Got a good grade, but yeah, rather dry.

Good foundation for majors in politics, but it can be a bit dry at times. Assignments were okay. It was interesting and I did enjoy it. Overall a solid foundation subject.

I love Andy, he was such an engaging lecturer, but most of the content was so dryyyy for me. Tutorials were so awful that I stopped going in the third week after attendance requirements were waived. Some topics can be interesting but it's just so much political theory, which I thought I'd enjoy, but I really didn't.

Great base subject if you are planning to major in politics. Assessments were straightforward. Tutorials were generally interesting and useful if enough students participated. Like any other subject at university level, you are expected to do some learning independently and go beyond what is given at face value in lectures. If you put in the time and effort to learn, then the subject is interesting and worthwhile. Doing the readings every week (or at least one) makes it easier to keep up with the content. I thought it was a great subject and eased me in well for later years.

Great foundation subject for politics, sociology, geography etc. Andy is a great lecturer as were the guest lecturers. Tutorials were helpful, assignments were a little difficult but tutor gave a lot of guidance.

Everyone tends to rave about this subject especially if you're at all interested in law/criminology, but I honestly felt like very little of this subject was relevant. Although some content that is discussed is very interesting, it is all delivered with a large degree of assumed knowledge/understanding of theories and academic language that you can just google. Nothing is really explained clearly in lectures and tutorials/my tutor spent the whole time talking about nothing in particular and gave no time to help students that didn't understand the content instead, looking down on you. Poor organisation of lectures and content making it very difficult to follow combined with being delivered at what felt like a third year level of understanding meant I could never grasp content let alone synthesis knowledge needed for later assignments/exams. Considering this is a foundation subject one would think it eases you into concepts/university when in reality I spent all my time floundering and barely passing the subject while I excelled in all my other classes. Readings are very theoretical and basically have no relevance to the tutorials/lectures. The major essay was barely explained in lectures/tutorials and used academic terminology you can't just google to figure out what they're marking you on. All-round hated this subject and wish I never picked it.

This is a really good foundation subject - I'm glad I choose it instead of the others. Andy is an incredible lecturer and the content he covered was super interesting and easy to understand. Most guest lecturers were engaging, but some lectures were dry (e.g. about the global financial crisis, and water conflict). My tutor (Bibiana) was really good in providing resources and supporting us - class discussions were sometimes dry, but if you completed the readings (which were relevant) then tutorials were good. Assessments were all straightforward and useful.

I found the lectures quite interesting, Andy has a way of explaining concepts that don't make them seem as outlandish as they may be. His use of personal anecdotes really helped me understand the subject matter. The guest lecturers were okay, not too engaging, and depending on their subject matter could be a little dry. Brian was a really engaging lecturer, and I loved how he conducted his lectures, however, the subject matter was not too interesting. The readings in the subject were quite okay, but sometimes they were just far too much. One week there were 100 pages to read!!!! I felt my tutorials just weren't that interesting, but I can't blame it on the tutor. I think a class full of first years that were scared to share their opinion just wasn't the most interactive situation. Overall the subject was quite interesting, but you have to wait 11 weeks to see how all the subject matter actually connects to one another. The subject in itself is essential if you are moving forward with any social sciences. And a tip for your essay, I would say choose a topic which you are really passionate about because if not, it's going to be a treacherous 2000 words.

Readings were very theoretical and not always relevant to assignments. Found the subject VERY theory heavy overall.

Personally loved this subject. Thought it was a very good foundation for social sciences as it introduced all the foundational theorists; Marx, Durkheim, Weber, Foucault, etc. Lecturer (Andy) was great.