Dear MacInsiders,

I've taken Peace Studies 1A03 as an elective, but I'm not too sure about the workload of the course as well as the difficulty of the material. Can anyone shed any light upon this matter? Some have told me that this is a rather easy elective, but others disagree, saying that it's too time consuming.

Regards,

Mephisto.

I took Peace Studies 1B03 last year. It was basically a continuation from 1A03, so I might be able to kind of help you out.
I would say it all depends on what prof you have. My prof (who was also the prof from 1A03) was only a sessional lecturer. It is possible that she will be gone next year. A new prof could make the course completely different!
I found the course I took very difficult. There were quite a few assignments (too many to list!!) and a lot of readings to do. I think that if your interested in the topic though it is a very good class to take.

I took 1B03 and found it to be alright. Not too heavy a workload, the essay is the biggest assignment. Rest is pretty easy if you pay attention in class and go to tutorial to discuss the topics. I'm assuming 1A03 would be similar.

Is it okay to take PEACE ST 1BO3 if you haven't taken 1AO3?

Yes. I took Peace St. 1B03, but didn't take 1A03.

I took Peace Studies 1A03 last year in first term and the work load was very heavy and time consuming. A lot of students ended up complaining to their TA about how much work it was for a first year course. The TAs passed this information on to the Professor who was Julie Hyde and she took it into consideration and altered the work load for the 1B03 course in second term.

If Julie is the professor again I would expect she would keep the lighter work load. From people who took 1BO3 the work load sounded a lot more reasonable and managable. I didn't take it myself and hated 1AO3 with it's heavy work load. With the lighter load though you might like it. The assignments weren't particularly hard but with so many of them it made it a lot harder.

My only other note about the course would be that I found it to be a lot of reading, but again with the lighter work load the reading load is reduced too because most of the reading was for doing assignments. (The courseware we had to buy was $100 though which sucked).

As someone mentioned though Julie Hyde is a sessional so she might not even be teaching the course this year.