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History IBB3 or Psycho IX03 ? or both

 
Old 07-23-2009 at 10:44 AM   #1
kiiwii
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History IBB3 or Psycho IX03 ? or both
Im going in for Business I .. and apparently i get 4 electives .... now im deciding between history IBB3 or Psycho IX03 ? or even both ? im not sure if i want 2 geog courses .... but i put both first year geo courses on my timetable for now and deleted the history course. Other elective is soicology.. heard that course is ok easy so im keeping it for sure.

So do u think i can survive both history and psycho in the same term? or pick 1 , then which one would u recommand ?
Old 07-23-2009 at 10:59 AM   #2
sew12
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I took History 1BB3 in first year as someone who enjoys taking history courses. I took 2 other History courses in first year and have taken 1 since and I can tell you I enjoyed them all more than 1BB3. I absolutely hated 1BB3, but I'll tell you why.

The time period and material this course is supposed to cover is excellent and would have been really interesting imo if a different professor had taught this course. I (along with others I knew who took it) hated the way this course was taught by Dr. Egan. It's extremely convoluted and boring and not at all how you'd expect the material to be taught. It's hard to explain.

Unfortunately the master timetable doesn't list who is supposed to be teaching this course this year so I can't really say if it will be better/worse/the same.

I thought I wrote a detailed course review somewhere here but I can't seem to find it now.

In any case from my experience with the way Dr. Egan teaches the course I hated it and would not recommend it as I found the way he taught it horrible and boring. Also I felt the course was unnecessarily difficult for a first year History course, it was a lot harder than the other 2 Level 1 history courses I took that same year. Overall it was a bad experience. That said I got a B or B- I believe.

All that said with a different prof it could be an excellent course. You could always choose it and check out the syllabus and stuff first week and then drop it and switch.
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Old 07-23-2009 at 11:04 AM   #3
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You could easily survive both. If I were to pick one though I would go with Psych 1X03 as it's a fairly easy course.

I took History 1A03 in my first year, and I found it to be a pretty heavy amount of work with the essays. In general I find it harder to get really high marks in social science/humanties courses than other courses. I ended getting an alright mark by my standards in 1A03 but was told by the prof that I had one of the highest marks in the class.
Old 07-23-2009 at 11:06 AM   #4
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i thought both courses have a heavy amount of essay? and i have heard that psy is even worse with a LOT of terminologies ?
Old 07-23-2009 at 11:07 AM   #5
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Quote:
Originally Posted by sew12 View Post
The time period and material this course is supposed to cover is excellent and would have been really interesting imo if a different professor had taught this course.
I took this course last year, with Dr. Sun. She mostly taught Japanese and Chinese history, starting in the mid 1800s, and ending with the fall of the Soviet Union and Tiananmen Square. I found that she tended to skim important things, and only talk about how it affected China and Japan (eg. the World Wars, the Depression). She also wasn't well organized in her lectures and spent a lot of time on little details that weren't mentioned after that. With a different prof it could have been a much better course - hopefully you can find out who's teaching it this year
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Old 07-23-2009 at 11:10 AM   #6
sew12
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Fight0 View Post
You could easily survive both. If I were to pick one though I would go with Psych 1X03 as it's a fairly easy course.

I took History 1A03 in my first year, and I found it to be a pretty heavy amount of work with the essays. In general I find it harder to get really high marks in social science/humanties courses than other courses. I ended getting an alright mark by my standards in 1A03 but was told by the prof that I had one of the highest marks in the class.
If you're going to pick a History elective I preferred 1A03 and 1B03 to 1BB3 although had the Professor been different I think I would have liked 1BB3 best. Of the 3 I think the material for 1BB3 is the most interesting.

All that said even though I didn't take it I think the subject matter for 1AA3 would be the most interesting. I did similiar subject matter in high school history so I decided not to take 1AA3 in first year but I think it would have been really good.

I don't know if you've already ruled out the other first year history courses but I'd recommend a different one over 1BB3, just based on my experience with it. Again though if a different Professor is teaching it (which is a possibility) than it could be awesome.

Reading the above it looks like someone else had a poor experience with 1BB3 with a different professor. So take that for what you will. It can be annoying when you're covering a huge time period and your Professor has a narrow focus you aren't really interested in.

One of the issues I had with Dr. Egan was he was a little bit too broad at some points and glossed over things, but mostly he just taught the whole course from a very strange point. Convoluted is the only word I can use to describe it. It was very strange. I think he was trying to challenge people to think which is all fine and good but his very non-traditional way of teaching history did not appeal to me.

As for History courses they are all generally very essay heavy, as a a lot of other Humanities courses. You definitely have to work hard on your writing skills to excel in these types of courses.
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Last edited by sew12 : 07-23-2009 at 11:14 AM.
Old 07-23-2009 at 11:11 AM   #7
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Quote:
Originally Posted by kiiwii View Post
i thought both courses have a heavy amount of essay? and i have heard that psy is even worse with a LOT of terminologies ?
The number of essays is much less and marking is less stringent in Psych 1X03. The majority of your mark in 1x03 will come from midterms/exams while in the history course I took it was nearly all from writing.

Psych 1x03 is not a science heavy course but it requires you to look at material with the scientific method and multiple choice questions on examinations require a lot of logical processing. That said, in 1x03 they don't make you memorize a lot of terms, you just have to understand concepts.
Old 07-23-2009 at 01:01 PM   #8
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I took History 1BB3 20th Century Global History last year as my engineering elective. It was horrible. Dr. Sun was teaching it and her lecturing style wasn't all too good. She would have maybe 2-3 slides per lectures sometimes just pictures. The book was nearly impossible to read without falling asleep and you HAD to read it for tutorial discussion. The course overall isn't to hard to get > 8.0 since there are 4-5 essays and 1 exam which is just an essay. This course could have been a WHOLE lot better if it was a different professor imo. Its safe to say I'm never taking a history course again!
Old 07-23-2009 at 01:04 PM   #9
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I think it's just safe to say in general that history courses are not bird courses.
Old 08-09-2009 at 12:10 PM   #10
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thank you so much everyone im taking psycho IX03 instead of IBB3 history =)
Old 08-09-2009 at 04:54 PM   #11
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Dont give up on history though. Dr. Sun is gone and someone else is going to be teaching it.
If you can at any point during your time at Mac, take History 1AA3 with Dr Heathorn or Dr Horn, its amazing and a great first year course.
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Old 08-09-2009 at 04:55 PM   #12
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Dr. Horn is amazing. I would take any class that he was teaching.
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Old 08-13-2009 at 11:58 PM   #13
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what about history 1m03 or 1b03



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