<p>I want to hear peoples' opinions on certain required classes at the SFS: Political & Social Thought, Problem of God, International Trade, International Finance, and Map of Modern World</p>
<p>If you've taken the class or even heard anything about it, please let know how the course was, and if the professor was favorable. Did you enjoy it or despise it? Who are some of the best professors teaching those courses? Just describe what the course was like. Thanks.</p>
<p>I actually would like to hear about this too! :]</p>
<p>[url=<a href=“http://www.ratemyprofessor.com%5DRateMyProfessors.com%5B/url”>http://www.ratemyprofessor.com]RateMyProfessors.com[/url</a>] learn it, live it, love it.</p>
<p>Most GT professors for the above courses should be in there.</p>
<p>Any other recommendations let me know: </p>
<p>I loved PST but it is a lot of dense reading and very challenging writing. Pinkard was great. He does a very good job putting complicated arguments into tangible terms. My TA is now a full time professor and I’m taking my second philosophy with him next semester. The discussion sections were always very heated. </p>
<p>All the Problem of God sections are very different. It depends on what you want out the class. Father King is the man who started the class 40 years ago. He is a legend. Though his class is more about Christian theology than a broader overview. Murphy is interesting for a skeptics perspective. His class is based on reading different religious texts and questioning personal beliefs. I know Sanders is a strong teacher and her class isn’t that challenging. </p>
<p>I haven’t taken I-trade of I-Fiance, but for I-trade if you like econ Kaneda is the Dean of the econ major in the SFS. He is a really animated teacher, very good at what he does and a great person to have a relationship in the department. However the curve is really tough because all the econ majors take him. Econ really isn’t my thing so I’m taking Charhudi (I’m sure I spelled that wrong), who everyone says is really boring, but very straight forward. Not sure about I-finance. </p>
<p>Map is one teacher, Habernack, and the class is split into two sections you really can go to either. He is an interesting guy to say the least, very particular about how is class is run and pretty arrogant. He is a institution in himself, so it’s kind of part of his act. Don’t worry about Map, people freak out and it’s annoying while you’re studying but it is so important as IR majors that we know this stuff. Once you pass you’ll be happy.</p>
<p>kulakai, ratemyprofessors.com is a great site that I have found to be very helpful in the past, but I was hoping to hear more about the courses in general</p>
<p>Pinkard is amazing for PST. And I took Biblical Literature with Pilch instead of PoG, and it was my favorite course I have taken so far. And you don’t need to be Christian to enjoy the class, because Pilch has a policy of leaving all faith at the door. Also, Hrebenak (pronounced HER-BEN-ACK) has an excellent mustache and his arrogance is an act. He is a great man and knows a lot about the subject. Map can be excruciating at times, but in the end, it is very worth while.</p>
<p>PST: I took it in the spring with Professor Murphy (he is on leave next year at Notre Dame) and it was fine; the papers were a lot of work but I thought the TA’s and the prof graded fairly. Either you find it easy or you don’t pretty much. Murphy is funny and you will understand philosophy with him. My TA, Marcus, was great.</p>
<p>Int’l. Trade: I took it with Chaudhuri. He’s really boring but gives you pretty much all the info you need. Exams were very realistic, no tricks, and there was no curve because you didn’t need one. I got a raw 80-some percent and ended up with a B. Fair class. But seriously don’t be one of those kids with a hand up every 3 seconds to challenge him or be annoyingly pretentious in your questions because he doesn’t really like it and neither do I haha.</p>
<p>Map: Hrebenak is really annoying to me and makes a LOT of errors in this class. Don’t let him scare you. Know where every country is, the colonies, etc. and that’s most of the battle. Seriously freshmen: STUDY FOR MAP. It sucks, but think of it this way, it only sucks once. You do not want to sit in that class year after year, so just get it over with freshmen spring. You don’t really need to study 15 minutes/night like he says, but honestly go to every class, take notes, and start studying your notes for a solid week before the exam at minimum. Don’t wait till the last second because you won’t pass. And some of you reading this STILL don’t pass because you won’t listen. LOL</p>
<p>Man, I can’t wait to get out of high school, and hopefully go to Georgetown :] These classes sound awesome, I mean I was never a math/science person. I honestly can’t wait to escape high school’s stupid curriculum. I love history and english, so just the thought of G-town’s history-oriented classes freshman year get me all excited!</p>
<p>I’ll bring another thing into this discussion: comment on your SFS Proseminar.</p>
<p>I had Richard Stites for it and the topic was Communism, Fascism and the World Wars. Totally amazing class, so much history covered, ranging from WWI, the Treaty of Versailles in 1919, the Russian Revolution and communism in Europe, interwar period and rise of fascism, Nazism, WWII, the Holocaust, German-Soviet front, etc. Stites is intense but it’s so worthwhile because he knows so much. He’s about…80? Smokes like a fiend. But very nice and helpful and has written several books on Russian history. He was quoted in one of our textbooks. 4 smaller papers (6 pages I think? he asked for 16 font at first HAHA then bumped it down to 14…) and the final paper was a comparative biography (for example I had Joseph Goebbels and Ilya Ehrenburg, Nazi and Soviet propagandists respectively), 10-12 pages. No internet research allowed. GREAT PROSEM if you like history and are willing to read/work. Best class/professor I took this year.</p>
<p>Okay, the test for Map of the Modern World sounds a lot like the infamous Cold War Test in my History class… It still freaks me out a bit, though. Could someone explain in more detail the format of the test, general topics (countries, colonies, time frame? and other “categories?”)</p>
<p>Map Test:</p>
<p>Format: you get a blank map of each region of the world (for example, the Caribbean, South America, Southern Africa, Europe, etc.) with numbers and letters on it corresponding to the questions. The questions require to know which country is which, conflicts, disputes, settlements, colonial powers, etc. For example it could be something like “Country A is…Botswana, Zambia, Tanzania, or Zimbabwe.” Or something like “Country A had a border dispute with country B that was settled thru…the Int’l. Court of Justice.”</p>
