PLIR 1010

Furia is slightly disorganized and not a great lecturer. He does not use powerpoints or a projector. Lectures, while not mandatory, virtually are because there are 5 pop reading quizzes given in lecture. If you are not there, you get a 0 on the quiz. Nevertheless, the class is highly dependent on your TA. They grade everything and for me, Carah Ong was much more informative and allowed me to understand the readings better than the professor. The midterm and final are easy as you know exactly what is expected of you. There are a few critical response papers, but these are only 3-4 pages and relatively easy. I'd definitely recommend the class for those looking for exactly what the class is called--an intro to international relations.

Prof Furia's lectures are somewhat disorganized and not all that helpful. Unfortunately, lectures are required since there are pop quizzes throughout the semester. I learned most of the information from reading and discussion. However, material is interesting. Exams are mostly reading based, not too difficult.

Professor Furia is not all that great at lecturing. Almost always he is rambling off and going on tangents. My TA was helpful in reviewing all the important points made in class, though she graded more strictly. All in all I didn't find this class all too interesting.

Great class, Furia is good while Espey is fantastic

Absolutely no structure to his lectures. Disorganized, random. He goes off on tangents and never finishes any of his previous thoughts. The readings were more interesting than his lectures. Disappointing class and ended up causing more stress than anticipated.

The material has the potential to be interesting and Furia is a really nice guy but personally, couldn't stay awake/focus during lectures. His voice kind of lulls you to sleep...

Bit boring overall, wouldn't recommend it but it's a requirement for a lot of people. Most of it is stuff you pick up naturally anyway.

The TA matters a great deal. I had Yu Gin Woo who was not a good TA, though nice. Her English was bad and discussions were almost always quiet and painfully awkward, as well as pointless because you end up going over things that should be intuitive to any high schooler.

Not a class I would recommend, that said, it's not horrible. The TA's are, for the most part, very indifferent to your experience in the class. Furia is a cool teacher but the readings are very long if you do them right and if you do them right you do not need to go to class at all.

Furia is a pretty boring lecturer and gets sidetracked often, but his lectures aren't all that important. A lot of people just go for 1 session a week when you have a partner exercise, which counts towards participation. Discussions are a joke, but you have to go to get attendance. Two short papers given 4 prompts are pretty straightforward. Midterm is ID's and essay and if you get a review sheet with possible questions beforehand, so if you study you can ace it. Homework is a lot of readings placed on Collab but you really only need to go through them before exams and for the papers. There is no cumulative final which for me was a big plus. The second test is the week before finals and it is non-cumulative, same format as first. Content is pretty dry and you don't go into too much depth. Do not take it if you are looking for a history of IR. This one basically teaches you the vocab and various theories of how international relations works. Pretty easy A/A-. Chelsea German was decent TA and pretty easy grader.

Prof. Furia is a fairly interesting lecturer. He's fairly knowledgeable and brings in interesting outside facts to his lectures. The class basically focuses on authors of International Relations articles which are very dense and boring. However if you can get through them and understand them the tests will be easy. The TAs are very hesitant to give and As on papers

Lectures are super disorganized and the powerpoints make no sense and are thus pretty much useless. Furia just spends the whole time going off on random tangents that are basically impossible to follow and we don't actually learn any content in class at all, just irrelevant stuff. Tests are frustrating to prepare for because he gives us what we're supposed to know for the tests, but since he doesn't teach us about any of it we don't have a lot of information to go off of. Pretty much any learning that takes place happens in discussion, and luckily my TA was awesome so that made the class way more bearable.