This class with Professor Trager is fairly easy if you do the readings since you don't necessarily have to attend lecture. Vice versa you can also attend lecture and still get an understanding of the concepts if all you did was simply go to lecture. Though, the TA's are the one's who grade your work and there can be misconceptions of what is correct and wrong between other TA's. With that being said just know what you TA looks for when it comes to the midterm and the final.

This is one of those classes that you can really pick between going to lecture or reading the textbook, it is largely the same material presented in two different formats. That being said, the class is fairly easy. However, it is quite important to do the extra assigned readings because he put some questions about them on the midterm. The writing assignments were basically just news summary type things so not too bad either. As long as you do the work and show up to class you should do well.

The information taught in this class is super interesting and I learned a lot from the readings and weekly current event assignments. Professor Trager isn't a very engaging lecturer, though, and I found that I could understand the material better by reading the textbook rather than going to lecture. The final was pretty hard so make sure you study in advance.

I liked this class a lot, and both Professor Trager and my TA were invested in making sure their students wee comfortable with the content. The class is taught very conceptually, with Trager using historical examples and anecdotes to describe the concepts. There were a couple of short papers due that were not difficult because they were based around applying these concepts to current world politics situations. The tests were all short response, but you have to study for them and have a clear grasp on concepts and examples to write about. I would recommend this class to poli sci majors, but caution people taking as a GE unless you are prepared to read (the reading consisted of long textbook chapters and outside articles that were pretty lengthy).

Professor Trager always deviates from the lecture content to tell stories that he thinks are interesting. I think he thinks that he is entertaining the class when he does this, but honestly, everyone is just waiting for him to switch to the next slide. But even with his slides, he is super unclear regarding everything. I had a really hard time in this class and for some of the days I went to lecture, I sat there for like 5 minutes, decided this wasn't worth my time, and just left to go take a nap.

I honestly really liked this class. I found the material and lectures to be pretty interesting. Trager really isn’t as boring as the reviews say. He tries his best to engage the class in lectures and does a good job of explaining the material. The class closely follows the textbook so definitely do the textbook readings for the midterm and final. I honestly didn’t do any of the other assigned readings but I guess they’re helpful for participation in discussion. There was definitely quite a bit of a workload for this class because of the policy briefs but as long as you space it out through the week, it’s really not bad at all. He tends to reuse some questions as well for the midterm and final so visit the testbank (can’t stress this enough!)

I took this class with Professor Trager and my TA was Valerie. It's a lot of reading (textbook: anywhere from 40-80 pages per week, pdf articles: dense, length varies (usually 10-30 pages per week), and other random readings he assigns), but I ended up loving the class. I'm a south campus premed and I'd say this was my favorite class I've taken so far. I think I went to class maybe three times the entire quarter (during week 1 and for the midterm). I got an A in the class, grades are based on discussion participation, weekly writing assignments, the midterm, and the final. I got a 10/10 on 4/5 of the writing assignments and a 9/10 on one of them. The essays are really interesting to do -- the prompts are fairly open-ended in that you can choose whatever current event in the news and relate it to the course material. I got a 90/100 on the midterm and a 92/100 on the final. The exams are mainly content from the textbook readings (I never did the pdf readings), if I had done the pdf readings, I probably would've done better, but overall if you're okay with an overall 94-96% in the class, it's not necessary. READ THE TEXTBOOK!! It's so easy to digest and very interesting (in my opinion) and all the test questions are taken from the basic concepts of the textbook. Overall, if you do the textbook readings, there's no need to go to class. If you can, take it with Valerie, she's the best TA I've ever had. Discussion is mandatory attendance, but you'll want to go because the TA's go over the concepts discussed that week. I took it as a GE and I would 100% take it again. I thought the material was so interesting and loved how the class focused on current events.

Textbook is the most useful part of this course. Vivien is the best TA-follow her review guides and you will be prepared for the exams. Selling the textbook for the class text at **********.

I am a computer science major who took this class as a GE. Many south campus majors like to disparage north campus majors for having easier workloads. While this class is admittedly easier than my major classes, I still did need to put in the effort to receive an A-, as it's writing-intensive and requires you to think differently than in your STEM classes. Also this class is straight-scaled (i.e. no curve), meaning that there is little forgiveness for doing poorly on one of your assignments or exams.

The workload of this class consists of 5 policy briefs (2-3 pages each), a midterm and a final. I found it facile to do well on the policy briefs (received 10/10 on all except the first one, which I received 9/10 on). However, I did find the midterm and final to be a little challenging to do well on (I received 89 on the midterm; I never received my results for the final) - the questions were objectively easy but you really need to know the material well and be precise with your answers in order to get full credit on each of those questions.

Of course, who you have as your TA can impact your grade. My TA, Jessica Lee, gave engaging discussions and was, in my opinion, a reasonable grader. However, I found the review materials provided by a few of the other TAs to be a little more useful.

As for the material, I genuinely enjoyed what I learned and I found Professor Trager to be an outstanding lecturer. However, what he covers in lecture is the same as what is covered in the textbook. Also lecture attendance isn't compulsory (though discussion attendance is). Therefore many people (including myself, admittedly, during the last two weeks of the quarter) will not attend to lecture, as there isn't much incentive to do so.

There's a fair amount to critique about this class, but I enjoyed it overall. It is a LOT of work and you'll need to devote a lot of time to doing the textbook readings, PDF articles, and essays. (You can mostly skim the PDFs, but make sure to do a thorough job on the textbook readings and essays.) But as long as you do the work, this class is not that difficult. At least during winter quarter 2019, Trager was an engaging lecturer and clearly very knowledgeable about world politics. He gives a midterm and a final that consist of 6-10 short answer questions and 1 essay question, so as long as you practice with the review material he posts on CCLE, you should be fine. There's a lot of information to know, but he often reuses questions from both past and practice exams. The TA you have definitely matters, both in terms of the value of sections and the grading of your essays. (I had Ethan C., who was very personable and an easy grader, and I've heard that Valerie W. is good as well.) I would highly recommend making friends in this class to get together with for study sessions; it definitely helps to talk through the material and know that you're not the only one struggling to keep up with the workload! Overall, this class was an enriching introduction to world politics; as a political science major with little experience with anything other than American politics, I definitely found the course worthwhile. If you're up for the challenge, take this class!