Withdrew after fee census but before academic census as could tell I was going to keep disliking this unit and didn't want to bring down my average! Sounds great but in practice more of a mish-mash of different subject matter and hard to follow! The lectures were too many and too broad. I'm a Modern History and International Relations major and couldn't bring myself to be interested in any of it...

The unit seemed great, but David Christian's lectures were interesting but need significant revision, Shawn digressed from his lectures far too often for them to be useful. The marking rubric was so loaded that figuring out why you were placed in a specific range required a meeting with your tutor. It seems like marking standards across the tutors was significantly different, with the older two marking harsher than the younger tutors - which is completely unfair since 80% of the unit is based on marks from writing. Feedback for the preceding short essay was returned 3 days before the next essay was due, which didn't give you much time to implement the (limited) feedback.

I picked up a lot of interesting information from the content in this unit, as well as some research and writing skills. However I feel like the time frame you have for the final essay is inadequate given that you sort of have to come up with your own question, and you're barely halfway through the course by the time you need to start.

I had no idea what to expect. I don't know anything about history or science but found this subject really good. It was a challenge, but is a subject I am glad I did and I still think about the concepts. It is a overview of history - not a specific period.