SOC 2320

This sociology course is a good mix if you do not want to take an introductory course but also don't have a large background in sociology/social science knowledge in general. Professor Bair is a good lecturer and generally chooses interesting topics to discuss. The first half of the course focuses mostly on understanding work-family, jobs, and gender relations, while the second half focuses on a variety of things, ranging from sociological studies to beer commericals. The premise of the course, in my opinion, is more interesting than the course at times. The lectures can be dry and the readings can be extremely long; however, Bair's explanations usually cover the key points efficiently so in terms of learning the information, the course is fine. I do dislike several aspects of the course though:
1) The grading. The scale for grading reading memos (four in total amount to 20% of your grade), papers (two which are also 20% in total), and short answers on the midterm and final (both of which comprise 50%) is super vague, making it difficult to understand why the TAs took off points for specific sections. They are very specific in terms of what you should put in your paper and how to write it, but neither Professor Bair nor the TA's made those expectations explicitly clear; I even went to office hours and got very little help.
2) The discussion sections are not long enough for the content the TAs and Professor Bair want to cover. They are only 50 minutes long and the TA's sometimes want to cover two big topics, maybe PMS and Sports coverage, into one 50 minute block. Time always flies by and its nearly impossible to get any clarity or new information from the discussion sections that was not already mentioned in lecture. Group work doesn't really help either because there is very little time to discuss anything.
3) Putting grades in Collab. The TAs are very inconsistent in terms of putting up grades or returning work. It is difficult to grade papers or memos, which I completely understand, but they do not give back memos in enough time to make improvements on future ones. My TA also failed to put up any grades on Collab besides my midterm grade, and though this complaint is pretty small compared to the others, I do want to know how I am doing in a course, especially as I approach finals.
Those were just a few things I wanted to mention, and as always, my experience with the course might not be yours! If you truly want to take this class, you should, but just keep these concerns in mind.

I'm a stem major and took this class as a college req. since I did not get into my spanish class for this semester - I am so glad it worked out that way! Prof. Bair was amazing, she was funny, intriguing, engaging, and easy to approach/talk to. Both of the TA's are great, my session was with Abigail and we had great discussions on course topics every week. Content-wise I was familiar with most of the main ideas throughout the course, but there is a decent amount of reading you do, almost all of it interesting though. The readings are really only important for the tests (specific questions regarding readings) and because you have to write a few short reading memos. Overall great class, easy, fun, low stress.

Bair is awesome and keeps the lecture relevant and interesting but the TAs are pretty tough. Bailey Troia is super nice and asks probing questions in discussion but is kind of a hardo grader.