Geography

This class has some aspects which make it very valuable, and in my opinion, very interesting, but a huge portion of the class relies on understanding the jargon which comes with it. That being said though, I found myself referencing what I learned in this class a ton in other classes, namely the fact that borders are everywhere and effect everything, so if you're actually interested in this stuff, you'll take a lot away from this class. I personally am glad I took this class because of this, but I would hate to do it again because of just how much time and effort this class took, so really be sure you know what you're getting yourself into. There are at least 2 hours of readings per class, and while you can sometimes get away with not reading everything, for the midterm essays you really need to understand what was assigned (they're also often dense and not skimmable). The best assignment of the class is when you can choose to make a storymap presentation on any border of your choice, and then later an essay on a related topic. An extra comment I want to give is the irony between the standpoint of the class and its structure. The class highlights the ever presence of borders, and takes a viewpoint that they're bad in a lot of cases (which I'm not disagreeing with), and yet, this class has such a "heavily defended border" (barrier to entry) in learning the jargon that is associated with understanding the course content.

This class has some aspects which make it very valuable, and in my opinion, very interesting, but a huge portion of the class relies on understanding the jargon which comes with it. That being said though, I found myself referencing what I learned in this class a ton in other classes, namely the fact that borders are everywhere and e …Read more

I heard this class described as "Intro to R but Without the Intro", which I think fits it well. Pete is a very fun professor, he was always excited and made the lectures as engaging as possible, but the combination of early Monday class period and learning about different statistical tests didn't go particularly well for me. I wish more of the class time went into actually learning how to use R rather than just copy-and-pasting code blocks from markdown files, because I didn't feel like I got a very good understanding of the material. I felt excited about the topic, but never really felt like I had gotten the skills or understanding to fully apply my enthusiasm. I'd recommend either taking a different intro to R or working a lot on making pretty graphs and charts with R before taking this class or else it can be quite frustrating.

I heard this class described as "Intro to R but Without the Intro", which I think fits it well. Pete is a very fun professor, he was always excited and made the lectures as engaging as possible, but the combination of early Monday class period and learning about different statistical tests didn't go particularly well for me. I wish m …Read more

I am conflicted about this course. On one hand, the material discussed was incredibly interesting and very relevant in the field. However, standards of evaluation are vague and instructions are often very confusing. Also, I love this professor, but their disorganization really impacted the quality of this class. Remote sensing is somewhat unwieldy, so I want to cut her some slack, as she wanted to cover as much as possible, but I wouldn't take this class again without some modifications.

I am conflicted about this course. On one hand, the material discussed was incredibly interesting and very relevant in the field. However, standards of evaluation are vague and instructions are often very confusing. Also, I love this professor, but their disorganization really impacted the quality of this class. Remote sensing is som …Read more