<p>It only covers countries you probably don’t know much about, for instance you don’t go over Canada, the US, or Western Europe at all. The regions are Eastern Europe, Southern Africa, North Africa/Middle East, SW/Central Asia, East Asia, Australia and Oceania, Middle America, South America, and the Caribbean.</p>
<p>Topics:
<p>Am I forgetting anything?</p>
<p>Other: Seriously, some of it is random stuff that he mentioned in class. It sucks because it’s kinda impossible to take great notes the way lecture is (very fast, crams a lot in, doesn’t explain terms or spell ANYTHING for you, no outlines or notes given). There were little random things on the test I sort of remembered, like religion of a place or a rebel group that lives somewhere, but it turned out ok. I ended up with an 80 and passing this year was a 63. I also attended every lecture, so I’m sure that helped.</p>
<p>The whole point of this class is, understand the patterns of what happened when instead of memorizing lists of crap because you can’t possibly do it. If you know general stuff about the world you can figure things out a lot of times. You come out of it thinking you failed but you didn’t.</p>
<p>And just few more things on the Map test: there is an exemption test in the fall for freshman/incoming transfer students. I think 4 people were exempted this past year. And the score for passing the regular test is the highest score on the test minus 30; in other words, the highest score this year was a 93, so the passing score was a 63.</p>
<p>^^^ the year DS took the exemption test, the passing score was 70. DS got a 71 and didn’t have to take the course. All those atlases we bought him over the years must have paid off!</p>
<p>Thanks so much for the detailed information, it makes me feel better about the test. One last question: So the test is not multiple choice, but fill-in-the-blank?</p>
<p>No no it is multiple choice. The maps are provided with numbers/letters referencing questions; they don’t have place names on them but you don’t have to identify the places apart from what the questions ask, multiple choice. It’s a bit hard to explain the format.</p>
<p>Yeah 4 people passed exemption this year…Mansfield, you’ve got a bright son because I can’t imagine passing before taking the course. I got in the 40s on the exemption test.</p>
<p>It’s less multiple choice and more true false in a way. Each country is numbered and there are 5 statements. Depending on the question you pick the statement that is true or false. It gets tricky because usually there is an all of the above or both a and b kind of response as well.</p>
<p>PST - the amount of reading (dense reading) thats assigned in this class is fairly heavy. coming out of high school, i wasn’t used to the way philosophy is taught in college. When covering a certain philosopher or school of thought, Prof. Pinkard would give only the pro side of the arguments–kind of like if he were in the shoes of that philosopher defending his own thoughts. so–it took some time getting used to but eventually i learned to appreciate it. that style of teaching encouraged people to bring up counter arguments on their own during discussion sections. the class also exposes students to a lot of the original literature that served as the basis for things such as the magna carta or the declaration of independence, constitution, etc. </p>
<p>pog - im not particularly religious and was skeptical of how “fair” the class would be since most pog classes are taught by jesuits. again, these classes do vary tremendously depending on who your professor is. professor steck turned out to be a great prof though and the reading material he gave us and class discussion really made me think hard about some deep issues–especially our final position paper that presented and defended our “world view.” if i remember correctly, the material was divided into three sections that answered: 1) are science and religion necessarily mutually exclusive 2) what is the meaning of life 3)does the existence of evil pose a problem for religion. overall great class–learn a lot</p>
<p>i-trade - i’m an econ major so i may be biased but i loved this class. profs like to debunk a lot of myths about protectionism, competitive advantage, etc. so i enjoyed the class. i know some of my non-econ friends who hated micro/macro principles really enjoyed this class. just an fyi its more so a quantitative course than a qualitative one.</p>
<p>i-finance - again, as an econ major i like this stuff. my i-finance course was basically all about exchange rate dynamics in international finance; we also covered other stuff like development economics and some growth theory. the final culmination of our semester was to learn a more advanced economic model that developed stuff we had learned in micro/macro principles and throughout the semester to better understand the effects of say, an increase in money supply. i hear what you cover really depends on who your teacher is though</p>
<p>map - its not as bad as everyone says. the prof is gonna try to intimidate you and tell you for every class you dont show up for–youre bound to be 10 points behind on the final exam (the final exam is pass/fail and makes up your grade for the class). most of the time students were just pounding away furiously on their laptops trying to keep up but many people i know never really looked at their notes or the book until a few days before the exam. and most of us pass–something around 15% have to repeat. </p>
<p>good luck, generally these are all great classes. look forward to your time here! hoya saxa</p>
<p>Yes, I will agree that as a not-extremely-econ-inclined person but not terrible either (Bs in micro and i-trade), i-trade was definitely more enjoyable due to the subject matter. Chaudhuri brings in a lot of real-world cases and examples and I didn’t feel like a lot of it was useless theory as you find in micro and macro often.</p>
<p>As for PST reading, I didn’t read anything in my class besides the passages required to write the papers and I ended up with an A…I guess it depends on the structure of the class because ours were 5 papers and he explained the opinions in lecture, so reading wasn’t that necessary.</p>
<p>Thanks for all the responses.</p>
<p>hi everyone! this thread is AWESOME…so much info! I have a question about Map- do we need to know the capitals of all the countries?</p>