<p>So I'm struggling between these 2 classes in the coming spring. They are taught by the same professors as Fall 2012. Can anyone comment on Arnold (Econ 101B) and Hawkins (Econ 136) if you took any of them last semester?</p>
<p>I really liked Arnold. Lot of material, and the tests were challenging, but he knew his stuff and curved generously. Did a very good job linking the class to the financial crisis of the last few years, giving all that theory a real-world application, which I enjoyed. Very willing to engage with students and answer questions. Ironically, he recommended we take Econ 136 with Prof. Hawkins.</p>
<p>^how generously did he curve? Would you mind sharing how much time you spent on this class and what grade you got?</p>
<p>First off, Arnold sucks as a teacher. He’s really good at speaking and he certainly has a good amount of experience in the financial world, but he has very little teaching experience and doesn’t make for a very effective lecturer. Besides learning a couple of economic models like IS and MP, I honestly feel like I learned almost nothing new on top of AP Macro…which is quite sad really. He also has a pretty bad course structure. But I see that Wood is co-teaching the course: from what I hear, he’s not a bad professor but he likes to throw curve balls on his homeworks and tests. Arnold’s midterm was more computational and a good/fair test; his final was stupid (not hard at all though). </p>
<p>All in all, Wood and Arnold will very likely complement each other. Wood will make the course more structured and not so much of a joke, while Arnold will make Wood’s tests and homeworks easier.</p>
<p>I didn’t spend too much time on the lecture material, but my GSI was very helpful and actually gave a good amount of interesting material on top of the lectures. Curve is rather difficult to comment on because there was only 1 midterm, and the average was 60%. Arnold admitted he wanted the average to be 70%. I got an A in the course, and I think the average is probably a B.</p>