Professor Williams is very enthusiastic about the material and spends about three days lecturing at the beginning of the semester. Around the third week of classes, students start to give presentations which may be on the midterm and is necessary to understand for the final paper. The grade breakdown for this class is: 15% presentation 1, 15% presentation 2, 30% midterm, 40% final paper. If you aren't comfortable giving a grad-level presentation for 30-75 min, then I would not recommend taking this course. The midterm, although take-home, is relatively long, but manageable. The final paper was straightforward and he encourages you to turn in a rough draft for him to look over before sending in the final copy. I learned a lot and it was definitely a worthwhile class. It's a completely different atmosphere from my other classes, but even though it was intimidating, it was a good learning experience.