After taking PSCI courses on mostly international politics and development last term, I promised myself that I'd take a course that deals with more domestic matters. This course was the perfect choice, as the American presidential elections were coming up soon. Furthermore, this course was taught by a familiar face: Dr. Gerard Boychuk (
remember this guy from PSCI 100? Apparently he's the most attractive male professor in the PSCI department according to my female friends). The course was probably the most fun in terms of content. Rather than covering the boring aspects of American politics, such as all the procedural and structural stuff, Boychuk chose to base the course on examining and analyzing the primary elections, which happened to be going on at the time. Topics included the role of delegates, media bias, campaign finance, aspects of primaries, aspects of American government, conventions, and factors determining political support. There was a textbook provided, but the book was mainly there to provide students with a general background knowledge of American politics. Material on the book was not tested on. Evaluations consisted of 4 debates, of which we also had to write a short position or overview paper. There was also a midterm and examination. Debates were marked mainly on attendance (If you showed up, you pretty much got at least 90, everyone got 100% as far as I can recall). The papers were marked rather easy (class average low 80s, I got mostly high 80s), but the midterm was quite hard in that I was not prepared for the style of questions being asked. The test questions were essentially asking us to reiterate and analyze the arguments that Dr. Boychuk made in lecture and in assigned readings, rather than being more knowledge-based. They were highly specific, so you would not be able to answer it properly without having paid good attention during lecture. I learnt from my mistakes made during the midterm and optimized my study strategy to accommodate for the style of questions asked. It paid off really well, as I happened to actually get 100% on the exam (which had a similar structure to that of the midterm). Thus, I managed to end off the course with a 91% as my final grade.