Professor
Sarah Kareem
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Most Helpful Review
Professor Kareem is very organized, and her lectures show it. Overall, I think she is pretty effective in getting what she wants you to know from each of the readings across. While there is a lot of reading, I skimmed most of them because lecture was informative in general; she covers what you need to know and links that to the themes. I will stress that there is a lot of information to take in. I always took copious amount of notes every lecture. There are three papers and a final exam. The final exam was long; I took the whole three hours and filled my whole blue book. The final consists of literary term identification (she gives you a list out of which she will choose beforehand), short passage ID in which you ID the text and write about its significance/relation to the text as a whole (not too difficult because they were either passages covered in class or there was some clue that they were linked to the text), and an essay. For the essay, you are given some prompts to choose from and basically have to trace how a theme has changed across the literary periods covered in the class. I thought the grading was fair. But I had a good TA who helped a lot when I was writing my papers. I know I definitely learnt quite a lot from this class.. Overall, I think this class is difficult but fair. Just be ready to dedicate a lot of time to this class.
Professor Kareem is very organized, and her lectures show it. Overall, I think she is pretty effective in getting what she wants you to know from each of the readings across. While there is a lot of reading, I skimmed most of them because lecture was informative in general; she covers what you need to know and links that to the themes. I will stress that there is a lot of information to take in. I always took copious amount of notes every lecture. There are three papers and a final exam. The final exam was long; I took the whole three hours and filled my whole blue book. The final consists of literary term identification (she gives you a list out of which she will choose beforehand), short passage ID in which you ID the text and write about its significance/relation to the text as a whole (not too difficult because they were either passages covered in class or there was some clue that they were linked to the text), and an essay. For the essay, you are given some prompts to choose from and basically have to trace how a theme has changed across the literary periods covered in the class. I thought the grading was fair. But I had a good TA who helped a lot when I was writing my papers. I know I definitely learnt quite a lot from this class.. Overall, I think this class is difficult but fair. Just be ready to dedicate a lot of time to this class.
Most Helpful Review
Winter 2021 - Professor Kareem gives a really good lecture! She's very passionate about her topic and it shows. Her lectures are quite interesting and engaging, and I loved her dry humor. It is an impressive feat to make such old, out of date literature seem so interesting and worth delving into. To get the most out of this class to become a better writer and analytic, make sure that you talk one on one with your TA and go to office hours.
Winter 2021 - Professor Kareem gives a really good lecture! She's very passionate about her topic and it shows. Her lectures are quite interesting and engaging, and I loved her dry humor. It is an impressive feat to make such old, out of date literature seem so interesting and worth delving into. To get the most out of this class to become a better writer and analytic, make sure that you talk one on one with your TA and go to office hours.
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Most Helpful Review
Fall 2017 - This class is honestly pretty difficult, but not too bad depending on your TA! The TA I had fall quarter (Seth) was very nice, but made us write a paper every single week... which was a lot. I much prefer my more laid back TA for winter quarter (Sean) who hosts more conversation-based sections. It's a lot of reading, so if you don't enjoy reading lengthy (and extremely difficult to decipher) dissertations written by age-old philosophers, I wouldn't suggest it. As for Professor Kareem, I found her to be a little difficult to understand at times, especially compared to Dienstag. Her points aren't nearly as precise or engaging, but she's an okay lecturer.
Fall 2017 - This class is honestly pretty difficult, but not too bad depending on your TA! The TA I had fall quarter (Seth) was very nice, but made us write a paper every single week... which was a lot. I much prefer my more laid back TA for winter quarter (Sean) who hosts more conversation-based sections. It's a lot of reading, so if you don't enjoy reading lengthy (and extremely difficult to decipher) dissertations written by age-old philosophers, I wouldn't suggest it. As for Professor Kareem, I found her to be a little difficult to understand at times, especially compared to Dienstag. Her points aren't nearly as precise or engaging, but she's an okay lecturer.
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Most Helpful Review
I took her Milton class and found it relatively easy. As a mainly lecture class, she presents slides and takes a fair amount of time on each of them. The reading was a breeze, actually; if you're the kind of student who waits until the week before testing to cram, it is entirely possible AS LONG AS YOU GO TO ALL THE CLASSES. She will, on occasion, try to engage students in discussions, but waits only until lecture has finished so that she properly presents her information. Yes, Kareem does not upload her presentations online because she expects students to go to class. She passes around a sign-in sheet just about everyday too. Midterms/Finals are a bit difficult, but fair, and she grades them fairly as well. Kareem also has a Reader who helps out with the papers and tests, and he is quite lenient (and reads 2/3 of the papers/tests). Overall a pretty good professor.
I took her Milton class and found it relatively easy. As a mainly lecture class, she presents slides and takes a fair amount of time on each of them. The reading was a breeze, actually; if you're the kind of student who waits until the week before testing to cram, it is entirely possible AS LONG AS YOU GO TO ALL THE CLASSES. She will, on occasion, try to engage students in discussions, but waits only until lecture has finished so that she properly presents her information. Yes, Kareem does not upload her presentations online because she expects students to go to class. She passes around a sign-in sheet just about everyday too. Midterms/Finals are a bit difficult, but fair, and she grades them fairly as well. Kareem also has a Reader who helps out with the papers and tests, and he is quite lenient (and reads 2/3 of the papers/tests). Overall a pretty good professor.
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