Richard Davis

School: Brigham Young University
Department: Political Science
Location: Provo, UT
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rated by 1 students
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Overall
Helpfulness
Clarity
Easiness
TL;DR: if you reed the booklist you will learn everything from Prof. Davis' course without either the inconvenience of trying to stay awake while he reads his slides out loud (which paraphrase what you just read) or the headache of trying to figure out what on earth he's looking for in assignments just to protect your GPA. Class is not particularly difficult, but his Media in American Politics lectures consist of him reading off his slides (which just paraphrase the reading you were assigned for that day) and asking basic, linear questions that any teacher training since 1987 will tell you not to ask. It is clear he comes from the breed of professors that think the effort balance between student and teacher should be 98-2 in spite of the student's other courses, job, mental health, etc. His assignments have incredibly brief and vague requirements, and the only mention he gives them in class is "look in the syllabus, it's all there." After talking with a few of my peers in the class I've determined that I'm not the only one that gets one sentence of feedback for every 20% he docks from a paper's grade. He is not approachable; I am comfortable in any other class talking with the professor and seeing them during office hours, but I dread trying to voice my concerns and being met with his unhelpful and dismissive responses. At first I was surprised that a class of 30+ students with multiple sections didn't have any TAs for grading, but I quickly realized it was more due to lack of applicants than lack of need. If you need whatever he teaches to graduate, take it from someone else. If the course just sounds interesting to you, find out what the readings are and get those--Prof. Davis will not add anything to your learning that you couldn't get from buying a couple $10 paperbacks or borrowing a few library books. I started this semester being most excited for this topic given the current state of the media, and now it is the only class that I hate (luckily I enjoy the rest of my course load so I can spare the mental energy required to get through this slog of a class).

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