Today marked the first day of my summer courses. I must say that my overall impression is good! This is very suprising to me because in the past I’ve held a bit of aprehension over classes that fall under the arts rather than the sciences. I can also say that traditionally I’ve not had the best of experiences in those classes. For example, I had to take english 103 twice. English 103 was perhaps my least favorite class I’ve ever taken here at purdue, right next to Physics 152 :)
So how would I describe the two courses? I’ve only finished my nightly reading for one of the courses and I must say that those first 25 pages are dreadfully boring :) Political Science 141 or “Governments of The World” of “Comparitive Politics” is all about examining how different governments throughout the world implement their governments. The book says that this is important because by understanding why democracies fail in Brazil and Thailand can lead to valuable insights into our own implementations of democracy.
The major focus of the class will be examining several different goverments such as the UK, France, Germany, Canada, Japan, China, and more in an effort to understand why those governments exists, how they came to be, and their relative pros and cons. The class has only three quizzes (all announced ahead of time), a midterm, and a final project.
Of special interest is the final project. The project is research paper that will ultimately by 12 to 15 pages in length. So far the only requirement is that you choose a country that you’re interested in and research its government in depth. You then generate 12 pages on it :) I’m sure its more complicated than that, but it holds a certain amount of excitement for me. My interaction with liberal arts has been completely 100 level classes required by my major(s). English 103 – Advanced Composition, Com 114 – Introduction to Communication, Com 315 – Technical Writing, Economics 250 – Macro Economics. All of these have been pretty rigid courses without an open end like this course. That, along with the fact that the class is only going to last 8 weeks makes it very appealing to me.
Add all of that to fact that my professor is:
leads me to believe that this course is destined for good grades.