Professor
Chris Johanson
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Most Helpful Review
Took 164: Spectacle of Rome. This class is frustrating and way more trouble than it’s worth. DON’T take it unless you have no other choice. I chose this class over another one because it made my schedule nice, but I ended up regretting that decision until the very last day until the paper was due after finals week.... The problem isn’t with the professor as a person. Johanson’s kind of a socially awkward guy, but he’s amiable and open to class criticism. He’s pretty busy with research and his family, so he returns emails with 2-3 day lag. He gives the class his cell number so you can text him. If you can get a hold of him, he’s willing to make time for students outside office hours. In his defense, he grades fairly. My main problem is the sheer amount of work required for the class. Participation is easy, but lecture and readings don’t really go together. There are anywhere from 40-100 pages of dense readings per week that you pretty much must read to complete the problem sets (questions about the readings) which make up the exam material. Many questions in the problem sets are difficult to answer because they don’t exactly match the readings. Johanson goes over the problem sets on some days, but you never reach all the questions. To study for the exams, just memorize all the problem set answers. Midterm and final were the same format of short answer/bullet points and creative essay at the end. He grades pretty fairly. The final was cumulative which was a LOT to go over. We had a problem set for 9/10 weeks. A short problem set is maybe 5 pages on a Google Doc; a long one 13-15 pages. Trying to work on the project in-between studying is difficult if you have other classes with finals/deadlines around the same time. The final project is a 5 minute presentation + paper which you must research because you need to identify the transformation of a spectacle at any 3 points in time or characteristic. If you choose a topic not touched upon in class, it's a laborious process. The professor gives you the full prompt pretty late, either 6th or 7th week. It’s not even outlined on the syllabus, so you don’t know what you’re getting into until it’s too late. The paper is 2000 word minimum for individual work, 3000 for a 2-person group, and 4000 for 3-person group. For your presentation, you’re expected to work with Google sketchup or Google earth to make visual aids. I'd say do at least two animations or screenshots of a scene. Definitely don't do these at last minute.
Took 164: Spectacle of Rome. This class is frustrating and way more trouble than it’s worth. DON’T take it unless you have no other choice. I chose this class over another one because it made my schedule nice, but I ended up regretting that decision until the very last day until the paper was due after finals week.... The problem isn’t with the professor as a person. Johanson’s kind of a socially awkward guy, but he’s amiable and open to class criticism. He’s pretty busy with research and his family, so he returns emails with 2-3 day lag. He gives the class his cell number so you can text him. If you can get a hold of him, he’s willing to make time for students outside office hours. In his defense, he grades fairly. My main problem is the sheer amount of work required for the class. Participation is easy, but lecture and readings don’t really go together. There are anywhere from 40-100 pages of dense readings per week that you pretty much must read to complete the problem sets (questions about the readings) which make up the exam material. Many questions in the problem sets are difficult to answer because they don’t exactly match the readings. Johanson goes over the problem sets on some days, but you never reach all the questions. To study for the exams, just memorize all the problem set answers. Midterm and final were the same format of short answer/bullet points and creative essay at the end. He grades pretty fairly. The final was cumulative which was a LOT to go over. We had a problem set for 9/10 weeks. A short problem set is maybe 5 pages on a Google Doc; a long one 13-15 pages. Trying to work on the project in-between studying is difficult if you have other classes with finals/deadlines around the same time. The final project is a 5 minute presentation + paper which you must research because you need to identify the transformation of a spectacle at any 3 points in time or characteristic. If you choose a topic not touched upon in class, it's a laborious process. The professor gives you the full prompt pretty late, either 6th or 7th week. It’s not even outlined on the syllabus, so you don’t know what you’re getting into until it’s too late. The paper is 2000 word minimum for individual work, 3000 for a 2-person group, and 4000 for 3-person group. For your presentation, you’re expected to work with Google sketchup or Google earth to make visual aids. I'd say do at least two animations or screenshots of a scene. Definitely don't do these at last minute.
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