I don't usually write reviews but DO NOT take ECON102 with Geerolf.

(1) This class is extremely disorganized. The lectures seemed fine but they are completely different from the material you see on the problem sets and the tests.

(2) Geerolf either never responds to your emails, or replies one week later. Please do not expect to receive any replies from him.

(3) TAs are useless, perhaps due to the very messy class, but I virtually learned nothing in TA sessions. I did reach out to my TA when I encountered a topic that needed clarification. In one email, his response was **a Wikipedia link** to the name of the topic. In another one, he wrote that he **did not know** how to reach the answer either. I have heard similar comments from other students about other TAs.

Multiple students have complained to the department. As usual, our all-highness-econ-department responded with non-practical solutions such as asking the students to attend alternative TA sessions and communicating with the professor. Please also note that we have implemented these suggestions prior to the complaint and (obviously) they did not work.

Anw for the sake of mankind, please avoid Geerolf. His lectures do not worth a good few thousand dollars. Action speaks louder than words.

This guy is nice, but his test aren’t test. If you want to pass his class all you need to do is memorize the problems on his problemsets and past finals/midterms. He copy and paste questions word for word. The numbers are identical as are the answers. The class doesn’t reward you for learning the material and understanding the moving parts, instead your grade depends on how much time you spend doing the same problem and memorizing the exact process.

This class was extremely frustrating because this professor was not clear on what topics are important and how best to prepare for the exams. He literally sent us an email of midterm/final material covered less than 24 hours before the actual test. Further, he did not know how to work an apple pencil for the first four weeks of class so he just went over all math equations from his lecture notes which was incredibly confusing and hard to process/learn from. When he did finally get his pen working, it was still unclear what items were important. There was a lot of stress when it came to preparing for exams, because it was so difficult to know what to study.
BOTTOM LINE: DON'T TAKE THIS PROFESSOR unless you want to suffer.

Geerolf revamped his class to make it less empirical and more conceptual, which was rather unfortunate. When he started, he lectured off of these slides that had a bazillion words each, making it extremely hard to follow. However, towards the end, he switched to lecturing on the board, which was significantly easier to follow along. Overall, his lectures were a bit unstructured / disorganized since it was his first time teaching his restructured class. He didn't really tell us much about the exams or what to expect. The multiple choice tested a lot of bizarre details (e.g. GDP per capita in the US, what percentage of the world's GDP is from the US) that were technically on the slides that he posted online, but that no one remembers. However, the material in the free response was covered in the recommended practice problems, and it's entirely possible to do well in the class without reading the textbook--the slides and problems are sufficient. He may be less disorganized when he teaches the course again in the future.