn't say they were the best but they also weren't the worst. She assigns a lot of reading for her lectures, but at least you can understand them and it isn't like a bunch of scholarly articles. I would say that the topics she lectures on in particular for the cluster are interesting themselves, but Professor Yokoyama as a lecturer isn't the best. Sometimes her voice is a little low, so make sure you tell her to turn her mike up or adjust its placement. Pay attention to all the lectures, especially hers because the quizzes have a lot of her lecture material on there.

The class itself is manageable. There is a lot of reading assigned, but you can get away with just skimming some of it and reading parts of it. Go to lecture and discussion and pay attention there. Don't avoid reading, but remember that SparkNotes is an option when it comes to the actual books. There are four quizzes and the lowest score is dropped. The last quiz itself has a bonus point for if you went to movie night and paid attention. If it's a movie you've already seen then you can usually get away with not going to movie night and still getting the bonus point. No matter how many movie nights you attend, remember that you can only gain one point.

There are two essays, and they are fair enough. Go to your TA's office hours and discussion to see what it is your TA wants to see in your writing (the actual professors that lecture don't ever look at your papers). Treat the rough draft like it is the final draft and make the proper revisions to get a better score on the final draft. But seriously, go to your TA's office hours or even email them with your questions because they're willing to help (thanks Jonathan!).