ECON 3010

Zirkle was not as bad as I had been told and the class was actually interesting and not too challenging.

Tests are not fairly representative of the material presented in class lectures. Midterms and Finals are riddled with typos and childish analogies.

absolutely horrendous class, making me seriously reconsider econ. taught terribly, you're really on your own for this one. if you do have to take it with him though, stay on top of the problem sets and the reading and hopefully there'll be enough similarities for you to be alright. ta's are only as valuable as you take from them, don't bother going unless you're gonna do the work. bad experience but your success is basically determined by how much time you're willing to spend with the textbook.

Zirkle is one of the messiest lecturers, but his tests aren't terribly hard, and you almost know what kinds of questions to expect once the tests roll around. Book he uses is really good, as well.

do NOT take this class with zirkle. as much as this class is supposed to suck since its a weed out class, zirkle makes absolutely NO sense. the class is fine to learn through the book for the first two midterms, if you understand the reading you can get a's on those. but the final material zirkle didnt even have enough time to finish teaching and he made no sense in what he did teach. the book isnt really that great either. zirkle may be nice but he really doesnt know what hes teaching, and he uses the excuse of living and commuting from richmond for everything, even if you have exam conflicts. i wouldnt recommend taking this class with him, no matter how good at econ you think you are, he makes no sense at all and just confuses people

Zirkle it a decent guy and if you go to class and study for the exams you should be fine. It's necessary to actually understand all the concepts and be able to apply them in different scenarios rather than being able to regurgitate formulas. Go to class though, his final exam featured a question he covered extensively in class but is not covered in the book. Definitely a weed out class.

Zirkle's lectures are based on variations of the problems throughout each chapter. read the chapter beforehand and it'll be easier to follow along in class. midterms are graded extremely fair, Murat s very flexible and grades pretty easily. midterms are based on the practice problems, if you understand those, you'll be fine. also, go to zirkle office hours before exams!!! he doesn't make the test until the day before so sometimes, he makes up new questions based on questions by students during his office hours, so going before the exams and asking/understanding other's questions are extremely helpful.

Zirkle really takes the weed out nature of this class to heart. His tests are very tricky and hard to comprehend because he presents situations you are most likely unfamiliar with. That is, the problems on tests are much harder than the practice problems he assigns. He also interrupts the class during tests multiple times to clarify things and make corrections or changes parts to questions, which is annoying and makes it hard to concentrate. The grading is fairly arbitrary too. There is little direction as to what some questions want as an answer. He lets the TAs decide how to allocate points. (Murat must be one of the worst econ TAs of all time). Zirkle's blackboard is impossible to follow. Don't get me wrong, Zirkle is a nice/funny guy, but he shows little mercy. Class average is 75% right now.

Zirkle is not a very good professor at all. He goes all over the place in lecture and erases his blackboard work and expects you to stay with him. No slides. Tests are completely different from his "practice tests"

Lecture does not make sense...TA session helpful, but still need to self-study a lot...