A pretty unenlightening experience. Mazzocco had clear favorites in the class, which was mildly annoying, and he would spend up to an hour at a time trying to eke out a single, simple response from students rather than moving along with engaging discussions. The whole class, save for a few tryhards, was extremely bored by the end of each hour-and-a-half meeting. I applied to join the seminar for inspiration and left completely uninspired, perhaps even less inspired than when I joined. The only benefit of the seminar, in my view, is that it can boost your GPA by a small fraction.

I really enjoyed taking Econ 89 with Mazzocco. The only way to enrol in his class is to also concurrently enrol in his Econ 11 course and email him when he provides details about it during his first lecture of Econ 11 but I would highly recommend it. The workload is very light, read the assigned article before class which only occurred every other week for two hours. At the end of the course, we had to write a one-pager about what we liked and learned about the course. I would definitely recommend this seminar to anyone in his Econ 11 course.

This class can only be taken if you are taking Econ 11 with Mazzocco during the same quarter. He will make an announcement during his Econ 11 class telling you to send him an email if you want a PTE number to be enrolled in this class. I would recommend everyone to try and get into this seminar.

This class met 5 times during the quarter for 2 hours at a time each. There were 5 readings and although they were long, the topic was very interesting. Professor Mazzocco was very engaging and made the class extremely fun. There is one final paper at the end of the class.